Joey Alexander / Chelsea Bridge - Billy Strayhorn

Published on Aug 3, 2014
"Chelsea Bridge" (1941) is a jazz standard written by Billy Strayhorn. The song has been recorded by Duke Ellington, Ben Webster, Wynton Marsalis, Keith Jarrett, Lew Tabackin, Vince Guaraldi, Joe Henderson and Tony Bennett, among many others. Ella Fitzgerald recorded it with Ellington on her albums Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook (1957) and Ella and Duke at the Cote D'Azur (1967).

In 1958, lyrics were written for the song by Bill Comstock, a member of the The Four Freshmen for their album Voices In Latin. According to Ellington biographer James Lincoln Collier, during a trip to Europe, Strayhorn actually saw a J. M. W. Turner or James McNeill Whistler painting of Battersea Bridge and mistakenly named the song after Chelsea Bridge.