Duke (77 page)

“A General Study of the Manifold Nature of Music”:
Grainger’s handwritten lecture notes for this series are part of the collection of Melbourne’s Grainger Museum. He spoke on Ellington on Oct. 25, 1932. See Brian Allison, “Grainger Meets Duke Ellington,”
Hoard House: News from the Grainger Museum,
July 2009.
“The three greatest composers”:
Bird, 204.
“High emotional and technical qualities”:
Allison, “Grainger Meets Duke Ellington.”

“Four typewriters”:
“Tabloid’s Furor Is Set to Music,”
The New York Times,
Jan. 26, 1933. Also on the program were Johnny Green’s
Night Club
and “Land of Superstition,” a movement from William Grant Still’s
Africa
(Berrett, 175).
“When I first heard him”:
The World at Large.

DE performed
Creole Rhapsody
as late as 1940:
See “Ellington Concert Climaxes Home Coming Program Here,”
Macon
(GA)
Telegraph and News,
July 7, 1940.
A list of favorite recordings:
Down Beat,
Nov. 5, 1952, in
Reader,
268.

A full-page ad:
Variety,
Jan. 28, 1932. The ad is reproduced in Stratemann, 46.
“Duke’s A number one chargé d’affaires”:
Stewart,
Boy Meets Horn,
149, 148.

American record sales:
“Phonograph Records,”
Fortune,
Sept. 1939.
“RCA Victor Unloading Stars”:
Variety,
Mar. 25, 1931.
DE cut a half dozen sides for Victor in June:
He recorded as a freelancer for Victor the following February with a pair of New York sessions at which he cut two extended medleys of his compositions that were simultaneously recorded with two different microphone setups, thus making it possible for Brad Kay and Steven Lasker to synchronize the performances in 1984 and release both sides in “accidental stereo.” (The medleys include “Mood Indigo,” “Hot and Bothered,” “Creole Love Call,” “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo,” “Lot o’ Fingers,” and “Black and Tan Fantasy.”) These recordings, in which the 1932 Ellington band can be heard with unprecedented sonic clarity, were officially released for the first time in 1999 as part of
The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (1927–1973),
a limited-edition twenty-four-CD box set.

A mustachioed dandy:
Ulanov, 169.
A “class attraction”:
“Irving Mills Presents Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra,” 1933 publicity manual (EC).
“Primitive rhythms!”:
Ibid.
“When Duke bends over the piano”:
Ibid.

A Christmas gift of $250:
Ulanov, 125.
The readers of
The Pittsburgh Courier:
Floyd G. Snelson, “Story of Duke Ellington’s Rise to Kingship of Jazz Reads Like Fiction,”
The Pittsburgh Courier,
Dec. 19, 1931.
$5,000 a week:
“Desperation Salaries: 80 ‘Name Acts,’ $2K or More,”
Variety,
Mar. 8, 1932.
“As fast as he got the money”:
Mills, oral-history interview.
“When I got to high school”:
Ellington, 51.

DE started making records for Brunswick:
He did not, however, sign an exclusive contract with the label, for which he appears to have recorded strictly on a freelance basis until 1934 (Lasker, liner notes for
The Complete 1932–1940 Brunswick, Columbia and Master Recordings of Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra,
4).
The band backed Bing Crosby:
Crosby and the Rhythm Boys, the trio with which he performed during his tenure with Whiteman, had previously been heard on Ellington’s 1930 recording of “Three Little Words,” and their singing can also be heard on the soundtrack of the performance of the song that is included in
Check and Double Check.
(Their vocal parts are “sung” on-screen by the members of the trumpet section.)
“The biggest thing, ever”:
Giddins, 267.
“The
Boss of All Singers
”:
Louis Armstrong, letter to unknown recipient, c. 1967 (Louis Armstrong Archive, Queens College).
“I’m proud to
acknowledge my debt”:
Ken Murray, “Louis, Bix Had Most Influence on Der Bingle,”
Down Beat,
July 14, 1950.

One of our first glimpses:
A shorter version of this new arrangement was recorded eight days earlier, on Feb. 3, 1932, as part of Victor L-16006, the “accidental stereo” recording officially issued by RCA in 1999.
“A new arrangement”:
Memories of Duke.

“What struck me”:
Hugues Panassié,
“Duke Ellington at the Salle Pleyel,” in Reader,
84.

“When I joined his band”:
Paul Eduard Miller, “Ivie Joined the Duke for Twelve Weeks, Stays with Band for Twelve Years,”
Down Beat,
July 15, 1942, in
Reader,
459.
“Off stage our Miss Anderson was another person entirely”:
Stewart,
Boy Meets Horn,
177.

“Very staid”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
“I never knew you”:
Brown, oral-history interview.

“Duke decided and they plotted”:
Bogle, 133.
“An exploiter of men”:
Tucker, liner notes for
Slide Trombone Featuring Lawrence Brown.
The quote comes from an unpublished interview that Tucker conducted in 1985.
“As a soloist, his taste is impeccable”:
MM,
122.

“I sat next to him”:
Quoted in Dietrich, 89.
“It was my own idea”:
Dance, 119, 120.
“I can’t play jazz”:
Brown, oral-history interview.

“The one person”:
Spike Hughes, “Day by Day in New York,”
The Melody Maker,
May 1933.
“A brilliant musician”:
John Hammond, “Benny Moten Makes His Mark,”
The
Melody Maker,
May 1933.

“Your poppa likes”:
Ellington, 28.

DE did not allow Brown to play with the band:
Brown, oral-history interview.
DE decided that thirteen was his lucky number:
Ned E. Williams, “Reminiscing in Tempo—Ned on Early Ellingtonia,”
Down Beat,
Nov. 5, 1952.
DE opened a successful engagement at Chicago’s Oriental Theatre on Feb. 13, 1931:
He returned to the Oriental a month later, on Mar. 13, 1931, which also fell on a Friday (Ken Steiner, personal communication).

“When I was eight”:
Boyer, “The Hot Bach,” 237.
He happened to be wearing a brown suit:
Ellington, 154.
“Once someone gave him a sweater”:
George, 68.
He threw away any garment with a loose button:
Stewart,
Jazz Masters of the Thirties,
85–86.
“Walk away from him”:
Ellington, 154.
People who whistled or ate peanuts backstage:
Ellington, 153.

DE would walk out of a room whenever the subject of death came up:
George, 68.

“Speaking of the Duke”:
John Hammond, “Meet John Hammond! Our New American Correspondent,”
The Melody Maker,
Feb. 1932.
“The syndicate that ran [the Cotton Club]”:
Ellington, 41.

“At first I was happy”:
Boyer, “The Hot Bach,” 242.

Sailing across the Atlantic appalled DE:
Ibid., 243.
Judicious doses of champagne and brandy:
DE, “Jazz as I Have Seen It,”
Swing,
Sept. 1940.

“I much regret”:
Joe Crossman, “What I Think of Armstrong,”
The Melody Maker,
Oct. 1932; Parsonage, 239.
“It is not a ‘show’ band”:
Spike Hughes, “Meet the Duke!”
Daily Herald,
June 13, 1933.

DE’s sidemen were forced to settle:
Ulanov, 134.
“Original Snake-Hips Girl”:
Dudley’s billing is given on the poster for the concert, reproduced in Vail, 81.

Pictures shot on the stage of the Palladium:
They are reproduced in Stratemann, 67.
“Like a high priest”:
Ellington, 66.
“This was a night that scared the devil”:
DE, “Duke Tells Of 10 Top Thrills In 25 Years,”
Down Beat,
Nov. 5, 1952.

“Ellington was always composed”:
Rhythm,
July 1933; George, 125.
“A
Harlem Dionysus”:
Quoted in Ulanov, 142.
“He does at once”:
“The Palladium: Mr. Duke Ellington and His Orchestra,”
The Times
(London), n.d.; clipping, EC.

“It literally lifts one out of one’s seat”:
“The Duke at the Palladium,”
The Melody Maker,
June 17, 1933. (This review, credited to a “special correspondent,” may have been written by Spike Hughes.)
“Probably the first composer of real character”:
Constant Lambert, “Matter Musical: The Art of Duke Ellington,”
Sunday Referee,
June 25, 1933.

“Is Duke Ellington losing faith”:
“Mike’s Report,”
The Melody Maker,
July 1, 1933. (“Mike” was Hughes’s pseudonym.)
“The Hot Dictator”:
DE, “Jazz as I Have Seen It.”
DE played all the pieces Hughes mentioned:
A program of the second concert, given on July 23, is reproduced in
DEMS Bulletin,
Oct.–Nov. 1997. It lists fifty pieces, all but eleven of them by DE, from which the numbers performed that day were chosen. The originals were a representative cross section of DE’s work up to that time, ranging from “Black and Tan Fantasy” to “Sophisticated Lady” and including
Creole Rhapsody.
The other numbers were all identified with jazz, including “Bugle Call Rag,” “St. Louis Blues,” “Tiger Rag,” Lawrence Brown’s features on “Rose Room” and “The Sheik of Araby,” and Hughes’s “Sirocco.”
Program notes:
Ibid.

“Windsor can play good drums”:
DE, “Jazz as I Have Seen It.”
DE made a point of meeting with Constant Lambert:
A relic of their meeting survives, a page torn out of an autograph album on which the two men’s signatures are preceded by the motto “Don’t mean thing / Ain’t got Swing” in Ellington’s handwriting. This item was offered for sale by James Pepper Rare Books, Inc., of Santa Barbara, California, in 2012. (It is now in private hands.)
“He gives the same distinction”:
Constant Lambert, “Gramophone Notes,”
New Statesman and Nation,
Aug. 1, 1931.
DE had never heard any of Delius’s music:
MM,
470. “When Ellington and his orchestra played before Percy Grainger’s music classes at New York University, Mr. Grainger drew some casual comparisons with the music of Bach and Delius. ‘I’ll have to find out about this Delius,’ said Mr. Ellington” (“Introducing Duke Ellington,”
Fortune,
Aug. 1933). DE’s friend Edmund Anderson claimed to have introduced him to the music of Delius, Debussy, and Ravel in a series of listening sessions that took place around 1936: “He laughed at the idea that he was supposed to be like Delius, but he
loved
that music” (Jewell, 52).
“There was one English composer”:
Enstice, 188.