Duke (73 page)

“Duke would have a skeleton of something”:
Tiegel, “Duke and Irving Mills.”
“I created the balances”:
Mills, “Irving Mills.”

“We got a session down there”:
Metcalf, oral-history interview.
“He knew how to construct at the piano”:
Mills, “Irving Mills.”

Duke Ellington, Inc., was owned by DE, Mills, and Samuel Buzzell:
“Certificate of Incorporation of Duke Ellington, Inc.,” Dec. 23, 1929 (Steven Lasker collection). According to this certificate, the corporation was divided into three shares, and each man owned a single share.
A 45-45 split of the band’s profits:
“Duke Ellington Breaks with Irving Mills, Famed Maestro Under Wm. Morris Banner,”
New York Amsterdam News,
Apr. 22, 1939.
“Mr. Mills’s ‘piece’”:
“Mills’ Music,”
Time,
Mar. 22, 1937.
“I owned the band”:
Irving Mills, unpublished film interview, in
RIT,
160.
“A clause in [the band’s] contract”:
“Louis Metcalf,”
Jazz Journal,
Dec. 1966, in
RIT,
80. (No evidence exists to substantiate the accuracy of Metcalf’s claim.)

Armstrong agreed to pay Rockwell $75:
Teachout, 134.
“Duke didn’t want to know”:
Wein, oral-history interview.

“Duke was a good listener”:
Mills, “Irving Mills.”

“He wanted Duke to be the star”:
John McDonough, “Reminiscing in Tempo: Guitarist Freddy Guy’s Ellington Memories,”
Down Beat,
Apr. 17, 1969, in
Reader,
484.
“Serious disillusionment for the men”:
Ulanov, 56.

“He was blue-white diamond”:
Greer, oral-history interview.
“For me, the development of Duke Ellington’s career”:
Mills and Emge, “I Split with Duke When Music Began Sidetracking,” in
Reader,
275.

CHAPTER FOUR
“THE UTMOST SIGNIFICANCE”

SOURCES

Documents

Helen Oakley Dance, oral-history interview, OHAM; Stanley Dance, liner notes for
The Ellington Era 1927–1940,
vol. 1, sound recording (Columbia); DE, unpublished interviews with Carter Harman, 1956 and 1964, EC; Sonny Greer, oral-history interview, IJS; Steven Lasker, liner notes for
Duke Ellington: The Complete 1936–1940 Variety, Vocalion and OKeh Small Group Sessions,
sound recording (Mosaic), OHAM; Irving Mills, oral-history interview, OHAM; Cootie Williams, oral-history interview, IJS.

Books

Balliett,
American Musicians II;
Berger,
Bassically Speaking;
Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke;
Boyd,
Autobiography of a People;
Calloway,
Of Minnie the Moocher and Me;
Cohen,
Duke Ellington’s America;
Collier,
Jazz;
Stanley Dance,
The World of Count Basie;
Stanley Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington;
Eberly,
Music in the Air;
Feather,
From Satchmo to Miles;
Hajdu,
Lush Life;
Hammond,
John Hammond on Record;
Harrison,
The Essential Jazz Records;
Haskins,
The Cotton Club;
Howland,
Ellington Uptown;
Langston Hughes,
The Big Sea;
Spike Hughes,
Second Movement;
Jablonski,
Harold Arlen;
Kisseloff,
You Must Remember This;
Lambert,
Music Ho!;
Lasker,
A Cotton Club Miscellany;
Lewis,
Radio Master;
Russell,
New Orleans Style;
Schuller,
Early Jazz;
Shapiro,
Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya;
Shipton,
I Feel a Song Coming On;
Stearns,
Jazz Dance;
Stearns,
The Story of Jazz;
Steiner,
Wild Throng Dances Madly in Cellar Club;
Stewart,
Jazz Masters of the Thirties;
Stratemann,
Duke Ellington Day by Day and Film by Film;
Sylvester,
No Cover Charge;
Tucker,
Ellington;
Ulanov,
Duke Ellington;
Welk,
My America, Your America;
Wilk,
They’re Playing Our Song;
Winer,
On the Sunny Side of the Street.

NOTES

The Cotton Club:
Jim Haskins’s
The Cotton Club,
the only full-length
history of the club, is mostly unsourced and must be consulted with caution.
“The Aristocrat of Harlem”:
The club’s slogan is said to have been coined by Edwina, Lady Mountbatten, a sexual adventuress who slept with many men of many colors (Jablonski, 40).
“Like a girl”:
Greer, oral-history interview.

“Muriels”:
Hammond, 126.
“The bandstand was a replica”:
Calloway, 88.

“Expensive and exclusive”:
Spike Hughes,
Second Movement,
230. “
$4–$5”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964. In his review of DE’s 1927 opening at the Cotton Club,
Variety
’s Abel Green reported that the cover charge was $2. Dan Healy, who staged the floor shows, remembered it as being $3 (Jablonski, 55).
“Bad and expensive”:
Hammond, 55.
A menu from 1931:
Lasker,
A Cotton Club Miscellany,
31–32.
$30 a bottle:
Shipton, 74.
“15 Minutes in a Taxi”:
Lasker,
A Cotton Club Miscellany,
28.

“The Cotton Club was a classy spot”:
MM,
80–81.

Madden hired only light-skinned women:
It was not until 1932 that Lucille Wilson, who later married Louis Armstrong, became the club’s first dark-skinned female dancer.
“Brutes at the door”:
Quoted in Jablonski, 53.
“It does not cater to colored patrons”:
“Cotton Club, Harlem, Bars Colored Couple Accompanied by White Friends Giving Police Orders as the Reason,”
The New York Age,
July 9, 1927.
“If you were very famous”:
Spike Hughes,
Second Movement,
230. Mercer Ellington claimed that anyone with enough money to pay the cover charge was admitted, but virtually all contemporary witnesses agree that except for black celebrities, a strict color bar was enforced by the club’s bouncers (Mark Gifford, “Mercer Ellington: An Interview with Duke’s Successor,”
Jazz Journal,
June 1990).
W.C. Handy was turned away from a show of his own songs:
“Cotton Club Takes Round in Ban Fight,”
New York Amsterdam News,
Feb. 13, 1937.

“Harlem Negroes did not like the Cotton Club”:
Langston Hughes,
The Big Sea,
224–25.
Irving Mills said that he made it happen:
Irving Mills, unpublished film interview, in
RIT,
67.

“I heard Duke and I wanted him”:
Jimmy McHugh, “McHugh’s View,”
Down Beat,
Apr. 14, 1960.

“Be big or you’ll be dead”:
Ulanov, 57.
Two weeks later:
Many versions of this story have circulated over the years. It is known, however, that
Dancemania,
the show in which DE was playing, opened on Nov. 21, 1927, twelve days before the band opened at the Cotton Club in New York. According to Fred Guy, who claimed to be present when DE signed the Cotton Club contract, “The next day we had to leave for a date in Philadelphia for a week, which gave us no time between our return and our opening. When we got back, we had to rehearse the entire show routines all afternoon and night—literally right up until showtime” (John McDonough, “Reminiscing in Tempo: Guitarist Freddy Guy’s Ellington Memories,”
Down Beat,
Apr. 17, 1969, in
Reader,
484).
“Everybody was betting we wouldn’t last a month”:
DE, “Jazz as I Have Seen It,”
Swing,
June 1940. Henry Allen’s widely reported claim that King Oliver, not DE, was the original choice of the Cotton Club’s management (see Balliett, 35) appears not to be true.

“I am mad at Harlem”:
“Lipstick” (Lois Long), “Tables for Two,”
The New Yorker,
Dec. 10, 1927.

“A slim brown girl”:
Frances Park, “Harlem 1927,”
The New Yorker,
Dec. 31, 1927.
“Better find a friend”:
“Goings On About Town,”
The New Yorker,
June 9, 1928.

“With the possible exception of Fletcher Henderson’s band”:
The New York Age,
Oct. 15, 1927, quoted in Tucker, 208.
“Teasin’est torso tossing”:
Abel Green,
Variety,
Dec. 7, 1927, in
Reader,
31–32.

“The first show was kind of weak”:
Irving Mills, unpublished film interview, in
RIT,
72.
It wasn’t until he opened at the Cotton Club:
According to Barney Bigard, Wellman Braud, the band’s bassist, told him that “Duke has had this six-piece outfit on Broadway, but he has just landed this deal at the Cotton Club. The man there wants him to expand the band to ten pieces” (Bigard, 44). Bigard joined the band shortly after it opened at the Cotton Club, making his first recordings with DE on Jan. 9, 1928.

Surviving programs of the five shows:
All surviving programs are reproduced in Stratemann, 687–93. Most of them do not identify the musical numbers by title.
No live recordings were made:
The earliest known live recordings by DE date from 1932. For a discussion of the only surviving manuscripts by DE from the early Cotton Club years, see Howland, 127–28.
Some scholars have suggested:
See, for example, Gunther Schuller, who claims in
Early Jazz
that Ellington’s musical development “was precisely due to the fortuitous circumstance of working five years at the Cotton Club. There, by writing and experimenting with all manner of descriptive production and dance numbers, Ellington’s inherent talent and imagination could develop properly” (339).

“The music for the shows”:
MM,
81.
“We played two shows each night”:
Bigard, 47.
DE identifies only one composition:
“I wrote ‘The Mystery Song’ for the Step Brothers in rehearsal. It was part of their act, not part of the show” (
MM,
81). The Four Step Brothers were a dance team organized in 1925 that made numerous film and TV appearances and remained active well into the sixties. DE recorded “The Mystery Song” for Victor in 1931.

“The most shocking, ribald, bawdy, dirtiest songs”:
Winer, 28.
“Jelly roll, jelly roll”:
Quoted in Shipton, 80.
“Every dance routine was too long and too loud”:
Spike Hughes,
Second Movement,
230.
“The chief ingredient”:
Jablonski, 55.