DUKE ELLINGTON--GENTLEMAN BANDLEADER

by Ian Whitcomb

Ian Whitcomb is a highly respected performer, composer, and music historian. You can find all of his CD's, DVD's, Books, and Songbooks by clicking here.

 
You can find Ian's main website at ianwhitcomb.com

Posterity agrees that Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (1899-1974) is right up there in the pantheon of great American composers. He must be happy with that position because in life he protested that his music was "beyond category." What a splendid progress from the "jungle jazz" of his Cotton Club band, with its primitive wah-wahs and growls, to the classicism of a concert hall presentation of his rhapsodies, sacred pieces and - his favorite - the suite composed in honor of Queen Elizabeth II! Quite an achievement for a pianist who scarcely ever put pen to paper.

But the Duke, although a trifle distant, as befits a natural aristocrat, was no aloof artist stuck in an ivory tower. He’d been in at the start of the dance band emergence back in the early 1920s, working as elegantly as he could in that noisy, hot kitchen of the American entertainment machine (born about the same time as he was). Surrounding himself with only the best raw talent, he’d listen, on the bandstand or in the studio, for a mesmeric riff here or a pretty melody there, throwing in some lush harmonies from his piano, spicing for variety with key changes and tonal coloring, stirring the ingredients of the recipe into a delectable whole. "Never forget," he often said, "that the art is in the cooking." Eventually, that tasty cooking was served up on 78 RPM platters as the master constitures "Creole Love Call," "Mood Indigo," and "Hot And Bothered."

His sidemen weren’t always pleased with the Duke’s methods of musical conception, but he soothed them. He was a diplomatic enabler and without his civilizing presence this fractious band might have dissolved in a sea of spirits; he was also a gentlemanly manipulator ruling, as one of his musicians said, "with an iron hand in a mink glove." An inner tenacity allowed him to negotiate the sudden swings in American pop taste and to end up as leader of the longest-lasting Big Band. This was never more evident than in the 1960s when, with rock all around,** Ellington survived as the Grand Old Man of Jazz, his shoulders heaped with honors and doctorates, still managing to swing merrily, while loving you madly.

Syncopation had not come naturally to Ellington. Born middle-class in Washington, D.C., a far shout from the Midwestern and Dixie crucibles of ragtime and jazz, he’d had to learn to swing from secondary sources. His parents were not lovers of the blues. Another difficulty was that every other dance band in the 1920s was labeled as a purveyor of jazz, even sweet outfits like Guy Lombardo and Rudy Vallee. It was imperative therefore to stand out and so Ellington, guided by his manager Irving Mills, joined the trend of presenting noble savages as true bohemians. The Duke forsook sweet music in the white tradition in favor of hot slabs of seeming Africanism (actually produced by specially recruited brass players skillfully utilizing trusty blue notes by way of plungers and mutes). This sexy heat, thickened by French impressionist chords from the Duke’s piano, was a sure click at The Cotton Club. It didn’t hurt to have a leader who, all top hat and tails and smiling urbanity, presented the epitome of civilized sophistication. Lady Mountbatten dubbed him, "The Aristocrat of Harlem." Networked radio broadcasts made the Duke and his lushly textured sound -- from the famous "tone palette" -- a national hit. Records made him an international figure, especially in England where he was compared favorably to Ravel and Delius. After a triumphant European tour, Ellington began to feel that: "Maybe our music does mean something."

To this end he started writing "extended works," breaking out of the 32-bar prison of the pop song. In 1939, after weathering the Swing craze and producing more than his share of song hits, he welcomed into the fold young Billy Strayhorn, a musical and social sophisticate who not only presented the Duke with a new theme in "Take The A Train" but also became his right-hand man, providing arrangements, good fellowship and a knowledge of fine wine.

In the 1940s he faced up to Be-Bop and the dissolution of the Big Bands. The secret was to employ players who could blow the flurried dissonances of bop, and also keep the band swinging for dancers and listeners by re-treading the old Ellington favorites. By the middle 1950s, with vocalists taking center-stage, rock & roll howling in the wings, and the backdrop of clubs, cabarets and theatres vanishing, Ellington became the king of the one-night-stands -- and even at this basic level he was reduced to subsidizing the band with royalties from his songs. Foreign tours, including the Middle East, India, Japan and (most notably) the Soviet Union, kept his prestige high as a gentleman ambassador of American music. But it was an extraordinary artistic comeback in 1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival that enthroned him once more. Time magazine put him on its cover. From then on he could produce his serious concert works for posterity and then relax in the pleasure of the passing moment as his trusted men, true to the spirit of the real jazz, confabulated new licks on the classic Ellington numbers, with their dapper compiler languidly exhorting them to even higher flights (which they all knew were rooted in rich soil).

On this CD you will be privileged to sit in with this gentleman bandleader at such dance concerts and catch again casual moments of musical chatter made glorious by the Ellington persona and immortal through the courtesy of electronics.

-- Ian Whitcomb, 1999

Author of "After The Ball - Pop Music From Rags To Rock"

* My food analogy is not outlandish: Ellington adored eating and he was creative at it, inventing a " reverse" dinner which began with a dessert (consisting of chocolate cake, custard, ice cream, jelly, applesauce and whipped cream) and ending with a plain old steak.

** He dignified rock with a jazz version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand."

Ian Whitcomb is a highly respected performer, composer, and music historian. You can find all of his CD's, DVD's, Books, and Songbooks by clicking here.

 
You can find Ian's main website at ianwhitcomb.com