According to Ellington biographer
James Lincoln Collier, during a trip to Europe, Strayhorn was inspired by a
J. M. W. Turner or
James McNeill Whistler painting of
Battersea Bridge and perhaps mistakenly named the song after
Chelsea Bridge. Strayhorn biographer
David Hajdu notes that "[u]nlike conventional tune-based pop and jazz numbers of the day, 'Chelsea Bridge' is 'classical' in its integration of melody and harmony as an organic whole." He also observes that it "vividly evokes the water below" the bridge rather than the bridge itself and that the piece is indebted to the work of
Claude Debussy. Hajdu also quotes noted jazz arranger and composer
Gil Evans as saying, "From the moment I first heard 'Chelsea Bridge,' I set out to try to do that. That's all I did ... tried to do what Billy Strayhorn did." In an analysis of the piece's haunting melody,
Gunther Schuller writes, "What Strayhorn exploited in the theme of 'Chelsea Bridge' is the duality of its chromatic harmonies. The theme is set in its first three bars in
minor sixth chords with an added
major seventh. However, Strayhorn causes us to hear these harmonies as if they were whole-tone chords. He achieves this effect by two means: 1) through orchestrational and dynamic stressing of the three upper notes [and] 2) by setting these sixth chords in their third inversions. This latter device takes away the rootedness of the harmonies, letting them float, so to speak, more towards the top of their structure." ==References==