Duke (84 page)

“Sun-Tanned Tenth of the Nation”:
The title of this number alludes to
One-Third of a Nation,
the “Living Newspaper” stage documentary about poverty in America that was one of the Federal Theatre Project’s most widely discussed productions.

Paul White received threatening calls:
Willard,
Jump for Joy.
“We had too many chefs”:
Hall, 110.

“It didn’t do very well”:
Granz, oral-history interview.

“That killed me”:
Quoted in Cohen, 194. (The friend was Brooks Kerr.)

“I want to do the history of jazz”:
MM,
240.
“You can start work today!”:
Henry Whiston, “Reminiscing in Tempo,”
Jazz Journal,
Feb. 1967. (In
MM,
DE recalled his proposed salary as $1,000 a week.)

Elliot Paul was working on a script:
Benamu, 29.

DE was the only genius he had ever known:
This remark is “quoted” without attribution in Maurice Zolotow, “The Duke of Hot,”
The Saturday Evening Post,
Aug. 7, 1943.

“I think I wrote 28 bars”:
Whiston, “Reminiscing in Tempo.”

DE “called doctor after doctor”:
MM,
165.
A picture of Ben Webster:
Büchmann-Møller, 89.

“Silly things like sleeping bad”:
Bigard, 77.

“When I told him I was leaving”:
Ibid.
“He’s just leaving”:
“Barney Bigard Is Leaving Duke,”
Down Beat,
July 15, 1942.
Ivie Anderson said in a radio interview that she was tired of the road:
Undated aircheck (Steven Lasker collection).
Anderson quit when DE refused to give her a raise:
Brown, oral-history interview.

CHAPTER TWELVE
“I DON’T WRITE JAZZ”

SOURCES

Documents

George Avakian, oral-history interview, OHAM;
A Duke Named Ellington,
TV documentary (WNET);
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: The Treasury Shows,
vol. 1, sound recording (Storyville);
The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concerts: December 1944,
sound recording (Prestige); DE, “
Black, Brown and Beige
by Duke Ellington” (typescript, n.d., EC); DE, unpublished interviews with Carter Harman, 1956 and 1964, EC; DE, untitled scenario of
Boola
(holograph MS., n.d., EC); DE and Inez Cavanaugh, liner notes,
Black, Brown and Beige: A Duke Ellington Tone Parallel to the American Negro,
sound recording (RCA Victor); Mercer Ellington, oral-history interview, EC; Ruth Ellington, oral-history interview, EC; Sonny Greer, oral-history interview, IJS; Phoebe Jacobs, oral-history interview conducted by researchers for Ken Burns’s
Jazz
(transcript available online at http://www.pbs.org /jazz/about/pdfs/jacobs.pdf); Max Jones, oral-history interview, OHAM; Brad McCuen, oral-history interview, EC; Betty Roché, oral-history interview, OHAM; Joya Sherrill, oral-history interview conducted by researchers for Ken Burns’s
Jazz
(transcript available online at www.pbs.org/jazz/about/pdfs/Sherrill.pdf).

Books

Büchmann-Møller,
Someone to Watch Over Me;
Cohen,
Duke Ellington’s America;
Crow,
From Birdland to Broadway;
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington;
Ellington,
Duke Ellington in Person;
Enstice,
Jazz Spoken Here;
George,
Sweet Man;
Gleason,
Celebrating the Duke;
Hajdu,
Lush Life;
Hasse,
Beyond Category;
Jewell,
Duke;
Ottley,
New World A-Coming;
Schuller,
Gunther Schuller;
Schuller,
The Swing Era;
Stewart,
Boy Meets Horn;
Stewart,
Jazz Masters of the Thirties;
Stratemann,
Duke Ellington Day by Day and Film by Film;
Terry,
Clark;
Tucker,
Ellington;
Ulanov,
Duke Ellington;
Vail,
Duke’s Diary, Part One;
van de Leur,
Something to Live For.

NOTES

“William Morris says to me”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964. The fullest account of the creation of
Black, Brown and Beige
is Mark Tucker’s “The Genesis of
Black, Brown and Beige
,”
Black Music Research Journal
(Fall 1993).
“The light was not too good”:
MM,
181. (The actual title of the film, directed by Jacques Tourneur, was
Cat People
.)

DE’s starting point was a typescript scenario:
He confirmed in 1956 that the music of
Black, Brown and Beige
was based on the scenario (DE,
Harman interview, 1956).
DE claimed in 1938 to have “completed” an opera:
“Ellington Completes Negro Opera at Bedside,”
Down Beat,
Oct. 2, 1938.
He started referring to it by name:
“Ellington Composes New Number,”
Detroit Evening Times,
July 30, 1940.
“You gather that he could finish it”:
Alfred Frankenstein, “‘Hot Is Something About a Tree,’ Says the Duke,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
Nov. 9, 1941.

No part of
Boola
was ever performed or recorded:
The printed program for a concert given by the band at the City College of New York on Jan. 3, 1939, included “An Aria from the Opera by Duke Ellington depicting the History of the Negro.” The program was changed prior to the concert, however, and the “aria” was not performed. (A copy of the program is part of the collection of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.)
DE had “taken some of the music”:
Howard Taubman, “The ‘Duke’ Invades Carnegie Hall,”
The New York Times Magazine,
Jan. 17, 1943, in
Reader,
160.
Boola
“yielded much of the material”:
Ulanov, 253.
“A message . . . shot through the jungle”:
DE, “
Black, Brown and Beige
by Duke Ellington.”
“Not a song of great Joy”:
DE, untitled scenario of
Boola.
“And now Come Sunday”:
Ibid.

DE was writing a book about
Black, Brown and Beige:
“Duke’s Book Will Explain His Carnegie Hall Symph,”
Variety,
June 9, 1943.
Selected passages:
Inez Cavanaugh, a black journalist who wrote the liner notes, described the passages as “the Duke’s own interpretation of the music, as reported by Inez Cavanaugh”
(DE and Inez Cavanaugh,
Black, Brown and Beige
).
“A collection of 800 books”:
Maurice Zolotow, “The Duke of Hot,”
The Saturday Evening Post,
Aug. 7, 1943.
“A song eased the lash”:
DE, “
Black, Brown and Beige
by Duke Ellington.”

“
Black, Brown and Beige
was his criticism of his own race”:
Enstice, 121.
“The [black] state of mind”:
DE, Harman interview, 1956.

DE stepped in front of a capacity crowd at Carnegie Hall:
Numerous sources report that the concert was a benefit for “Russian war relief.” (See, for instance, Hasse, 263.) In fact it was a benefit for Russian War Relief, Inc., a Popular Front organization later identified as a Communist front, albeit one so carefully camouflaged that it was long regarded, by DE among many others, as a legitimate operation.
“National Duke Ellington Week”:
Stratemann, 239.
“I [saw] some ordinary people”:
Roché, oral-history interview.
“His flamboyant black band”:
“The Duke of Jazz,”
Time,
Feb. 1, 1943.
“That first night at Carnegie”:
MM,
266.

“To this reviewer’s ears”:
Elliott Grennard, “Ellington Preems Tone Poem at Carnegie Hall; 3,300 Pay Way,”
Billboard,
Jan. 30, 1943.
A latter-day counterpart of the historical pageants:
It is not known whether DE saw any of these productions, but Henry Grant, with whom he briefly studied harmony as a boy, directed the chorus in
The Evolution of the Negro in Picture, Song, and Story,
which was performed at Washington’s Howard Theatre in 1911. Mark Tucker reports that this pageant was divided into four parts that are reminiscent of the sections of
Black, Brown and Beige,
“Overture,” “Night of Slavery—Sorrow Songs,” “Dawn of Freedom,” and “Day of Opportunity” (Tucker, 12).
The solos are written out:
For a discussion of this aspect of the work, see Wolfram Knauer, “Simulated Improvisation in
Black, Brown and Beige
,”
The Black Perspective in Music,
Jan. 1990.

“To show the close relationship”:
MM,
181.

“The contribution made by the Negro”:
Ibid.
“The lighter attitude”:
Ibid., 182.
“At the end of the Spanish-American War”:
DE and Inez Cavanaugh,
Black, Brown and Beige.

“A soul inflection”:
MM,
167.

“The Harlem of the ’20s”:
Reader,
163. (The program for the Carnegie Hall concert is reproduced here.)

DE incorrectly remembered the running time:
MM,
181.

“We stopped using the word jazz”:
DE, TV interview,
The Parkinson Show,
BBC, 1973, in
RIT,
247.

“What I’m trying to do”:
Ulanov, 275.

“The history of the Negro”:
Donald Freeman, “‘Asphalt Jungle’ Theme by Duke Ellington,”
The State Journal
(Springfield, IL), Feb. 25, 1961.

Most Americans “still take it for granted”:
Nat Hentoff, “This Cat Needs No Pulitzer Prize,”
The New York Times Magazine,
Sept. 12, 1965, in
Reader,
363.

“Really a series of social-significance thrusts”:
MM,
183.
“Spiritually aligned”:
Ottley, 183. Ottley spelled out the word “A-Coming” in full in the title of his book, and the program of the 1943 Carnegie Hall premiere follows that usage. On other occasions, however, DE sometimes spelled it in full and sometimes with a terminal apostrophe. For a discussion of this matter, see Ken Steiner’s note on
Duke Ellington at Carnegie Hall, Dec. 11, 1943
(Storyville),
DEMS Bulletin,
Apr.–July 2002.