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CDs by Duke Ellington
Duke
Ellington and John Coltrane /
Ellington at Newport /
The Great Summit /
The Count Meets the Duke /
Blues in Orbit
The Very Best of Duke Ellington
/
Three Suites /
Piano Reflections /
Far East Suite /
Masterpieces-1926-1949 /
Money Jungle
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Duke
Ellington
Bio-Chronology 1899-1974
1899—Born April 29, 1899 in Washington, D.C.,
delivered by a midwife named Eliza Jane Johnson at 2129 Ward
Place, N.W., at the home of his paternal grandparents. His
parents Daisy Kennedy Ellington and James Edward Ellington,
ideal role models, taught him everything from proper table
manners to an understanding of the emotional power of music.
* *
* * *
Critique of
Duke Ellington's America by
Harvey G. Cohen—Edward Kennedy Ellington was born
in 1899, in Washington, D.C., at a time when the nation’s
capital was arguably the best place for an African-American
child to live. The largest urban Negro community in the country
maintained its own opera company, classical-music groups, and
literary societies; its segregated schools taught African
history, stressed proper manners and speech, and were intent on
producing students who were, in Ellington’s phrase,
“representative of a great and proud race.” For many years, from
Emancipation through the imposition of onerous racial
restrictions by the Wilson Administration, climaxing in a
brutal, white-sparked riot following the First World War, the
upper stratum of the city’s black population held to a
proto-Harlem Renaissance ideal: demonstrate how civilized,
intelligent, and accomplished we are, and racism will fade away.
One need not demand respect if one commands it.—Claudia
Roth,
NewYorker
* *
* * *
1906-1907—Duke’s first piano lessons came around the age
of seven or eight and appeared to not have that much lasting
effect upon him. It seemed as if young Duke was more inclined to
baseball at a young age. Duke got his first job selling peanuts
at Washington Senator’s baseball games. This was the first
time Duke was placed as a "performer" for a crowd and
had to first get over his stage fright.
1913—Began to sneak into Frank Holliday’s poolroom. His
experiences from the poolroom taught him to appreciate the value
in mixing with a wide range of people.
1913-1917—Attended Armstrong Manual Training School to study
commercial art instead of an academically-oriented school
Began to show a flare for the artistic. Nicknamed
"Duke" by a boyhood friend who admired his regal air,
the name stuck and became indelibly associated with the finest
creations in big band and vocal jazz.
Began to seek out and listen to ragtime pianists in
Washington and during the summers, where he and his mother
vacationed in Philadelphia or Atlantic City.
Heard a hot pianist named Harvey Brooks. Later sought Harvey
out in Philadelphia where Harvey showed Duke some pianistic
tricks and shortcuts. Duke later recounted that, "When I
got home I had a real yearning to play. I hadn’t been able to
get off the ground before, but after hearing him I said to
myself, ‘Man you’re going to have to do it.’" Thus
the music career of Duke Ellington was born.
Taken under the wings of Oliver "Doc" Perry and
Louis Brown who taught Duke how to read music and helped improve
his overall piano playing skills.
Found piano playing jobs at clubs and cafes throughout the
Washington area.
Dropped out of school and began his professional music career,
three months shy of graduation,
1917 (late)—Formed his first group: The Duke’s Serenaders.
1918-1919—Moved out of his parents’ home and into a home
he bought for himself. Became his own booking agent for his band.
Play throughout the Washington area and into Virginia for
private society balls and embassy parties.
1918—Married Edna Thompson.
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* * *
Duke Ellington
Collection, 1927-1988, #301—In
his early teens, Ellington sneaked into Washington clubs and
performance halls where he was exposed to ragtime musicians,
including James P. Johnson, and where he met people from all
walks of life. He returned in earnest to his piano studies and
at age fourteen wrote his first composition, "Soda Fountain Rag"
aka "Poodle Dog Rag." Ellington was earning income from playing
music at seventeen years of age and around this time he earned
the sobriquet "Duke" for his sartorial splendor and regal air.
On July 2, 1918, he married a high school sweetheart, Edna
Thompson; their only child, Mercer Kennedy Ellington, was born
on March 11, 1919. Duke Ellington spent the first twenty-four
years of his life in Washington's culturally thriving Negro
community. In this vibrant atmosphere he was inspired to be a
composer and learned to take pride in his African-American
heritage.—American
History
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* * *
1919 (March 11, 1919—Mercer Kennedy Ellington was born.
1920—Earned enough money to support both wife and child.
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* * *
Critique of
Duke Ellington's America by
Harvey G. Cohen—Charm, drive, and an audacious
talent: he was barely out of his teens before he had established
the Duke’s Serenaders and several other nicely profitable dance
bands, and was supporting himself—and a wife and baby—in style.
Yet, by his own account, even when he felt sure enough to try
his fortunes in New York, age twenty-four, he had never actually
written music. He had composed a few songs in his early years,
and began composing again as soon as he hit Tin Pan Alley, but
he had never written anything down and wasn’t entirely certain
that he could. Ellington was himself something of an “ear cat,”
and even as he learned what he needed to know, and his music
became increasingly complex, his instinctual bias was for the
more instinctual art. Partly, this was the natural democrat’s
appreciation of the tough and unschooled African-American
“gutbucket” sound; partly it was the natural aristocrat’s desire
to make everything look easy. (“How was I to know that composers
had to go up in the mountains, or to the seashore, to commune
with the muses for six months?”)
Other popular composers
have faced similar gaps between their early training and their
goals; George Gershwin’s solution was to make himself a lifelong
student, working with a series of teachers on harmony,
counterpoint, orchestration. Ellington didn’t have the
temperament for this approach, nor did it appear to offer what
he needed. He had something all his own, something that made the
arduous process of writing music yield immediate and
exhilarating results: he had his band.—Claudia
Roth,
NewYorker
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* * *
1923—Left the security of Washington and moved to New York
under the encouragement of Fats Waller, during the formative
Cotton Club years, experimented with and developed the style
that would quickly bring him worldwide success and recognition.
Ellington would be among the first to focus on musical form
and composition in jazz using ternary forms and
"call-and-response" techniques in works like Concerto
for Cootie (known in its familiar vocal version as
Do Nothin' till You Hear from Me) and Cotton Tail
and classic symphonic devices in his orchestral suites. In this
respect, he would
Made his first recording. Ellington and his renamed band, The
Washingtonians, established themselves during the prohibition
era by playing at places like the Exclusive Club, Connie’s
Inn, the Hollywood Club (Club Kentucky), Ciro’s, the
Plantation Club, and most importantly the Cotton Club. Thanks to
the rise in radio receivers and the industry itself, Duke’s
band was broadcast across the nation live on "From the
Cotton Club."
1923-1927—Honed skills as a bandleader, songwriter, and
pianist. Learned how to function within New York's competitive
musical scene. Sough professional opportunities with publishers
and record companies.
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* * *
Duke Ellington
Collection, 1927-1988, #301—Ellington
moved to New York City in 1923 to join and eventually lead a
small group of transplanted Washington musicians called the
"Washingtonians," which included future Ellington band members,
Sonny Greer, Otto Hardwicke and "Bubber" Miley. Between 1923 and
1927, the group played at the Club Kentucky on Broadway and the
ensemble increased from a quintet to a ten-piece orchestra. With
stride pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith as his unofficial guide,
Ellington soon became part of New York's music scene; Smith
proved to be a long-lasting influence on Duke's composing and
arranging direction. At the Club Kentucky, Ellington came under
the tutelage of another legendary stride pianist, "Fats" Waller.
Waller, a protege of Johnson and Smith, played solos during the
band's breaks and also tutored Ellington who began to show
progress in his compositions. In November, 1924, Duke made his
publishing and recording debut with "Choo Choo (I Got To Hurry
Home)" released on the Blu-Disc label. In 1925, he contributed
two songs to Chocolate Kiddies, an all-black revue which
introduced European audiences to black-American styles and
performers. By this time Ellington's family, Edna and Mercer,
had joined him in New York City. The couple separated in the
late 1920's but they never divorced or reconciled.—American
History
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* * *
1926-1927—Distinctive qualities appeared in such pieces as East
St. Louis Toodle-O, Immigration Blues, Black and Tan Fantasy, and
Creole Love Call. After a decade of study and
apprenticeship, Ellington emerged an original.
1927 (late)—Landed a job for his orchestra at the Cotton
Club, one of New York's premier nightspots, located in Harlem at
142nd Street and Lenox Avenue. Operated by the gangster Owney
Madden, patronized by wealthy whites, and staffed by blacks.
1928—Signed an agreement with Irving Mills to produce and
published Ellington’s music. Recording companies like
Brunswick, Columbia, and Victor came calling. Duke’s band
became the most sought after band in the United States and even
throughout the world.
Some of Ellington’s greatest works include, Rockin’ in
Rhythm, Satin Doll, New Orleans, A Drum is a Woman, Take the
"A" Train, Happy-Go-Lucky Local, The Mooche, and
Crescendo in Blue.
1927-1931—Ellington and his orchestra remained at the Cotton
Club, with periodic interruptions, until early February 1931.
Expanded to twelve pieces, three reeds, three trumpets, two
trombones, and four in the rhythm section (piano, banjo or
guitar, bass, drums). Trumpeter Arthur Whetsol returned in
1928.
Others joined Ellington: reed-players Johnny Hodges and
Barney Bigard, trumpeter Freddie Jenkins, and in 1929, trumpeter
Cootie Williams and valve trombonist Juan Tizol.
Began to compose and record prolifically, turning out over
180 sides between December 1927 and February 1931 (compared with
the 31 his band had make in nearly four years at the Kentucky
Club).
Under contract to Victor, recorded for other labels under
various pseudonyms, such as The Jungle Band, The Whoopee Makers,
and Mills Ten Blackberries.
1930—Appeared in film Check and Double Check.
1932—Boston critic R.D. Darrell wrote "Black
Beauty," the first serious essay on Ellington's music to be
published.
1932—(summer)—First visit to Europe. Six weeks in Britain
with large audiences, appearances in Holland and France. At one
private party the Duke of Kent asked Ellington to play Swampy
River, and the Prince of Wales briefly took Sonny Greer's
place at the drums. While in London, the orchestra recorded for
Decca and broadcast over the BBC.
* *
* * *
Critique of
Duke Ellington's America by
Harvey G. Cohen—The scrappy band of the early
Kentucky Club days became an orchestra of a dozen players at the
Cotton Club. But Ellington wanted an even larger sound: more
color, more detail, more possibilities. By the time of the first
European tour, in 1933, there were fourteen players, plus a
vocalist; the group that was ultimately known as Duke Ellington
and His Famous Orchestra had grown, by the mid-forties, to
nineteen players, travelling and recording together, working and
virtually living together, fifty-two weeks a year. These
musicians were Ellington’s inspiration, not merely as
professionals but as individuals with irreplaceable musical
personalities. He did not write a “Concerto for Trumpet,” in
1939; rather, it was a “Concerto for Cootie”—that is, a work
designed for the specific articulations of the superb trumpet
player Cootie Williams, who replaced Bubber Miley and had
already been with Ellington for about ten years. (“You can’t
write music right,” Ellington told this magazine, more than
sixty years ago, “unless you know how the man that’ll play it
plays poker.”)—Claudia
Roth,
NewYorker
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* * *
1934—Appeared with his orchestra in two Hollywood Films, Murder
at the Vanities and Belle of the Nineties.
Made with his orchestra a Paramount short on their own,
"Symphony
in Black" (released in 1935), featuring the young Billie
Holiday.
1935—Mother Daisy dies. Loss of his mother was
especially traumatic which resulted in an extend period of
mourning during which few new works appeared. Recorded in "Reminiscing
in Tempo."
1936—Wrote
"Echoes of Harlem."
1937—Father James Edward. dies. Recorded the two-part
"Diminuendo
and Crescendo in Blue."
1937—Wrote
"Azure."
1937-1938—Returned to the Cotton Club, then located downtown
on 48th Street.
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* * *
Duke Ellington
Collection, 1927-1988, #301—The
ten years from 1932 to 1942 are considered by some major critics
to represent the "golden age" for the Ellington Orchestra but it
represents just one of their creative peaks. These years did
bring an influx of extraordinary new talent to the band
including Jimmy Blanton on double bass, Ben Webster on tenor
saxophone and Ray Nance on trumpet, violin and vocals. During
this 10-year span Ellington composed several of his best known
short works, including "Concerto For Cootie," "Ko-Ko," "Cotton
Tail," "In A Sentimental Mood," and Jump For Joy, his first
full-length musical stage revue.
Most notably, 1938 marked
the arrival of Billy Strayhorn. While a teenager in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, Strayhorn had already written "Lush Life,"
"Something To Live For" and a musical, Fantastic Rhythm.
Ellington was initially impressed with Strayhorn's lyrics but
realized long before Billy's composition "Take the A' Train"
became the band's theme song in 1942 that Strayhorn's talents
were not limited to penning clever lyrics. By 1942, "Swee' Pea"
had become arranger, composer, second pianist, collaborator and
as Duke described him, "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes
in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in
mine." Many Ellington/Strayhorn songs have entered the jazz
canon and their extended works are still being discovered and
studied today. Strayhorn remained with the Ellington
Organization until his death on May 30, 1967.—American
History
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* * *
1938—Left Mildred Dixon, a dancer he had met at the Cotton
Club, for Beatrice "Evie" Ellis. Had separated
from his wife in the late 20s.
1938—Wrote
"Braggin' in Brass."
1939—Broke with manager Irving Mills and signed with
the William Morris Agency and moved to the publisher Jack
Robbins.
1939--Wrote "The Sergeant Was Shy. "
1940—Wrote
"Jack the Bear," "Harlem Air Shaft," "Concerto for
Cootie," "Ko-Ko," and "Cotton Tail."
* *
* * *
Critique of
Duke Ellington's America by
Harvey G. Cohen—But these musicians were
sometimes his collaborators in a more unusual way, described by
reporters who sat in, marvelling, on working sessions. Ellington
would start off with a melody, or even just a few bars that were
quickly tweaked and critiqued into a theme. Then, one by one,
the improvisations began—Barney Bigard on clarinet, Johnny
Hodges on alto saxophone, Tricky Sam Nanton on trombone were all
especially fluent—with each player improving on the last
player’s phrases, elaborating and extending, while the
trombonist /copyist Juan Tizol caught the accumulating effects
on paper (albeit not quite as fast as they kept coming).
Ellington approved or rejected the additions, made changes and
issued challenges, then usually took the results home and worked
the whole thing over. The next day, there would be a few hours
of refinement and repetition, until the piece was fixed and
memorized. (Ellington always preferred memorization: how could
you let loose if your nose was stuck in a score?) By this
method, the time for creating or arranging a new number—most
numbers were about three minutes long, the standard length of a
78-r.p.m. recording—appears to have been just two days. “My band
is my instrument,” Ellington said, and the way he played it
explains his music’s extraordinary mixture of freedom and
control.
This collaborative process
could create difficulties when Ellington employed a melody that
he had overheard one of the musicians playing, or that a
musician had sold him for a regulation fee. The main tune of
“Concerto for Cootie,” for example, was something that Ellington
bought from Williams for twenty-five dollars, a sum believed to
be reasonable by both parties until, a few years later, words
were added and it became a hit as “Do Nothing Till You Hear from
Me”—with no royalties for Williams. Johnny Hodges, the band’s
most gorgeously lyrical player and a fount of melody—he
contributed the tunes for “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and “I
Let a Song Go Out of My Heart”—became so annoyed that, during
performances, he mimed rubbing dollar bills between his fingers
when Ellington launched into a number that Hodges felt was
rightly his. One of Ellington’s most beloved songs,
“Sophisticated Lady,” has several contributing claims and was
described by the trombonist Lawrence Brown as “one of those
where everybody jumps in.”—Claudia
Roth,
NewYorker
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* * *
1941—America Entered World War II.
1941—Recorded Jump for Joy; Chelsea Bridge,
Raincheck and a new theme for the orchestra, Take the
"A" Train.
1941—Dispute between radio broadcasters and the American
Society of Composers and Publishers in 1941, which stimulated
the composition of new pieces since much of Ellington's previous
ASCAP-licensed repertory was banned from the airwaves
1942—Wrote Main Stem; A Slip of the Lip (May Sink a Ship).
1942-1944—Musicians' union strike led to a recording hiatus
of nearly a year and a half.
1943—Wrote the "tone parallel"
"Black, Brown and Beige," premiered 23 January 1943 at Carnegie Hall
(Ellington's debut). First major black composer—who worked in
the jazz idiom and whose works usually were heard in nightclubs,
ballrooms, and theaters rather in temples of high art—to
present an evening of original music in New York's most
prestigious concert hall. a black composer. Thereafter over the
next five years, Ellington performed Carnegie at regular,
near-annual intervals. New York celebrated "Ellington Week" from 17-23
January.
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* * *
Critique of
Duke Ellington's America by
Harvey G. Cohen—None of Ellington’s musicians—not
even Strayhorn—ever composed a hit on his own. Most important,
all these works turned out to sound purely and recognizably like
Ellington. For those who doubted that he was a “real” composer,
here was the conundrum: How could the band have created
Ellington, when Ellington created the band?
Despite the air of
insouciance, Ellington took his composing seriously. It was
gratifying to have people sit and listen to his music in a
proper theatre, as they did for the first time in 1930, when the
band accompanied Maurice Chevalier during a Broadway run and
filled out the bill for an entire act. Coast-to-coast radio
broadcasts from the Cotton Club had won the band an enormous
following, and it gave concert-style performances throughout its
first national tour, in 1931, usually performing in movie
theatres between shows. Recordings had similarly prepared the
way in England and France, where, in 1933, the band appeared on
variety bills in the biggest venues, and was met with a respect
that, for all its popularity, it had never known at home.
Members of the group were suddenly being discussed not merely as
entertainers but as artists, and it seemed that every note they
played was considered to be—in the words of one British
critic—“directly an expression of Duke’s genius.”
—Claudia
Roth,
NewYorker
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* * *
1943 (11 December)—Wrote for concert hall New World
A-Coming. Engagement at New York's Hurricane Club included broadcast. Ben Webster left orchestra. * *
* * *
Critique of
Duke Ellington's America by
Harvey G. Cohen—“What we could not say openly, we
expressed in music,” Ellington wrote in the British magazine
Rhythm, in 1931, trying to explain the Negro musical
tradition that had grown up in America, music “forged from the
very white heat of our sorrows.” All his life, Ellington gave
the impression of having been unscathed by racism, either in his
early years—color, he said, was never even mentioned in his
parents’ home—or during the long professional decades when it
defined almost every move he made: where he could play his
music, who could come to listen to it, whether he could stay in
a hotel or attend another musician’s show, and where (or
whether) he could find something to eat when the show was over.
The orchestra made its first Southern tour just after its return
from England, in 1933, travelling (thanks to Mills) in supremely
insulated style: two private Pullman cars for sleeping and
dining, and a separate baggage car for the elaborate wardrobe,
scenery, and lights required to present a show more dazzling
than any that most of the sleepy little towns where they made
their stops had ever seen. Ellington made a special effort to
perform for black audiences, even when it meant that the band
added a midnight show in a place where it had performed earlier
that night exclusively for whites. Reports from both racial
groups were that the players outdid themselves; it is difficult
to know where they felt they had more to prove.
Segregation was hardly
peculiar to the South, of course, any more than it was limited,
in New York, to the Cotton Club and its ilk. The down-and-dirty
Kentucky Club had been no different: even without thugs at the
door, there was an unspoken citywide dictate about where the
different races belonged. The only exceptions were the “Black
and Tans,” the few Harlem clubs that permitted casual racial
mixing, and to which Ellington seems to have been paying
tongue-in-cheek tribute with the not-quite-meshing themes of
“Black and Tan Fantasy.” This was the first number played, after
“The Star-Spangled Banner,” at Ellington’s landmark Carnegie
Hall concert, in January, 1943, although the piece sounded very
different from his twenties hit: taken at a slower tempo, with
extended solos, it was twice its original length—so deliberative
it seemed a kind of statement—and showed off the burnished power
of Ellington’s forties band.—Claudia
Roth,
NewYorker
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* * *
1944 (19 December)—Wrote for concert hall
"Perfume Suite." Engagement at New York's Hurricane Club included broadcast. Richard O. Boyer wrote extensive profile in the
New Yorker
in which he dubbed Ellington "The Hot Bach." Juan Tizol left orchestra
1945—Engaged at the Zanzibar Club, include broadcast. Rex Stewart left orchestra
1946 (23 November)—Wrote for concert hall
"Deep
South Suite." Otto Hardwick left orchestra; Joe Nanton died 20 July while
on tour 1947 (27 December)—Wrote for concert hall
"Liberian Suite." Left Victor and signed with Columbia.
1948 (13 November)—Wrote for concert hall
"The Tattooed
Bride."
1950—Paul Gonsalves joins Ellington
band. Trip to Europe (for the first time since 1939) and in
1958 and 1959. 1951—Wrote
"Harlem." Left Ellington orchestra—Johnny Hodges, Lawrence Brown,
Sonny Greer and Tyree Glenn. Trumpeter Clark Terry and drummer Louie Bellson joined
Ellington band.
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* * *
Duke Ellington
Collection, 1927-1988, #301—In
1956, the American public rediscovered Duke and the band at the
Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island. The searing performances
of tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves on "Diminuendo and Crescendo
In Blue," his premiere soloist, alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges
on "Jeep's Blues" and the crowd's ecstatic reaction have become
jazz legend. Later that year Duke landed on the cover of Time
magazine. Although Ellington had previously written music for
film and television (including the short film, Black and Tan
Fantasy in 1929) it wasn't until 1959 that Otto Preminger asked
him to score music for his mainstream film, Anatomy of a Murder,
starring Jimmy Stewart. Paris Blues in 1961, featuring
box-office stars Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier in roles as
American jazz musicians in Paris, followed.
Ellington's first
performance overseas was in England in 1933 but the 1960's
brought extensive overseas tours including diplomatic tours
sponsored by the State Department. Ellington and Strayhorn
composed exquisite extended works reflecting the sights and
sounds of their travels, including the Far East Suite, 1966.
They wrote homages to their classical influences; in 1963, they
adapted Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and celebrated
Shakespeare's works with the suite Such Sweet Thunder in 1957.
With Ella Fitzgerald, they continued the Norman Granz Songbook
Series. Ellington also began to flex his considerable pianist
skills and recorded albums with John Coltrane (1963), Coleman
Hawkins (1963), Frank Sinatra and Money Jungle (1963) with
Charles Mingus and Max Roach. The First Sacred Concert debuted
in San Francisco's Grace Cathedral in 1965. In his final years,
Ellington's thoughts turned to spiritual themes and he added a
Second (1968) and Third (1973) Concert of Sacred Music to his
compositions.—American
History
* *
* * *
1953—Moved to Capitol in 1953 (the first session produced
"Satin
Doll").
1955—Wrote
"Night Creature" for symphony and jazz orchestra.
1956—Wrote
"A Drum is a Woman," for a television production. Appeared at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. Went back to
Columbia.
1957—Wrote
"Such Sweet Thunder."
1958—Made a trip to Europe
1959—Wrote Tool Suite and Idiom; and Anatomy
of a Murder for a Hollywood film directed by Otto Preminger. Made a trip to Europe
* *
* * *
Critique of
Duke Ellington's America by
Harvey G. Cohen—The band had become a very
expensive proposition, and was subsidized largely by those
royalties from long-ago hits. Even when it had a big resurgence,
thanks to an appearance at the Newport Festival, in 1956, the
stir was due not to the newly minted “Newport Festival Suite”
but to a crazily exciting six-minute improvisation by the
saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, played between the paired 1937
pieces “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue.” Contrary to the
long-term concertizing trend in Ellington’s music, the
performance got people back on their feet and dancing again, and
got Ellington on the cover of Time.
His renewed stature did not
prevent controversy in the black community, however, when, in
1959, the N.A.A.C.P. gave Ellington its highest award.
Recipients during the previous couple of years had been Martin
Luther King, Jr., and the civil-rights activists Daisy Bates and
the Little Rock Nine. Now the editorial pages of
African-American newspapers doubtfully inquired: What had
Ellington done to deserve this honor? It wasn’t just a question
of what music had to do with civil rights; Jackie Robinson had
won in 1956, with no such questions raised about baseball.
Rather, as the Time article had put it, “Duke is not a militant
foe of segregation.” It went on to note that “he plays for
segregated audiences on his annual swings through the South,”
and added that Ellington had explained, with a verbal shrug,
“Everybody does.”
What had he done to deserve
the honor? The plainly factual answer is that he had raised a
lot of money over the years playing benefits for the N.A.A.C.P.,
and for many other organizations that had asked for his help.
But there were deeper answers. Ellington, offended by the
accusation that he had been silent on civil rights, replied that
those who doubted him had simply failed to use their ears.
“They’ve not been listening to our music,” he said. “For a long
time, social protest and pride in black culture and history have
been the most significant themes in what we’ve done.” In sum:
“We have been talking for a long time about what it is to be
black in this country.” For Ellington, being black in this
country meant approaching difficult issues in strategically
different ways.
Earlier in the fifties, he
had quarrelled with the N.A.A.C.P., in fact, over playing
segregated theatres, arguing that his musicians needed to make a
living, and that the N.A.A.C.P. ought to focus on more urgent
matters (such as “the toilets and water fountains in colored
waiting rooms”). At the same time, he had written privately to
President Truman, asking if Truman’s daughter, Margaret—a
concert singer—might serve as honorary chairwoman for an
N.A.A.C.P. benefit, the proceeds of which were to be used “to
stamp out segregation, discrimination, bigotry,” and other
American ills. The letter was discovered by the music historian
John Edward Hasse in the Truman Library, with Ellington’s
request marked with the word “No!” underlined twice.—Claudia
Roth,
NewYorker
* *
* * *
1963—Traveled to the Middle East and India. Wrote My People
for Century of Negro Progress Exposition in Chicago, contained
such religious pieces as such religious numbers as Ain't But
the One, Will You Be There?, and David Danced
Before the Lord.
1964—Traveled to Japan. Composed Far East Suite.
1967—Billy Strayhorn
dies.
1968—Traveled to Latin America and Mexico. Composed Latin
American Suite.
1970—Composed Afro-Eurasian Suite. Collaborated with
Alvin Ailey on the ballet The River. Johnny Hodges dies.
1971—Traveled to the Soviet Union. Composed Goutelas Suite.
Critique of
Duke Ellington's America by
Harvey G. Cohen—In 1960, Ellington agreed
to accompany some Johns Hopkins students, after a performance,
to a Baltimore restaurant that had turned black students away,
and to be captured by a local photographer being turned away
himself; it was a major act in terms of the cost to his pride.
In 1961, his booking contracts began to stipulate that he would
not play before segregated audiences. He led a State Department
tour, in 1963, designed to counter the news stories about
American racism that were proving so useful to the Communist
cause, and Cohen believes its political dividends helped to spur
the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act. Cohen offers many
other examples of Ellington as a sometimes surreptitious “race
leader,” but it is almost embarrassing that he should have to
make the effort.
Celebrating Ellington’s
seventieth birthday, in 1969, Ralph Ellison recalled what it was
like when, in his youth, in the thirties, the Ellington band
came to Oklahoma City “with their uniforms, their
sophistication, their skills; their golden horns, their flights
of controlled and disciplined fantasy,” all of it like “news
from the great wide world.” For black boys like Ellison all over
the country, the band had been “an example and goal,” he wrote.
Who else—black or white—had ever been “so worldly, who so
elegant, who so mockingly creative? Who so skilled at their
given trade and who treated the social limitations placed in
their paths with greater disdain?”
Two years before Ellington died, in 1972, Yale University held a
gathering of leading black jazz musicians in order to raise
money for a department of African-American music. Aside from
Ellington, the musicians who came for three days of concerts,
jam sessions, and workshops included Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle,
Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Mary Lou Williams,
and Willie (the Lion) Smith. During a performance by a
Gillespie-led sextet, someone evidently unhappy with this
presence on campus called in a bomb threat. The police attempted
to clear the building, but Mingus refused to leave, urging the
officers to get all the others out but adamantly remaining
onstage with his bass.
“Racism planted that bomb, but racism ain’t strong enough to
kill this music,” he was heard telling the police captain. (And
very few people successfully argued with Mingus.) “If I’m going
to die, I’m ready. But I’m going out playing ‘Sophisticated
Lady.’—Claudia
Roth,
NewYorker
* *
* * *
1973—Wrote Music is my Mistress
1974 (24 May)—Dies from cancer.
Sources: www.dukeellington.com/index.html
www.ilinks.net/~holmesr/ellington-bio.htm *
* * * *
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Duke Ellington was recognized in
his lifetime as one of the greatest jazz composers and performers.
A genius for instrumental combinations, improvisation, and jazz
arranging brought the world the unique "Ellington" sound that
found consummate expression in works like "Mood Indigo,"
"Sophisticated Lady," and the symphonic suites
Black,
Brown, and Beige (which he subtitled "a Tone Parallel to
the History of the Negro in America") and
Harlem
("a Tone Parallel to Harlem").
Duke Ellington and his band went on
to play everywhere from New York to New Delhi, Chicago to Cairo, and Los
Angeles to London. Ellington and his band played with such greats as Miles
Davis, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella
Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, and Louis Armstrong.
They entertained everyone from Queen Elizabeth II to
President Nixon. Before passing away in 1974, Duke Ellington wrote and
recorded hundreds of musical compositions, all of which continue to have
a lasting effect upon people worldwide for a long time to come. |
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Duke Ellington Collection, 1927-1988, #301—Duke
Ellington died on May 24, 1974 at seventy-five years of age. His
funeral was held in New York's Cathedral of St. John The Divine;
he was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery. His long-time companion
Beatrice "Evie" Ellis was buried beside him after her death in
1976. He was survived by his only child, Mercer Kennedy
Ellington, who not only took up the baton to lead the Duke
Ellington Orchestra but assumed the task of caring for his
father's papers and his legacy to the nation. Mercer Ellington
died in Copenhagan, Denmark on February 8, 1996, at the age of
seventy-six. Ruth Ellington Boatwright, Duke's only sibling,
lives in New York City. Both Mercer and Ruth were responsible
for shepherding the documents and artifacts that celebrate Duke
Ellington's genius and creative life to their current home in
the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American
History.—American
History
*
* * * *
Archives Center Finding
Aids—Duke Ellington Collection, 1927-1988,
#301—History/Provenance Note—The acquisition of the
Ellington Collection began with a chance encounter between
Mercer Ellington and John Kinard, former Director of the
Smithsonian's Anacostia Museum in October, 1985. Mr. Ellington
was filming a public service announcement at the Anacostia
Museum. During the event Mr. Ellington mentioned to Mr. Kinard
that although his father's tapes had been given to a radio
station in Copenhagen, Denmark, Duke's papers were still in
Mercer's possession. Mr. Kinard contacted Roger Kennedy, former
Director of the National Museum of American History, who asked
John Hasse, Curator of American Music, to pursue the lead.
Negotiations for the
Collection began and in April, 1986, John Fleckner, Chief
Archivist of the Museum and Dr. Hasse surveyed the material in
New York City. After extensive negotiations the Duke Ellington
Collection arrived at the National Museum of American History in
April, 1988. Objects and artifacts—largely 3-dimensional
materials—are housed in the Museum's Division of Cultural
History. (202-633-1707) Archival material—primarily music
manuscripts, paper documents, photographs and audio material are
housed in the Museum's Archives Center.
The material has been a
rich resource for study by Ellington and jazz scholars,
musicians and cultural historians. Drawing largely from the
material in the Collection, an exhibit titled Beyond Category:
The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington curated by Dr. John Hasse
opened in the National Museum of American History on Duke's
birthday April, 28, 1993. The original exhibit plus three panel
exhibits, all produced by Smithsonian Institution Traveling
Services (SITES), continue to tour the United States.—American
History
*
* * * *
Duke Ellington
Collection, 1927-1988, #301—Scope and Content Note—Dating
approximately from the time Duke Ellington permanently moved to
New York City in 1923 to the time the material was transferred
to the Smithsonian institution in 1988 the bulk of the material
in the Duke Ellington Collection is dated from 1934-1974 and
comprises sound recordings, original music manuscripts and
published sheet music, hand-written notes, correspondence,
business records, photographs, scrapbooks, news clippings,
concert programs, posters, pamphlets, books and other ephemera.
These materials document Ellington's contributions as composer,
musician, orchestra leader, and an ambassador of American music
and culture abroad. In addition, the materials paint a picture
of the life of a big band maintained for fifty years and open a
unique window through which to view an evolving American
society.
The ca. 310 cubic feet of
archival materials have been processed and organized into
sixteen series arranged by type of material. Several of the
series have been divided into subseries allowing additional
organization to describe the content of the material. For
example, Series 6: Sound Recordings, is divided into four
subseries: Radio and Television Interviews, Concert
Performances, Studio Dates and Non-Ellington Recordings. Each
series has its own scope and content note describing the
material and arrangement (for example; Series 10: Magazines and
Newspaper Articles is organized into two groups, foreign and
domestic, and arranged chronologically within each group). A
container list provides folder titles and box numbers.
The bulk of the material is
located in Series 1: Music Manuscripts and consists of
compositions and arrangements by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn
and other composers. Series 6: Sound Recordings also provides a
record of the performance of many of these compositions. The
materials in Series 2: Performances and Programs, Series 3:
Business Records, Series 8: Scrapbooks, Series 9: Newspaper
Clippings, Series 11: Publicity and Series 12: Posters provide
documentation of specific performances by Duke Ellington And His
Orchestra. Ellington was a spontaneous and prolific composer as
evidenced by music, lyrical thoughts and themes for extended
works and plays captured on letterhead stationery in Series 3:
Business Records, in the margin notes of individual books and
pamphlets in Series 14: Religious Materials and Series 15: Books
and in the hand-written notes in Series 5: Personal
Correspondence and Notes.
During its fifty-year lifespan, Duke Ellington And His Orchestra
were billed under various names including The Washingtonians,
The Harlem Footwarmers and The Jungle Band. The soloists were
informally called "the band" and Series 3 includes salary
statements, IOU's, receipts and ephemera relating to individual
band members.—American
History
* * *
* *
* *
* * *
 |
Obama's America and the New
Jim Crow (Michelle Alexander)
/ Michelle_Alexander Part
II Democracy Now
(Video)
Michelle Alexander Speaks At
Riverside Church
/
part
2 of 4 /
part 3 of 4 /
part 4 of 4
There are
more African Americans under
correctional control
today--in prison or jail, on
probation or parole—than
were enslaved in 1850, a
decade before the Civil War
began. If you take into
account prisoners, a large
majority of African American
men in some urban areas,
like Chicago, have been
labeled felons for life.
These men are part of a
growing undercaste, not
class, caste—a group of
people who are permanently
relegated, by law, to an
inferior second-class
status. They can be denied
the right to vote,
automatically excluded from
juries, and legally
discriminated against in
employment, housing, access
to education and public
benefits—much
as their grandparents and
great-grandparents once were
during the Jim Crow era.—Michelle
Alexander,
The New Jim Crow |
* *
* * *
The Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh, and Wailer
By Colin Grant
The definitive group biography of the Wailers—Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Livingston—chronicling their rise to fame and power. Over one dramatic decade, a trio of Trenchtown R&B crooners swapped their 1960s Brylcreem hairdos and two-tone suits for 1970s battle fatigues and dreadlocks to become the Wailers—one of the most influential groups in popular music. Colin Grant presents a lively history of this remarkable band from their upbringing in the brutal slums of Kingston to their first recordings and then international superstardom. With energetic prose and stunning, original research, Grant argues that these reggae stars offered three models for black men in the second half of the twentieth century: accommodate and succeed (Marley), fight and die (Tosh), or retreat and live (Livingston). Grant meets with Rastafarian elders, Obeah men (witch doctors), and other folk authorities as he attempts to unravel the mysteries of Jamaica's famously impenetrable culture. Much more than a top-flight music biography, The Natural Mystics offers a sophisticated understanding of Jamaican politics, heritage, race, and religion—a portrait of a seminal group during a period of exuberant cultural evolution. 8 pages of four-color and 8 pages of black-and-white illustrations. Colin Grant Interview, The Natural Mystics
|
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
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Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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updated 11 June
2008
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