“Come Sunday” was first introduced by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra at their first Carnegie Hall concert on January 23, 1943. Ellington recorded the piece for RCA Victor the following year.

In 1942 Ellington and His Orchestra were engaged for a special performance at Carnegie Hall, and for the event Ellington composed an extended piece entitled “Black, Brown and Beige,” each color denoting a section of the piece corresponding to a period of time in the history of African-Americans in America. Ellington described it as “a tone parallel....” “Come Sunday” is what is now known as the 32-bar, AABA-form song (which Ellington wrote for alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges), but originally it was part of a 12-minute portion of the first section, “Black.”

Ellington had composed extended pieces prior to “Black, Brown and Beige.” His first, from 1931, was entitled “Creole Rhapsody.” Then in 1934 his “Symphony in Black” was made into a short film feature. In 1935 the piece “Reminiscing in Tempo” (in four parts) took up two 78 rpm records (a radical concept for a jazz group at the time), and this was followed by the two-part “Diminuendo in Blue” and “Crescendo in Blue” from 1937. It was clear that Ellington envisaged his music to go beyond the standard 32-bar, pop-song convention of the day, an idea that was contrary to the way many, including music critics, viewed the band. In fact, Ellington’s manager of 12 years, Irving Mills, resigned following the issuance of the recordings of “Reminiscing in Tempo.”

Obviously, Ellington was a visionary whose music wasn’t fitting into the preconceived notions of what was considered to be jazz. During the 1930s and ‘40s, Ellington’s compositions were tending to go in radically different directions than the music by other big bands of the time. Also, for years his compositions had been tailored to the individual sounds of his band members, and he was the first of relatively few bandleaders to utilize this approach.

The critics generally panned “Black, Brown and Beige.” The jazz critics felt Ellington was somehow deserting jazz for “serious music” (the term at the time for orchestral or “classical” music), and the “serious music” critics felt it wasn’t up to the great classical compositions. Caught in the cross-fire, Ellington was clearly upset and soon after began to utilize the term “beyond category” for his music rather than using the word jazz. It’s clear in retrospect that neither critical camp understood what Duke was attempting, and he was so disturbed by the turns of events that it would be several years before he would attempt anything similar. Thankfully, however, he continued to compose extended works and eventually gained the critical respect he so deserved.

In 1944 Ellington and the orchestra commercially recorded excerpts from “Black, Brown and Beige” (including “Come Sunday”), but it wasn’t until 1958 that he would revise the piece and record it in its entirety for Columbia Records. In the 1970s, the 1943 live performance was issued for the first time on LP.