Rethinking Duke Ellington article @ All About Jazz

The great anomaly, as I have said probably too often now, is the Shakespeare Suite, which he never played as a suite after its premiere, not even on the three occasions after its premiere when he returned to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, to whom it was dedicated. Did he think his suites were too difficult for his musicians to recite in their entirety? Surely not. Probably the most difficult pieces on the Shakespeare Suite are “Madness in Great Ones” and Britt Woodman’s astounding “Sonnet for Hank Cinq,” and he did call those pieces from time to time—well, as long as Woodman was in the band. But on the other hand he apparently never played “Daybreak Express” in his nightly repertoire after recording it in 1933. It is an astounding arrangement, and no doubt stunningly difficult. Did he think it was too difficult? Well,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Mercer Ellington obviously didn’t—he brought it into the repertoire 40 years later when he took over the band after Duke’s death.

Another possibility, a sad possibility, is that Ellington felt that audiences would think he was pretentious putting an entire suite on display. That sounds ridiculous, I know, but on that awful occasion in Paris when he dumbed down the program he was playing because a trad fan complained, Ellington wrote, obviously apologetically, that he had been “showing off” by playing , The Liberian Suite. After that, he stopped ‘showing off’ and reverted to “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be” and the like.

AAJ: You express irritation with Ellington towards the end of the book. What should he have done differently in his later years?

JC: I am not alone in believing that he should have found more occasions for showing off—yes, showing off—his great gifts as composer. He might have mounted evenings with his orchestra and symphony players in one of the Manhattan showplaces. He might have made them annual occasions in the 1960s as he had done with the Carnegie Hall concerts in the 1940s. To do that, he would necessarily have had to take some time off the road. He would have had to organize the suites, and rehearse “Night Creature” with symphony musicians sharing the space with his band members. If you look critically at the 1940s Carnegie concerts, you see the rise of Ellington’s ambitions as a composer of extended works displayed in grand style with auspicious audiences and front-page entertainment coverage.

You also see the carping of John Hammond and a few other critics. Though those critics had no obvious influence on Ellington’s composing or on the attention those concerts received, they apparently stifled his ambitions so that he shut down the Carnegie recitals in 1948. To any objective viewer, he did that prematurely. He could have gone on for years. At the moment the Swing Era was on its last legs and dance halls were being shuttered, and the Carnegie concerts provided a great outlet for his music. But he quit them, and carried on with a regimen of one-nighters in movie theaters, high school gyms, and other places a long bus-ride away. Why? Was it because there were no John Hammonds in the audiences? His loyal fans applauded the opening strains of “Take the ‘A’ Train,” and the folks who were taking a night off from watching television in their rec rooms dutifully joined them. Toward the end, more and more time was given to playing the medley of old favorites and bringing on singers for “Rocks in My Bed” and “Hello Dolly.” Amazingly, while this formulaic enterprise was occupying his nights, he was also composing The Far East SuitThree Black Kings and the magnificent ballet The River. But he never played The Far East Suite as a suite, and he never heard the symphony Three Black Kings, and he neither heard the score nor saw the ballet for The River At the triumphant debut of The River by the American Ballet Theater at Lincoln Center in New York on 25 June 1970, Ellington was playing a one-nighter at the Grant Park band shell in Chicago.

AAJ:You write about the missing last act. Can you expand on that?

JC: People who know Ellington’s music today are likely to think of him as a songwriter. He deserves to be lauded as a composer, and especially as a composer who invented and promulgated concert music that is distinctively New World music, an increment to the great tradition of classical concert music. One of the most astute jazz critics, Benny Green, asked Ellington if he would consider presenting an evening of his music along the same lines as one might present Bach or Delius or Debussy, and Ellington laughed at the notion. Green was taken aback and told him so. A few others in his lifetime like Alvin Ailey and Martin Williams also rued that attitude. He spent his last decades playing one-nighters around the world. He composed extended works but seldom played them publicly. He indulged his role as emcee, showman, and presenter, but he shunned public displays of his role as composer. His last act might have been a gala celebration of his accomplishments as a composer instead of smiling balefully at the small crowd applauding the opening bars of “Take the ‘A’ Train” at a ballroom in De Kalb Illinois.

AAJ: Of the suites not mentioned in the book, which are ripe for reconsideration?

JC: That’s a difficult question. I suppose it is obvious that I think The Queen’s Suite, The Riverand the Shakespeare suite are masterworks. The Liberian Suite has a weak first movement (“I Love the Sunrise”) but otherwise deserves to be heard. The New Orleans Suite should be dusted off and played annually in New Orleans if not elsewhere. Afro-Bossa was underdeveloped with five of its movements played cold at one recording session because the band had to pack up for a European tour.

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Ray Nance complained to Stanley Dance about the lack of preparation. The bolero called “Afro-Bossa,” which Ellington called “Bula,” is the only fully polished piece in the suite, and it remains one of Ellington’s great compositions. It should be played, but other pieces need to be reworked before it can properly be played as part of a suite. The manuscripts are apparently available if anyone wants to try.

AAJ: Why did Ellington fill his time with formulaic concerts?

JC: I think they were easy for him, and gratifying. The complaints were few, and Ellington didn’t seem fazed by them. Strayhorn complained about the medley as a waste of time, according to Mercer Ellington. Spectators at the Berlin Jazz Festival jeered at ”
data-original-title=”” title=””>Money Johnson and the other male singer, and Ellington stomped off the stage, furious, but he reappeared for the late show. The organizer at Monterey Jazz Festival told him to leave his singers in the dressing room and instead add some numbers with Jimmy Rushing instead. Ellington sulked on the piano bench while Rushing sang. Those were isolated incidents. Audiences and producers should have been more demanding, but he had a certain charisma, Ellington did, and it elicited unconditional love from suburbanites who had given up an evening to attend a real live concert.

AAJ: What are the traits in Ellington’s makeup that limited his acceptance?

JC: Ellington was a man who hid in plain view, as Don George said. The more he said, the less he revealed. But on at least three occasions he capitulated when he felt some audiences didn’t like what he was playing. The public record shows only a few instances—I think I documented all of them in my book—and he reverted to simpler tunes. As Benny Green said, when he walked onstage he became an entertainer rather than a composer. He was “traumatized” at the 1956 Newport Festival according to George Avakian because he was playing Festival Suite, a three-part suite, with too little rehearsal time, a typical failing of his, when critics who had complained about his extended works were in the wings. Ellington exuded bravado most of the time but he quaked when no one was looking. His son Mercer said you could only tell his mood by the music he composed between 3am and 10am, after the room cleared of well-wishers and he was left alone.

AAJ: The Sacred Concerts do not occupy much space in the book. Is there a reason?

JC: I recognize the Sacred Concerts as large productions, with choirs and tap dancers and bells and whistles, and I also recognize the sheer artistry of

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Alice Babs‘s contributions that Ellington provided in the Second Sacred Concert, the clumsily titled “T.G.T.T.” and perhaps “Heaven.” But they are for the most part cabaret performances with a parade of Sunday-School verities. Nothing in them, in my opinion, comes close to the spirituality of his contemporary compositions “The Lake” and “Village of the Virgins” in The River. “Village of the Virgins,” in spite of its flippant title, deserves a lyric that extols its magnificent, hymn-like melody.

AAJ: Can you describe an Ellington concert that made a particular impression on you?

JC: I was never disappointed. The first concert I saw, maybe in 1955, the band played in a movie theatre, the Palace, in Hamilton, Ontario. I had seen lots of movies there, hitchhiking into the city from my small town, and never knew that if you raised the screen you could fit an orchestra on the stage. A few years later, at the Brant Inn, in Burlington, Ontario, Willie Cook and Jimmy Hamilton came and sat with us between sets almost certainly because our dates were beautiful 17-year-old girls. We weren’t hip enough to buy them a drink. Or rich enough. I have no recollection of what the band played but I know at the first one my friend and I had been mesmerized by a Capitol Record called Ellington 55. Not a record I play often now, except that it has the definitive recording of “Happy-Go- Lucky-Local” on it. It was always a thrill. In 2023 the Alvin Ailey Dance Company visited Toronto. The current solo star danced “Reflections in D,” and though he was not Alvin, it was a treat—and “Night Creature” was breathtaking.

AAJ: What are the areas of Ellington that should be explored in the future?

JC: We need regular displays of Ellington the composer. We need to hear the extended works and the suites played whole, but also displays of his most innovative band music. In the book, I propose a train trilogy made up of “Choo Choo (Gotta Hurry Home” (1923), “Daybreak Express” (1933) and “Happy-Go-Lucky Local” (1946, in the 1954 arrangement). The world needs to hear the through-composed compositions, not the toe-tapping Swing Era oldies. I mean “Bula” (a.k.a. “Bossa-Nova”), “Creole Love Call,” “La plus belle Africaine,” “Black Beauty,” “Feet Bone,” “Village of the Virgins” … Laurent Mignard seems to be doing a good job keeping his repertoire band Duke Orchestra together, and of course

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Wynton Marsalis‘s Lincoln Center Orchestra is a treasure, as is his Essentially Ellington High School Competition. We need more like them, and maybe stricter attention to repertoire, so that we get to hear the more challenging compositions more often.

AAJ: You write with warmth and skill about the album Such Sweet Thunder (Columbia, 1957). Why was it so important to you?

JC: Well, for starters, it is brilliant music, all 12 movements. I started off my Duke fandom, as I said, with the rollicking 1954 “Happy-Go- Lucky-Local,” but I was already enamored of Miles Davis’s more poetic turns on “Round Midnight,” “Fran Dance,” and so on. And here was Ellington framing that cool delicacy in masterful ensemble writing, evoking moods and humors that seemed fresh on the hundredth listening. And to top it off, transliterating the strict sonnet form into music. I must confess I thought Leonard Feather was contemptible when he admitted in Down Beat that he didn’t get it. “Who cares?” he said. I cared, and I thought he should have cared too. Ellington’s brilliance shone all the brighter if you put as much effort into listening as he had put into composing. No one else has ever dared to make musical sonnets in any musical genre.

AAJ: Are there any pieces in the stockpile that you think are worthy of more attention?

JC: Definitely. There are hidden treasures all over—pieces played once or twice and abandoned. I have named a few already: “Feet Bone,” though it got one public airing two years later at Newport 1958; “Lake” and “Village of the Virgins” and maybe “Giggling Rapids” from The Riverpre- recordings; “Northern Lights” from The Queen’s Suite I am making a list now with the working title ‘the Best 20 Ellington Band Compositions (no vocals, no piano solos, no Strayhorn).’ It’s early and it keeps changing but so far three of those stockpile tunes are on it and are likely to stay on it.

AAJ: Singers who worked with Ellington are often dismissed by aficionados, yet you spend a chapter on them. Why?

JC: As you will know from the book, I view music with words to be an excrescence. Music is quintessentially nonverbal. Adding words to it shifts it into the left hemisphere, the mundane world. Ellington knew that, consciously or not, and wrote some fascinating music with the human voice used nonverbally, that is, used instrumentally. I devote a chapter to that theme, looking with some love at Adelaide Hall, Kay Davis and Alice Babs. I think it is the first comprehensive view of Ellington’s gift for “wordless articulation,” as R.D. Darrell praised it in 1930. There is also a chapter on Ellington’s music with words. I think it is most interesting as a documentation of the dumbing-down of music so that generations starting in the middle of the last century think that music is song, that is, music is words sung to melodies, or—how weird is this?—in rap ‘music’ words spoken to rhythms.

Ellington understood that music is quintessentially nonverbal but he had to go along with it, naturally, and in the end he contributed with distinction to the Great American Songbook starting with “Mood Indigo” (1931) and ending with “Satin Doll” (1953). Along the way, he presided over some unforgettable performances of songs, and I make a particular fuss over

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Billie Holiday‘s “Solitude,” Kay Davis’s “Lush Life” at Carnegie Hall, and

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Mahalia Jackson‘s “Come Sunday.” Along the way, I was unable to hide my contempt for Herb Jeffries’ “Flamingo,” notwithstanding Strayhorn’s brilliant arrangement, and the stultifying tradition of pseudo- Edwardian baritones that Jeffries founded in Ellington’s band.

AAJ: Why do you think that Harlem is just as important as New Orleans? Why do we disregard the importance of the Harlem Renaissance?

JC: Musicians of the Harlem Renaissance—not just Ellington but

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Fletcher Henderson,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Don Redman,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Coleman Hawkins,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Mary Lou Williams,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Ben Webster,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Art Tatum, and so on—took the musical elements that came up the river and codified them so that they could be admired globally. History has underplayed that role. One of the tragedies of American history is the political and racial contempt for Harlem that took root in the mid-20th-century. In the first decades of the 20th century it had been the beacon of light in American arts and letters and athletics and politics. Maybe it was too successful. In the Depression years it was overrun by immigrants from the Deep South and smaller cities—people who were desperate to find work and security, and finding none were desperate to seek food and shelter from government resources. When the New Deal passed them by, Harlem became a scary place.

As late as 1975, on my first trip to New York, I asked a taxi driver in the early morning if he would drive me around Harlem and show me the Apollo and Small’s Paradise and Sugar Hill. He looked me over and said, “I did that, son, we’d both end up dead.” He was African American. Those days are now long gone. In 2019 I was limo’d to Harlem to be interviewed for the Miles Davis documentary, and the interview took place in a brownstone across the street from where Strayhorn had lived. But the communal memory of Harlem in the United States appears to be fixated on those years of rioting and turmoil, not the preceding years of the teeming meritocracy of the Harlem Renaissance.

AAJ: Why was Ellington so keen to keep away from politics?

JC: If by politics you mean race relations, then Ellington denied that he kept out of politics. In the 1960s, when “black is beautiful” became a clarion call of the civil rights movement, he proudly pointed out that he had written “Black Beauty” in 1928. In 1951, he sent an autographed copy of A Tone Parallel to Harlemto President Truman with a note telling him that he hoped its premiere at the upcoming NAACP benefit concert would further the government’s initiatives toward equality and freedom. In the 1960s, on the U.S. State Department tours, which were a blatant attempt by the U.S government to counteract Russian propaganda that Americans maintained a caste system with their African American citizens, Ellington told every press conference that race relations in the United States were a domestic problem, not an international issue, and pointed out that African Americans had participated in every war and labored in every industry in the country’s history. He participated in those government tours, as did

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Louis Armstrong,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Dizzy Gillespie, and others, by blinking at the political ramifications and reveling in the hospitality shown to him and his musicians, the relatively relaxed concert schedules, and of course the sights and smells and customs of what he called “the other side of the world.”

AAJ: Was Ellington’s relationship with his mother important?

JC: Well, she told him, “Edward, you are blessed,” and he never doubted her in that or anything else. His sister Ruth said that their mother was so prudish that she would not even wear lipstick. Duke certainly didn’t inherit her prudishness. His music reflected a sensuality that is one of its abiding attractions, along with the deep melancholy that he tried to hide but failed.

AAJ: Was Ellington using travel and music to hide from mundane responsibilities?

JC: Well, what we know is throughout his career he hurried on to the next project as soon as the current project was off his plate, so to speak. Often before it was finished. Even Black Brown and Beige, a crucial crossroads for his reputation as a serious composer, was stunted in the third movement, the “Beige” movement, so much so that Maurice Peress played all four of its themes as a single continuous movement. His failure to complete projects by fleeing to the next gig became a near-fatal artistic flaw, as I document in my closing chapter. Instead of making a stand-alone suite from his score for Anatomy of a Murder, he packed his bags in Ishkeming, Michigan, and scurried on to a one-nighter in a place called Clayton, New York. Instead of reprising his Shakespeare suite on the three occasions he played at the Festival in later years, he played “Take the ‘A’ Train” and a medley of old favorites. He failed to see the advantages of sitting still for a week or two in a room with a piano and looking deeper at what you have done and giving it polish. For Ellington, that seemed pretentious or self-important or, maybe, trying too hard. Nothing was ever presented as being hard won, or worth fighting for.

AAJ: Who was the most important effective drummer

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Sonny Greer,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Sam Woodyard,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Rufus “Speedy” Jones,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Louie Bellson?

JC: Bellson brought a vitality to the band that raised the temperature of everything they played. He was one of the bright spots in 1950- 53, while Ellington was rebuilding the band with great new musicians one at a time. Until Bellson came along, we didn’t know what a difference a drummer could make. After trying several replacements, Woodyard arrived and brought some of the same fire. With hindsight, we came to realize that Sonny Greer had a vaudeville side that sometimes got in the way. Drumming underwent some changes in his time, it became more cymbal-oriented, and you can’t blame him for not keeping up. In the end, he lost his touch. Ellington apparently kept him on the payroll the rest of his days. Rufus Jones lacked subtlety but his ebullience worked in some of the Afro-Eurasian pieces that came into being around the time he joined the band. Bellson, by the way, is magnificent in Maurice Peress’s 1992 replication of Black Brown and Beige. Ellington never wrote drum parts for Greer or anyone else, and Peress transcribed Greer’s playing at Carnegie Hall from the acetates. We don’t know how literally Bellson followed them, but he is certainly a force on the replication.

AAJ: Ellington and Strayhorn: some commentators, recently, have suggested that Ellington did not credit Strayhorn enough.

JC: I totally disagree. It seems to me that Ellington gave him all the credit he earned, and probably more. The expat trombonist Billy Byers witnessed their working relationship while they were putting together the score for Paris Blues . Byers was amazed to see Ellington laboring day and night while Strayhorn lived the high life. It suited Ellington fine, apparently. Among people who lacked Byers’ close-up view, Strayhorn’s presence deflected some of the attention from Ellington. Ellington is effusive in his comments in his memoir, as he was with everyone. More materially, he gave sole composer credit to Strayhorn for “Passion Flower,” “Star-Crossed Lovers,” “Isfahan,” and other gems but we have recorded evidence, notably for the last two, of Ellington reshaping those tunes, giving them the final shape. As

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Ethan Iverson says, we see him deleting Strayhorn’s ornamentation, giving it the “right feel.” And taking no credit for doing so, here and elsewhere. Looked at objectively, Ellington made it possible for the lovable, gifted, insecure little man to enjoy “weekends in Paris” and “to live a lush life,” as he fantasized in his undisputed masterpiece.

AAJ: How did Ellington’s writing change after Strayhorn’s death?

JC: Ellington undertook the first Middle East tour with Strayhorn but by the time they released The Far East Suite three years later, 1966, Strayhorn was hospitalized. So he was absent for most of the Afro-Eurasian impetus including the Afro-Eurasian Eclipse and Togo Brava Suite. Eddie Lambert thought that Ellington rediscovered the “jungle” music of his pre-Strayhorn days after Strayhorn’s death but sadly Eddie didn’t live to hear Togo Bravaand the other music that featured Norris Turney’s flute and the decidedly dulcet turn Ellington’s music took. I don’t think Strayhorn altered Ellington’s music greatly at any time. He filled gaps for him—writing all the vocal arrangements except Kay Davis’s, and brilliantly drafting the lotus-eater ballads for Johnny Hodges. But he had nothing to do with the extended works or most of the suites. Ellington followed his own path before and after him. After Strayhorn, he hired

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Wild Bill Davis for the vocal arrangements, Ron Collier for the symphonic commissions, and Maurice Peress for a suite and an opera. Ellington was as productive as ever in those years, and more mobile than ever. Too mobile because much of the music from his final years has to be recovered from the stockpile (Togo Brava,among others) and from concert performances (especially “La plus belle Africaine,” never issued in its stockpile version because Carney was absent). He probably recorded less in studios in his last two years than he had since the Washingtonians.

AAJ: Why was the time with

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Frank Sinatra‘s Reprise label so disappointing?

JC: I have puzzled over this recently. Sinatra sold the company during Ellington’s first year and the contract terms changed but mainly he lost the producer privileges that had led him to record albums in Paris with Alice Babs,

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand at the time), the violin trio and two others. That was a distraction anyway. Why didn’t he give Reprise his best efforts? Reprise didn’t release those albums he produced, and they took their time releasing the two albums of Swing Era hits by fading bandleaders that, presumably, Strayhorn arranged. After making a brilliant start with Afro Bossa (1963), recording the brilliant title track (a.k.a. “Bula”), he rushed through the rest and recorded them alongside those Swing Era charts. He acted like he wanted to get rid of the three-year obligation in the first four months. He did record The Symphonic Ellington on his European tour, an indispensable record. And his Paris concert from that tour is a keeper too, but it came out on Atlantic, not Reprise. Reprise tried to get some mileage by compiling an album of old favorites from his European tour (Duke Ellington’s Greatest Hits) and the Concert in the Virgin Islands (with only one new tune that he ever played again). He obviously soured on the relationship with Reprise and most the three-year contract resulted in minor music.

AAJ: What does the split with Norris Turney tell us about the way that Ellington treated musicians?

JC: Not much, I think. Mercer made a big thing of it in his memoir as a way of showing the gloom that underlay the pasted-on smile in his father’s last years. But I suspect Ellington was equally callous with other musicians whom he saw as making demands on him, like Ben Webster and Mingus, and maybe

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Jimmy Forrest. With Turney, it had a happy ending. Turney recognized that his fortunes took an upturn after his 4 years with Ellington. He played in good bands, and made his first records as leader. Years later, in 2009, he told an interviewer, “I’m part of the family—an Ellingtonian.”

AAJ: Do you have any sympathy with Max Harrison’s view that Ellington was “one who might have become one of our century’s greatest composers but who instead persisted in leading a band?”

JC: I think Max Harrison got it right. I quote Albert Murray on the same point, and Murray was otherwise a very ardent supporter of Ellington. Benny Green. bless him, had the temerity to confront Ellington with the question. My final chapter documents his forsaking what might have been his final hurrah. It has affected his legacy. If he is celebrated in some circles as a jazz star, he does not seem to be celebrated in broader music circles as the inventive, innovative, dynamic composer that tilled new ground for almost 50 years. That aspect was overshadowed. He himself laid the groundwork for its neglect, and playing the endless one-nighters was the most obvious symptom for what in the end amounted to a failure of artistic integrity. But there is a paradox. Despite all that, he left all the music behind, beautifully preserved, resonant and copious. If anything, there may be too much of it, though no one should complain about being given more than we deserved. Music lovers and music scholars have to be drawn into the heart of his compositional genius. Ignore “Pretty and the Wolf” and “Madam Zzaj.” Pretend they never happened. It will take serious listeners, especially gifted and imaginative young musicians, to plumb the compositional core. That has to happen, I think, before he will be given his due. AAJ: You have written about three important jazz musicians. Do you still gain pleasure in listening to current jazz musicians?

JC: I hope so. By now, some fans might not think of

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Kamasi Washington and

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data-original-title=”” title=””>Esperanza Spalding as current, but I do. In Toronto we have a dedicated radio station, Jazz.FM. They do a reasonable job of playing current musicians, especially when they are visiting our jazz clubs. And the clubs are keeping their doors open. We have four university and college music faculties that include jazz programs within about 100 kilometers. The Toronto Duke Ellington Society gives scholarships to three of them. One of those jazz faculties, in fact, is right around the corner from my office. I count myself lucky.

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