Duke (83 page)

“Raymond? He has perfect taste”:
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
138.
“Floorshow”:
Ibid., 61.
“A kid that [
sic
] has a lot of showmanship”:
Down Beat,
Sept. 1, 1942, quoted in Collier, 241.
His name began to be featured in newspaper ads:
See Vail, 232 and elsewhere.
“A diet of heroin and whiskey”:
George, 216. (Nance is not specifically identified, but the context leaves no doubt that he was the musician in question.)

“Slowly they drifted in”:
Gammond, 176–77. All of the recordings made by Towers and Burris that night are available on a two-CD set called
At Fargo 1940: Special 60th Anniversary Edition
(Storyville).

“What the scientists do”:
DE, TV interview,
The Parkinson Show,
BBC, 1973, in
RIT,
323.
“I live for the nights that this band is great”:
Grover Mitchell, quoted in Crow, 282.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
“A MESSAGE FOR THE WORLD”

SOURCES

Documents

Lawrence Brown, oral-history interview, IJS; Dutch Jazz Orchestra,
Something to Live For: The Dutch Jazz Orchestra Plays the Music of Billy Strayhorn,
sound recording (Challenge); DE, unpublished interview with Carter Harman, 1964, EC; Norman Granz, oral-history interview, EC; Irving Mills, oral-history interview, OHAM; Brian Priestley, “The Early Forties Recordings (1940–1942),” liner notes for discs 8–13 of
The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition,
sound recording (RCA Victor); Patricia Willard, liner notes for
Jump for Joy,
sound recording (Smithsonian Collection).

Books

Benamu,
It’s All True;
Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke;
Bogle,
Dorothy Dandridge;
Büchmann-Møller,
Someone to Watch Over Me;
Buckley,
The Hornes;
Carter,
Anthony Blunt;
Cohen,
Duke Ellington’s America;
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington;
Denning,
The Cultural Front;
Ellington,
Duke Ellington in Person;
Gammond,
Duke Ellington;
Giddins,
Visions of Jazz;
Gleason,
Celebrating the Duke;
Hall,
More Dialogues in Swing;
Hajdu,
Lush Life;
Mason,
Stone Tower;
Stratemann,
Duke Ellington Day by Day and Film by Film;
Ulanov,
Duke Ellington;
Vail,
Duke’s Diary, Part One;
van de Leur,
Something to Live For.

NOTES

“I always consider my problems opportunities”:
Gleason, 167.

“When we opened”:
Dance, 33.

BS’s version of “Chloë” was adapted from a stock arrangement:
The band’s recording of “Chloë,” made on Oct. 28, is clearly based on a version of the song that had been recorded by Tracy-Brown’s Orchestra, a Chicago dance band, in 1928 (Priestley, “The Early Forties Recordings”).

“After spending $8,000”:
“Mercer Ellington Joins Dad,” unsourced and undated clipping, c. 1940, in Vail, 193.
“Overnight, literally”:
Hajdu, 83–84.

“He’d set problems for me”:
Ellington, 93. The scores of “Blue Serge” and “Jumpin’ Punkins” are in DE’s handwriting, which suggests that the role played by him in their creation was greater than Mercer cared to admit. According to Leonard Feather, who worked with the Ellington band as a press agent starting in Nov. 1942, Mercer “has seldom done any of the arranging [of his compositions] except on parts of ‘Jumpin’ Punkins’ and ‘Moon Mist’” (Leonard G. Feather, “Billy Strayhorn—The Young Duke,”
Jazz,
Jan. 1943). For a discussion of the provenance of these compositions, see Cohen, 177–78, 603.
“Chelsea Bridge” was inspired by Whistler’s
Nocturne: Blue and Gold—Old Battersea Bridge:
Ulanov, 226. Even though there is an actual Chelsea Bridge in London, Aaron Bridgers confirmed that this was the specific painting that BS had in mind. According to Bridgers, BS “thought that ‘Chelsea Bridge’ sounded better: he did know the difference” (van de Leur, 292).

DE’s “yearlings”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
“I contend that the Negro”:
“Speech of the Week,”
California Eagle,
Feb. 13, 1941, in
Reader,
147.

“To give an American audience”:
John Pittman, “The Duke Will Stay on Top!,” unidentified clipping, in
Reader,
149.

“Hey, this joint sure is jumpin’!”:
Willard,
Jump for Joy.
“Count me in”:
Howard Reich, “50 Years Later, Pegasus Puts Ellington’s Fiery Musical Back Together,”
Chicago Tribune,
Oct. 6, 1991.
One of the principal investors in
Jump for Joy:
The other investors included W.R. Burnett, the pulp novelist who collaborated on the screenplays for
Scarface,
Little Caesar,
and
High Sierra,
and Joe Pasternak, who is best remembered for producing Deanna Durbin’s film musicals.

“The leftist Hollywood crowd”:
RIT,
233.
The history of the Popular Front:
For a discussion of the Popular Front and its various theatrical ventures, see Denning, 283–319.
Pins and Needles
was so beloved of the American left:
Carter, 187.

A “Negro Revue”:
Ibid., 312. “Mad Scene from Woolworth’s,” one of the sketches that Hughes wrote for this project, would later be recycled for use in
Jump for Joy.
A “Communist-front organization”:
Mason, 18.

“Jno. Garfield”:
Bill Smallwood, “On the Beam,”
California Eagle,
Feb. 6, 1941.
“Social[ly] conscious” friends:
DE, radio interview with Stanley Dance, BBC, 1971, in
RIT,
230.
A full-page
New York Times
ad:
Advertisement,
The New York Times,
Nov. 3, 1944.

“Whatever town he went to”:
Mills, oral-history interview.
“I’ve never been interested in politics”:
DE, “No Red Songs for Me,”
The New Leader,
Sept. 30, 1950.
“When something bad happened”:
Ellington, 157.

A longtime Republican:
Tom Simon, the US State Department officer who escorted DE and the band on their 1963 tour of the Middle East, told Arne Neegaard that DE confirmed this fact to him in conversation (Arne Neegaard, personal communication).
DE’s FBI file:
The file is headed “Subject: Edward Kennedy (Duke) Ellington. File: 100-HQ-434443.” It can be viewed at the FBI’s website, vault.fbi.gov.

“Whose sympathies fitted into my scene and scheme”:
MM,
155.
“An all-Negro show”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
“Everything, every setting”:
MM,
176.
“Traditionally, black humor had been portrayed”:
Willard,
Jump for Joy.
“We included
everything we wanted to say”:
Henry Whiston, “Reminiscing in Tempo,”
Jazz Journal,
Feb. 1967.

“I am a Negro”:
“Ellington Denies Charges of Ingratitude, ‘Uncle Tom-ing,’”
California Eagle,
Jan. 30, 1941.
“You don’t seem to fit the right shade”:
Emory Holmes II, “When the ‘A’ Train Hit L.A.,”
Los Angeles Times,
Apr. 25, 1999.

“I teach Betty Grable”:
Buckley, 151.
DE claimed that
Jump for Joy
was written by fifteen different people:
MM,
175.
“The most beautiful
woman”:
Bogle, 89.

“Duke was in the bathtub”:
Willard,
Jump for Joy.
The exact role of BS in the writing of the score of
Jump for Joy
is unclear, but everyone close to the show agreed that he worked hand in hand with DE. While the program credits him only with “musical arrangements,” Blankfort and Kuller both thought that he deserved coequal billing with DE. “We should have listed Billy, too: ‘By Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn,’” Blankfort said. “But Ellington had the name. He was the big draw.” Kuller put it more directly: “The thing is, see, Duke was the front man. . . . Listen, the world wasn’t ready to accept a show by Duke Ellington. It certainly wasn’t ready to accept Duke Ellington
and
some other guy nobody ever heard of” (Hajdu, 92). The opening-night program of
Jump for Joy,
which shows BS’s billing, is reproduced in
MM,
177–79.

“We had a national tour all planned”:
Reich, “50 Years Later.”
“As the audience screamed and applauded”:
MM,
180.

“Duke Ellington and his orchestra”:
Quoted in Reich, “50 Years Later.”
“Main trouble with ‘Jump for Joy’”:
Review of
Jump for Joy,
Variety,
July 16, 1941.
“A good part of the trouble”:
Almena Davis, “Ellington Opus Gets Once-Over,”
The Pittsburgh Courier,
undated clipping (EC). (This review was reprinted from
The
Los Angeles Tribune.
)

“The show was never the same”:
MM,
175.
“The Negroes always left proudly”:
Ibid.
“Duke Ellington’s band was supposed to be”:
“G.T.S.” (George T. Simon), “Joe Turner Star of Duke’s Revue!,”
Metronome,
Oct. 1941.

DE incorporated a vest-pocket version of the revue into his stage show:
See the advertisements reproduced in Vail (204, 205, 211).
The only attempt to revive
Jump for Joy
lost its backers $100,000:
Variety,
Mar. 11, 1959, quoted in Stratemann, 399.

“A milestone in Ellington’s career”:
Giddins, 245.
Few of the sketches are extant:
After
Jump for Joy
closed, the finished sketches were returned to their respective authors and thus were not preserved in DE’s papers (Reich, “50 Years Later”). “A Colored Musical Review in Two Acts, entitled: ‘JUMP FOR JOY,’” a typescript of a preliminary draft of the book, has survived and is now in the hands of a private collector. While the show was extensively revised after the writing of this draft, it appears to give a reasonably clear sense of how
Jump for Joy
played on stage.

A silent film shot by friends of the cast:
Stratemann,
171. The sole surviving print of this film, which was shot by Andy and Mary MacKay, is now in the possession of the jazz film collector Mark Cantor.