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Duke Ellington in Person
EDWARD KENNEDY ìDUKEî ELLINGTON ALWAYS SPOKE OF HIS LIFE AS A SORT OF fairy tale, and perhaps it was. How, if not by magic, could someone so abundantly and equally blessed with talent, even temperament, and good looks come to be? A man who seems never to have suffered (until, perhaps, the very end), who was unfailingly polite and apparently unflappable, who above all improved the world by giving it the glowing contents of his imagination? Duke Ellington is not just our greatest jazz musician, but ouróAmericaísógreatest musician, period: author of some two thousand compositions, from three-minute masterpieces like ìSophisticated Ladyî and ìSolitudeî to majestic extended works like ìHarlemî and ìBlack, Brown and Beige.î
ìBlessedîóEllington himself used the word when he wrote his autobiography. ìDo I believe that I am blessed? Of course I do! Ö There have been so many extraordinary and inexplicable circumstances in my life. I have always seemed to encounter the right people in the right places at the right time, and [to do] the right thing.î
Born on April 29, 1899, in Washington, D.C., he grew up among that cityís substantial black middle class. His mother, Daisy Kennedy, was the daughter of a District of Columbia police captain. Daisy married the ambitious young James Edward Ellington, who was successively a coachman, butler, caterer, and blueprint draftsman. ìJ.E.,î as Duke called his father, ìalways acted as though he had money, whether he had it or not. He raised his family as though he were a millionaire.î
Ellington had a happy childhood, from which he emerged strong and whole: He was an eager athlete, a bit of a bookworm, but not much interested in schoolwork. In the only music course that appears on his high school transcript, he got a D. But when he learned, as he later put it, ìthat when you were playing piano there was always a pretty girl standing down at the bass clef end of the piano,î he dedicated himself to keyboard technique. By his mid-teens, Duke (the nickname came from a snooty junior high school friend who liked to give his pals titles) was hanging out at Frank Hollidayís pool room on T Street, a magnet for Pullman porters, pool sharks, and the cityís best piano players. And the kid watched. And listened.
Soon he had his own band. Offered a scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (he was a visual artist of some promise), the eighteen-year-old Duke turned it downóhe was making too much money as a dance band entrepreneur, sending out four or five groups a night. In 1918 he married Edna Thompson. In 1919 a son, Mercer, was born. The marriage soon foundered, and though Duke and Edna never divorced, they rarely saw each other after the mid-twenties.
In 1923 Ellington and his fellow musicians Sonny Greer and Otto Hardwick ventured to New York, where they quickly began to starve. Hightailing it back to D.C. for some of Miss Daisyís cooking, they felt the pull of New York again after three months. This time they landed a gig at Barron Wilkinsís Harlem cafe, playing what was then called ìconversation musicîósoft, sweet, and conventional.
Later in 1923 the group was offered a job on West 49th Street at the Hollywood Cafe, soon renamed Club Kentucky. Ten men strong now (they would eventually grow to sixteen), they were no longer playing ìconversation musicî but something weird and compelling. Dubbed ìjungle musicî for Sonny Greerís obsessively pounding tom-toms, it had little to do with Africa and everything to do with the African-American blues. Whatever you called it, the Ellington bandís music sounded like nothing before or since.
Its singularity was rooted first in the musicians themselvesóìan unrivaled collection of musical eccentrics,î one writer has called themóand second in their bossís gift for combining and blending their idiosyncrasies into an even more striking whole. Trumpeter Bubber Mileyís smears, groans, and wails, or the insinuating noises, like a cat in heat, that trumpeter Cootie Williams got from a plunger mute (the business end of a toilet plunger cupped over the hornís bell)óin another bandleaderís hands, these sounds would have been mere barnyard effects, novelties. In Ellingtonís, they became the building blocks of high drama and sophisticated comedy.
Ellingtonís twin rolesóbandleader and composerówere already thoroughly intertwined. For the rest of his life, the band was his indispensable composing tool, a great tone-painterís palette. Dukeís later collaborator, Billy Strayhorn, put it best: ìEllington plays the piano, but his real instrument is his band.î
In 1927 Duke and his men landed the house job at Harlemís mobster-owned Cotton Club, the epitome of Roaring Twenties chic. Playing nightly to slumming millionaires, the Ellington orchestra made its name. During his six years at the club, Duke wrote ìBlack and Tan Fantasy,î ìEast St. Louis Toodle-Ooî (with Miley), ìCreole Love Call,î ìMood Indigo,î and other early masterworks.
His persona was already established: unfailingly elegant, a master of suave flattery (ìMy, you make that dress look beautiful,î was a favorite Ellington line). The real Duke was more complicated. His band member Rex Stewart, who later wrote several perceptive books, had this to say about his onetime boss: ìEllington is the most complex and paradoxical individual Iíve ever known. He is completely unpredictable; a combination of Sir Galahad, Scrooge, Don Quixote, and God knows what other saints and sinners were apt to pop out of his ever-changing personality.î
Ellington kept his inner self, or selves, well hidden. As his friend Irving Townsend said, ìDuke Ellington was seldom alone. Yet he was the most solitary and secretive man I ever knew.î
If Ellington ultimately stayed aloof, it was to cultivate his ruling passion. Thereís a famous passage from his autobiography whose playful tone ends on a note of dead seriousness:
ìRoaming through the jungle, the jungle of ëoohsí and ëahhs,í searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats. The more consonant, the more appetizing and delectable they are. Cacophony is hard to swallow. Living in a cave, I am almost a hermit, but there is a difference, for I have a mistress. Lovers have come and gone, but only my mistress staysÖ . Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.î
In 1933 the Ellington orchestra sailed to England (despite Dukeís fear of ocean travel) and played to ten solid minutes of applause at the worldís most prestigious theater, the London Palladium (Ellington called the applause ìterrifyingóit was applause beyond applauseî). Back in the United States, the band spent 1934ñ36 crisscrossing the nation. They were fine indeed, these dandies from the Apple. The novelist Ralph Ellison, then an Oklahoma City high school student and aspiring musician, describes the bandís impact when it blew into his hometown:
Ellington had his own goals. In 1935 ìReminiscing in Tempoî took up both sides of two 78-rpm discs, an unprecedented length for a jazz work. ìNothing quite that challenging had ever been attempted in jazz composition,î says the composer and jazz historian Gunther Schuller. This was music for listening and contemplation, not Lindy-hopping. The language of jazz, barely forged, was already being pushed, challenged, extendedóto the horror of many jazz fans.
John Hammond, a talent scout and critic, argued in the jazz magazine Down Beat that ì[Ellingtonís] music is losing the distinctive flavor it once had.î Not only had Duke ìadded slick un-negroid musicians to his band,î wrote Hammond, but ìhe has purposely kept himself from any contact with the troubles of his people or mankind in generalÖ . [He] consciously keeps himself from thinking about such problems as those of the Southern sharecroppers, the Scottsboro boys, intolerable working and relief conditions in the North and SouthÖ . The Duke is afraid to think about himself, his struggles, and his disappointments.î
The irony of Hammondís last sentence is that ìReminiscingî was Ellingtonís response to the worst crisis he had yet encountered: his motherís death, which had thrown him into a depression. For Hammond, ìstrugglesî meant social struggles only, not the more universal traumas of deep personal loss and a sudden face-to-face encounter with mortality.
Nor could Ellington be accused, at any point in his career, of ignoring his blackness. In a 1941 speech to black churchgoers in Los Angeles, he responded to Langston Hughesís poem ìLet America Be America Againî (which Ellington mistakenly identified as ìWe, Too, Sing Americaî) by going Hughes one better. The poetís catalogue of Negro contributions to American history was too modest, said Ellington. The black man wasnít merely a builder of American civilization but more like the builder. Here was an astonishing, and astonishingly early, voicing of a theme that gained currency only decades later, in the writings of Ellison and the social critic Albert Murray:
In the years just before 1940 Duke began three important relationships. Beatrice ìEvieî Ellis became his companion for the rest of his life; the physician Arthur Logan became his personal doctor and best friend (on whom the Duke, a confirmed hypochondriac, came utterly to depend); and he acquired a collaborator, the composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn, who wrote the bandís theme song, ìTake the A Train.î
When America entered World War II, Ellington was at the peak of his popularity and making his best music yet. Rarely has American popular musical taste dovetailed so completely with works of genius: ìKokoî (ìas perfect a composition as the three-minute limit of the 10-inch 78-rpm phonograph record would permit,î says Gunther Schuller), ìCotton Tail,î ìDo Nothing Til You Hear From Meî (the vocal version of ìConcerto for Cootieî), and ìNever No Lamentî (the instrumental version of ìDonít Get Around Much Anymoreî). By 1943 Ellingtonís eleven hundred recordings had sold twenty million copies.
And on he rode, through the war years. As the fifties began, the decline of big bands, the rise of rhythm and blues, and the first premonitions of rock íní roll caused a slump in Dukeís fortunes. In 1951 three great sidemen, the alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, the drummer Sonny Greer, and the trombonist Lawrence Brown, all quit (though Hodges and Brown later rejoined). ìSatin Doll,î in 1953, was Ellingtonís last hit single.
But you couldnít ever count the Duke out. In 1956 a spectacular solo by the tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves sparked near-pandemonium at the Newport Jazz Festival, catapulting Ellington onto the cover of Time. Suddenly Duke was as visible as ever. His final incarnation arrived: ìthe coolly amused, persistently polite, impregnable aristocrat,î as Nat Hentoff put it in 1965. He was an international figure now, nation-hopping on State Department-sponsored tours, the old whistle-stops replaced by airports the world over. When a reporter asked him if he would ever quit the road, Ellington smiled and said, ìWhat would I do sitting in one place? Iím in contact every night with peopleólive peopleólistening to my music. What reason would I have to retire from the road?î
ìWatch him some night in the wings,î said a band member. ìThose bags under his eyes are huge, and he looks beat and kind of lonely. But then we begin to play, he strides out on the stand, the audience turn their faces to him, and the cat is a new man.î The road was burned into his soul; for all his aloofness, he thrived on the daily contact with musicians, audiences, friends in cities everywhere.
Some argue that this restlessness prevented Ellington from fully realizing his genius. Had he been able to sit still, they say, he might have accomplished the one goal that eluded him: the mastery of big, extended musical forms. ìHe knew it was a dream he would never realize,î writes Schuller, adding that Ellington was too distractedówillinglyóby the crush of one-night stands to acquire the technical skills and to muster the quiet concentration that larger works require. The big concert pieces, from ìCreole Rhapsodyî in 1931 through 1943ís ìBlack, Brown and Beigeî to the suites and religious works (Ellington called them ìSacred Concertsî) that took up more and more of his time from the fifties on, were failures, collages of unrelated, if glowing, material. Or thatís what one camp maintains, insisting that Ellington reached his creative apogee with his great three-minute hits of the early forties.
Wrong, insists the other camp. Wynton Marsalis devoted an entire segment of his recent radio series, ìMaking the Music,î to a close reading of Ellingtonís ìTone Parallel to Harlemî and argued persuasively that that work, commissioned by Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1951, is a completely successful large work, its themes subtly developed, its organic unity complete. Far from reaching his artistic height in the 1940s, says Marsalis, Ellington kept right on evolving.
In 1967 Billy Strayhorn died (Duke responded with one of his finest albums, And His Mother Called Him Bill), followed in 1970 by Ellingtonís greatest sideman, the irreplaceable Johnny Hodges. When Arthur Logan died, in late 1973, Duke cried himself to sleep. ìI donít know what Iím going to do,î he told Loganís widow. ìI wonít last six months.î
He didnít. He died on May 24, 1974, writing music until almost the very end. On May 27 ten thousand mourners gathered at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on the outskirts of Harlem. One of the speakers, the British journalist Alistair Cooke, summed up the crowdís, and the worldís, emotions. Paraphrasing the novelist John OíHaraís reaction to the death of George Gershwin, Cooke said, ìDuke Ellington died last week. I donít have to believe it if I donít want to.î
Ellingtonís impact on America wasnít just musical. Here, to use that belabored phrase, was an incomparable role model. The composer Robert Crowley saw the Duke as a public hero along the lines of Franklin D. Roosevelt. ìIn his expansive zest for life, his resilience, his perenially unexpected response to events, and his creative execution of everyday tasks,î said Crowley, ì[Ellington] set an example of human potentialities for thousandsîómake that millionsóìof people.î Especially African-American people. Though Ralph Ellison was writing about the Ellington orchestra in what follows, his words apply best of all to its leader:
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