Duke (80 page)

“Spot has the same $1.50–$2 table d’hote dinner policy”:
Variety,
n.d., in Vail, 149.
“We worked clean through the Depression without ever knowing there was one”:
Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke,
52.
DE’s record sales were sagging:
Ulanov, 197.
“Now he was not only broke”:
Ellington, 70.

“The ‘TOO-sies’”:
Roger Ringo, “Reminiscing in Tempo with Freddie Jenkins,”
Storyville,
Apr.–May 1973.
“Not only am I losing one of my best musicians”:
Billy Howe, “Whetsol [
sic
] Is Forced to Leave Duke,”
The Pittsburgh Courier,
Mar. 3, 1938. (Whetsel died in 1940.)
“That was what drove him into becoming a funeral director”:
Ellington, 23.
“Swing is stagnant”:
Peter Bellamy, “Duke Ellington Says ‘Swing Has No Future,’”
Cleveland News,
Oct. 8, 1938.

DE started telling journalists that he had finished writing an opera:
See, for example, “Ellington Completes Negro Opera at Bedside,”
Down Beat,
Oct. 2, 1938.

“I don’t drink any more”:
MM,
75.
DE would drink endless Coca-Colas:
Sherrill, oral-history interview. This habit continued to the end of his life. When DE went to the Soviet Union in 1971, the US embassy in Moscow agreed to supply him with fifteen cases of Coca-Cola for his exclusive use during the tour (Harvey G. Cohen, “Visions of Freedom: Duke Ellington in the Soviet Union,”
Popular Music,
Sept. 2011).

It was around this time that DE left Mildred Dixon:
Sources vary widely as to the date of the breakup, but it cannot have been earlier than Jan. 23, 1939, the date when DE is known to have brought BS to his New York apartment to live with Mercer and Ruth Ellington, since he never returned to 381 Edgecombe after he moved out.
“I didn’t know if she was colored or white”:
Terry, 122.
“Typical of many attractive black women”:
Davis, 58.

Opinions vary on when she met DE:
See Jacobs, oral-history interview, and George, 137.
“Mildred had heard about a girl”:
Ulanov, 208.

Mildred was still living at 381 Edgecombe:
Floyd G. Snelson, “Harlem,”
The New York Age,
Jan. 25, 1941.
She was still there as late as 1950:
“Ellington’s Tempo Music Reactivated,”
Billboard,
Aug. 12, 1950.

Evie was linked to DE in the black press:
“The oomph girl, Bea Ellis, is quietly lolling in her ‘Sugar Hill’ love-nest and will join her heartbeat, Duke Ellington, next week, when he opens his engagement at the Hotel Sherman, in Chicago” (Floyd G. Snelson, “Harlem,”
The New York Age,
Aug. 24, 1940).
DE introduced Evie to friends as “Mrs. Ellington”:
“He called her Evie, and often introduced her in my presence as Mrs. Ellington” (Irving Townsend, “Ellington in Private,”
The Atlantic Monthly,
May 1975).
“Bea Ellis and Edward K. Ellington”:
Ellington, 77.
DE paid off gossip columnists:
Ibid.

“She felt very exploited”:
Davis, 59.
“Evie was very much obsessed”:
Ellington, 78.

“Ladies and gentlemen”:
George, 59.
“Everyone has to dig a little distortion”:
Ibid., 51.

“An exciting woman”:
DE, “The Most Exciting Women I’ve Known,”
Ebony,
Apr. 1952.
“He had a basic contempt for women”:
Ellington, 128.
“A lot of men who are womanizers”:
George, 109.
“I do not wish to disenchant you”:
Gordon Parks, “Jazz,”
Esquire,
Dec. 1975.

“You grow up, you find”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
“Women who cry and women who laugh”:
DE,
Man with Four Sides
(typescript, Stanley Dance collection, Yale University).

“Duke’s only concern”:
George, 94.
“He didn’t want a role”:
Ibid., 147–48.

A four-part series:
Although these pieces accurately represented Ellington’s sentiments, they were, like most of the other articles that he published in the thirties and forties, ghosted by Helen Oakley, who later recalled that “I was so used to him and the way he talked and everything that when I’d write up his little pieces, they sounded like Duke” (Helen Oakley Dance, oral-history interview).
“Adolescent”:
DE, “Duke Says Swing Is Stagnant,”
Down Beat,
Feb. 1939, in
Reader,
133–34.

A sideswipe that DE was forced to retract in print:
“It was my intention to merely infer that the political affiliations of Mr. Hammond bordered on the ‘left wing.’ The impression conveyed that he is in any way associated with the Communist party was both accidental and erroneous” (DE, “Ellington Corrects a Statement Re Hammond,”
Down Beat,
May 1939). The text of DE’s letter suggests that it was written under the threat of litigation.
Hammond wrote for and had close ties to the Communist-controlled
New Masses,
but a 1935 visit to the Soviet Union had disabused him of any lingering illusions about Stalin and Stalinism, and the FBI, which opened a file on Hammond six years later, eventually concluded that “there is no information indicating that he is a member of the Communist Party.”
“He apparently has consistently identified himself”:
DE, “Situation Between the Critics and Musicians Is Laughable—Ellington,”
Down Beat,
Apr. 1939, in
Reader,
137.
“He has identified himself”:
DE, “Duke Concludes Criticism of the Critics,”
Down Beat,
May 1939, in
Reader,
137.

“[A] band with an amazing amount of color”:
DE, “Duke Becomes a Critic!!,”
Down Beat,
July 1939, in
Reader,
139.
“His practice of offering his own renditions”:
Ibid.

“Frightening to see”:
Stewart,
Boy Meets Horn,
187. “
Severed their long business association”:
“Irving Mills and Duke Ellington Sever Association,”
The Melody Maker,
May 6, 1939, in
Reader,
141.
Details of the professional divorce:
For a discussion of the break and its aftermath, see Lasker, liner notes for
Duke Ellington: The Complete 1936–1940 Variety, Vocalion and OKeh Small Group Sessions,
16.

“Because [he] sensed”:
Irving Mills, “Irving Mills: ‘I Split with Duke When Music Began Sidetracking,’”
Down Beat,
Nov. 5, 1952, in
Reader,
275.
“Irving Mills decided in ’38”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
“Duke started getting disenchanted”:
Michael P. Zirpolo, “In Duke’s Head,”
IAJRC Journal
(Summer 2000).

“Lack of attention”:
Ulanov, 206.
“Duke Ellington sat down at the table”:
Ibid., 207.
“The most expensive casket made”:
RIT,
207–8. Udkoff may have been confusing J.E.’s casket with that of Daisy, which was reported as having cost $3,500.

“The Duke has been exploited”:
John Hammond, “The Tragedy of Duke Ellington, the ‘Black Prince’ of Jazz,”
Down Beat,
Nov. 1, 1935, in
Reader,
119.
“A musical sharecropper”:
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., “Soap Box: My Grandfather’s Branded, Our Musicians Are Slaves, Owned Body and Soul, Work for Massa Mills,”
New York
Amsterdam News,
Nov. 21, 1936.
“He has EARNED something like $2,000,000”:
Quoted in Ulanov, 206.
“An unfounded and unwarranted libel”:
“Ned E. Williams Replies to Criticism of Irving Mills by Rev. A.C. Powell, Jr.,”
The New York Age,
Dec. 5, 1936.

Only one of the thirty-three paragraphs:
Abel Green, “Mills Music’s 40-Year Success Story; From 5G & 3 Songs to $5,000,000 Empire,”
Variety,
Oct. 28, 1959.
“We dissolved our business relationship agreeably”:
MM,
89.

He instructed his publicists and road managers:
Helen Oakley Dance and Al Celley both testified to this precaution (Cohen, 168).
“I don’t eat with niggers”:
Ibid., 161. (This story was told to Cohen by George Avakian.)

DE switched managers to bolster his prestige:
For a detailed account of the switch, see Cohen, 168–71.
“Duke was very respectful”:
Anderson, oral-history interview.
“John Hammond . . . was supervising”:
“Leonard Feather Rebuts Hammond,”
Jazz,
May 1943, in
Reader,
174.

“Anybody that John couldn’t push around”:
Helen Oakley Dance, oral-history interview. (Stanley Dance, Helen’s husband, was present at and took part in the interview, and it was he, not Helen, who made this statement.)
DE returned to Victor:
For a discussion of the switch, see Lasker, liner notes for
Duke Ellington: The Complete 1936–1940 Variety, Vocalion and OKeh Small Group Sessions,
20. As was his wont, Hammond neither forgave nor forgot. In addition to writing a vicious review of
Black, Brown and Beige,
he tried in 1942 to persuade Johnny Hodges to leave Ellington and become a member of a racially integrated house band that Hammond was putting together for CBS (Leonard G. Feather, “Hodges Refuses Scott Offer; He’s Accused of Sabotage!”
Orchestra World,
Sept. 1942).

“After our very successful European jaunt”:
Stewart,
Boy Meets Horn,
189.
“That Ellington’s is the most unappreciated band”:
Review of “Serenade to Sweden” and “The Sergeant Was Shy,”
Down Beat,
Dec. 1, 1939.

CHAPTER NINE
“THE EYES IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD”

SOURCES

Documents

Lawrence Brown, oral-history interview, IJS; DE, unpublished interview with Carter Harman, 1964, EC; Mercer Ellington, oral-history interview, EC; Ruth Ellington, oral-history interview, EC; Sonny Greer, oral-history interview, IJS;
Jazz 625,
TV program, Feb. 20, 1964 (BBC); Steven Lasker, liner notes for
The Complete 1932–1940 Brunswick, Columbia and Master Recordings of Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra,
sound recording (Mosaic); Steven Lasker, liner notes for
Duke Ellington: The Complete 1936–1940 Variety, Vocalion and OKeh Small Group Sessions
(Mosaic); BS, public interview, Duke Ellington Society, New York, Mar. 1962; Juan Tizol, oral-history interview, IJS.

Books

Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke;
Cohen,
Duke Ellington’s America;
Collier,
Duke Ellington;
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington;
Ellington,
Duke Ellington in Person;
George,
Sweet Man;
Hajdu,
Lush Life;
Jewell,
Duke;
Schuller,
The Swing Era;
Stewart,
Boy Meets Horn;
Traill,
Just Jazz 3;
Ulanov,
Duke Ellington;
van de Leur,
Something to Live For.