To meet two of Ellington's closest confidantes, Stanley and Helen Dance, I traveled two hours from LA to their home in Vista, California just west of San Diego. It was my enormous good fortune to speak with both of them at once; I had expected to see Stanley only, but it was Helen who sparked most of our conversation, for nearly an entire afternoon. She had been, from the mid-1930s, legendary as a writer, concert organizer, and producer. Stanley, of course, was perhaps the person closest to Duke Ellington, aside from. his own family, for the last fifteen years of Duke's life. He was also the person who helped pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines resume his career in the 1960s.
From this point, it is best to let Stanley and Helen Dance tell their own stories.
STANLEY DANCE: (on his problems selling his most recent book) I'd written another biography of a Black musician, and I thought that would be easy to sell.
I've had a difficult time, too. I just had to decide to do it. If it sells, that's fine, but I can't be going into this thing just for the money.
SD: People think you make a lot of money at this. You'll probably get a $5,000 advance, and that's about it. The main thing is to find an audience, but the trouble is the young people in New York don't know anything about jazz, except for the guy at Oxford University Press.
Sheldon Meyer? They sat on my manuscript for almost a year and then sent it back. It was the manuscript I wrote as a master's thesis a year ago, because it didn't have as much as they'd like about Ellington's music. That's a dilemma, because I'm not a musicologist; if I were, I'd probably do something like Gunther Schuller. His second installment [The Swing Era] is due any time now.
SD: He works sixteen to eighteen hours a day, so he has little time to write books.
It's thirteen or fourteen years overdue as it is. But what can you say about Ellington's music without taking it bar by bar?
SD: There is quite a bit to be said, apart from analysis. When you get into analysis of the music, you're going to a different audience. The average person who wants a biography does not want too much analysis where you've got to have musical illustrations. That's a book really for musicians. At the same time, you've got to show knowledge of what is important, what is the best of it. You' ve got to develop a personal, fairly critical attitude.
To my mind, anything he does is of interest, because you know the man is kind of a genius. You could look at something that you don't like and ask, "Why did he do this? Why didn't he do that?" I have a preference for what I call the hard core of his music. The extended works and so forth were created for white people in particular. They don''t mean much to me. His true genius lay with the band pieces, which were superior to anything anybody else did. The suites were marvelous, because when you call something a suite, immediately white people think, "Aha! This is a serious piece of music." But suites are supposed to have a common. theme. Most of these were a series of different dances, but all of a sudden twelve or ten or eight pieces. They could have been 78-r.p.m. records; they were separate compositions, really. There were exceptions, like the New Orleans Suite or The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse.
Did Duke feel the same way?
SD: Duke was a person who understood the nature of the business and the audience. He was a very shrewd man. He did many things because he knew what would get some good press reaction. He knew what his audiences wanted, too. The big thing I think everybody should stress is that he said over and over again that he needed a band to play his music, and the secret of hearing his music was keeping the band alive. That fact determined many of the things he did.
His compromises were not on his best level; he did play rock tunes, he did compromise only occasionally, but it was purely a matter of dollars. That Mary Poppins thing: we all thought it would turn out horribly, but musically, it came out well. There's lots of excellent music on it. n I didn't particularly like that Bal Masque record. That was done for the same reason: survival, to keep the band running.
I was talking to Irving Mills yesterday. He stressed that very much: keeping the band together, keeping the same personnel. He takes a lot of personal credit for that, the rules he laid down for the band. It's difficult for me to say how powerful a force he was, compared to Duke. But I get the impression that Mills pretty much ran the thing while he was in command.
SD: Mills came into the picture about, what, 1928?
Nineteen twenty-seven, the Cotton Club.
SD: At that time, a Black Bandleader had to have a white backer. There's no question that, within that realm, Mills was divine. He was gifted, and he had far more foresight than most of them. He was extremely valuable to Ellington. When you come up to the first long work, "Creole Rhapsody," he had the idea for that title. "Rhapsody" sounds important. That was Mills's idea. I give Mills a lot of credit. People say that Mills cheated Duke; well, I don't know. Duke refers to him in Music Is My Mistress, that in the early days, he was indebted to Mills.
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Irving Mills with Duke
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Mills said he felt slighted by Ellington's reference to him, but I don't understand why.
SD: He called me several times. He was terrified that it would be much worse than it was.
There's nothing derogatory in there at all. What did he expect?
SD: He may have thought he deserved more credit.
What did Lawrence [Brown] say about Billy Strayhorn?
He called him a genius. As a matter of fact, he didn't consider Ellington "in the same Auditiorium" as Billy Strayhorn.
SD: This is where you have to be careful. You've got to make your own judgment. The point is that before Billy came and after he had died Duke still produced things, and after Billy died he seemed to be writing more than before. I always think Billy was a crutch that Duke didn't really need. He was a great talent, and he contributed a lot, but whether Duke leaned on him more than he needed, I don't know.
Another thing: there are a lot of arrangements written by people like Dick Vance. They're not important, but a good portion of the book did come from outside sources. That record Columbia's just put out, The Girls Suite, some is obviously Duke and some are probably Billy's work. I do know, for instance, that Suite Thursday, when that was written I was in Boston making records with Harry Carney. I was there a week or ten days, and Duke was writing this down every day and taking it down to rehearsal in the afternoon and alter it. By the time they got to Monterey, they premiered it, and then the record was made. It was basically what I'd heard in Boston, and Billy Strayhorn wasn't even there.
I'm troubled by my conversation with Lawrence Brown. In The World of Duke Ellington, he mentioned that he was unhappy when he left the band.
SD: Lawrence has a reason for bitterness that has nothing to do with music. He was always a very sad person, a misanthrope really, as likable as he is.
He was married to Fredi Washington. Was he still married to her at the time of her death?
SD: Fredi? She's still living. She went to Duke's funeral. She lived in Stoughton, Connecticut.
I can't discount a man who played with Duke for over thirty years. Essentially, what he said was that Duke was gifted with a fine memory and that everything he wrote was stolen from his sidemen, a riff here and a riff there, combined into something new.
SD: In the early days, you can see that was the case. The names that appear as joint composers: there comes a time when it disappears altogether. After Strayhorn gets in, you very seldom get author's credit given to someone else. Have you talked with Louis Bellson at all?
I just missed him a year ago, but he comes through Chicago regularly.
SD: I often meet musicians, just like yourself. Of course, Cootie is still alive, but he won't talk unless you pay him $500.
I had a talk with him, but I didn't interview him on tape. We had some coffee together.
SD: One of the things that's happened is archives. The Smithsonian people would pay $2,000. Older musicians now want to be paid to do it.
You can't blame them.
SD: No, you can't, especially when they've more or less left the business. When they were active, they would like to be interviewed by DownBeat. It was valuable publicity, but once they've retired, you can understand why they'd want some money.
Speaking of reticence, Duke is not even approached by anyone around him. In the foreword to The World of Duke Ellington he makes the cryptic remark that Helen and Stanley Dance would not reveal more than they ought. Was he thinking about his personal life?
SD: No. It just meant that he trusted us. He knew we wouldn't anyway.
When I moved to this country about thirty years ago, he offered me a job. I didn't want to work for him. I knew a good deal about Ellington. I was interested rather as you are. I loved and was intrigued by him and his music. I was very friendly with Johnny Hodges and Paul Gonsalves, and people like that.
That meant the world to me. I'd do a lot of things for Duke, taking pieces from newspapers and so forth. I kept his scrapbooks; I got on top of that, and it wasn't too bad. I reckon the last fifteen years of his career, I did things for him. I was useful to him. There was never any feedback: he asked me, and I said "yes."
I went on tour with him to South America, and we had a tremendous time. I remember Russia: I didn't want to go to Russia, because I was still aa British citizen. When we were there, the diplomatic service were gathered on us. And I was there on a British passport; I didn't know whether they would put me in jail while Duke had gone off.
There was another controversy at that time, about a film. Somebody wanted to make a documentary about the Russian tour.
SD: Yes, there was something going on. The best pictures were taken by Time-Life.
You said you didn't make the Near East tour.
SD: No, I didn't. I wish I could remember the reason. Ellington describes it in his book. I put some of that together.
Ray Nance was deported during that tour, wasn't he?
SD: There was some trouble. He was a junkie.
Would you mind talking about yourself? Were you born in London?
SD: That's the last place in the world I would want to be born! That and New York.
You're not a big-city person.
SD: I was from a little town in Essex, Braintree. It was in the country.
Were you raised to go into a particular profession?
SD: My father was a businessman; he was like the mayor of this town. He was quite brilliant. His main business was a local import tobacco company.
When I was fourteen, I was sent to the local high school, but I was separated and sent to boarding school. That quickly makes you take a little trouble with your work. It was there that I got interested in jazz, because there were three or four boys whose parents were big shots, directors of what is now the EMI Colombian label for Okeh Records. When they sent their kids to school, they knew all kinds of popular music. The average kid would take one or two records for a thirteen-week term. These kids came back with all the records.
The result was that I grew sick to death of songs like "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob-Bob-Bobbin' Along," that sort of song. Gradually, they had a pile of records they didn't want to play, because they got sick of them.
Were any of them by American bands?
SD: Yes. There were a lot of American records. But then I heard Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers, and Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti. Nobody really cared for these records; they sounded weird to them.
Louis
But some of us were intrigued. We had a boy who had very thick lips: we called him "Thick Lips Tom." So every time he came into our room, we'd play "Thick Lips Blues" just to irritate him.
Gradually, we started to like these records, so by trial and error we began to listen to Lou.is Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. In 1932, some of us saw Louis Armstrong in London.
Was he at the Palladium?
SD: No, I think it was at the Hogan Empire, which was a similar place. Duke did his premiere at the Palladium.
That would have been the world's premiere vaudeville house.
SD: Yes, it was that for a long time, even up until World War Two.
Duke was impressive at the Palladium. I guess they played about forty minutes. Ivie Anderson sang "Stormy Weather." By that time there were two magazines really devoted to jazz. There was one called Rhythm and the other Audio. These were written mainly for semi-pros, that guy who plays on a bandstand two nights a week. There may have been some really devoted to professional musicians, but generally speaking, these were the two. Anyway, these semi-pros supported the magazines, and there was discontent at the Palladium, because the public wanted one thing and these semi-pros quite another. So there was a special concert at the Trocadero for musicians. They had the first half planned for commercial music and the second for musicians.
Anyhow, it was the biggest movie house in Europe. It was a huge place. That was the first true jazz concert in Europe.
In '37 I got acquainted with Helen for the first time. I met her in a studio; I think she was recording for Bluebird. Then we went to the Cotton Club.
At the time, you'd never met Ellington in person. I don't imagine you were invited to any of the fancy parties!
SD: None of them.
I was going to ask you about something by a Cambridge student named Russell Woodward. At the time of Duke's visit, he accompanied him and wrote a series of twelve essays, most of them devoted to the band, its sidemen and style. The manuscript was at the Chicago Historical Society, in the files of the Associated Negro Press. They printed some of it. It made for interesting reading, the impression Ellington made on English audiences.
SD: I remember the name. I think Sinclair Charles sent s copy to me. I didn't think it was publishable; I don't think it is today. Have you read the one R. D. Darrell wrote in Disques?
I've been unable to find it.
SD: It's worth quoting, because people don't realize what the first sixth months of Down Beat meant. There was very little intelligent criticism. I used to read Orchestra World. It was useful: it told you who the bands played and where they were playing. They even had record reviews, but there was no conception of what was good. In England during the period I'm talking about, there was a guy called Edgar Jackson, who was a sort of doyen of jazz musicians.
I always thought it was Spike Hughes.
SD: Spike was later. Spike was very good, but Edgar Jackson for years had been writing stuff about Bubber Miley's solos being "negroid" and crude. Those were actually the adjectives he used. A lot of English viewpoint was dictated by white musicians: Paul Whiteman, Red Nichols, and many more. Really, they liked Red Nichols! It wasn't until Spike Hughes began to write that we got any first-class criticism. Then John Hammond began to write.
When did Leonard Feather begin his career?
SD: Leonard Feather started out about 1933 or ’34; he was very white in his opinions. Panassier began to write in France, and that was good, because his columns were mostly about Black bands.
At any rate, you made a visit here.
SD: I came here in 1937. Duke was playing at the downtown Cotton Club.
Wasn’t that the year of “Caravan”?
SD: I think they recorded “Caravan” in ’36.
Tell me about the show.
SD: All I remember is Duke and a few others onstage, and that when the band began, Ivie Anderson appeared six times. I really don’t remember much about the show; there were a lot of dancers and singers. This is something I’m intending to do something about, because everybody likes the big albums.
You mean like Carnegie Hall?
SD: But this isn’t it. Duke led his band for fifty years. Then people say the band was sloppy. Well, of course it was sloppy when they were playing a dance in Oshkosh or somewhere.
Those were the nights when very often extraordinary things happened, because somebody isn’t on the stage, and somebody else takes his solo, and he might come up with something that Duke hears.
There have been a countless number of private recordings made, and they are extraordinary.
SD: They are the bread and butter of musicians. That’s where they’re most at ease and natural, and more or less enjoying themselves. That’s what people always talk about: the road and so forth.
At what point did you meet Ellington?
SD: In 1937. I’d gotten an introduction by way of my wife. There was a magazine in France called Jazz Hot ; I worked for it and so did she.
While you were writing, how did you make a living?
SD: In my father’s business. You might have thought I had gone away to Africa or something! Then I went to New York along with Helen.
She was working for Irving Mills at the time.
SD: She was doing publicity, but primarily she was making all those small-group records for
Variety. I was going to come back the following year, but I was in the Royal Observatory, which was trying to be air defense. That was the year of Munich and we were kind of frozen, but I did go over to Paris when Duke was there in 1939.
I read it was done in a bomb-proof shelter.
SD: The Palais de Beaux Arts [in Lille? The Paris venue was the Salle Pleyel.] It was a big place, but I don’t suppose it was bomb-proof. It might have been at the beginning of the war, but certainly not by the end. It was a big place. It couldn’t have been bomb-proof.
I was going back to New York, but the venue cancelled. Then he came back in 1948.
They couldn’t play in England because of the musicians’ union.
SD: That was because the American union wouldn’t allow British bands. Americans always make it sound as though the British union was bad, but actually it was the fault of the Americans.
At any rate, I remember that in 1939, Rex Stewart made the record in France. They couldn’t find a drummer that morning. Barney [Bigard] wanted me to play drums, but all they had was a military side-drum with one stick and one brush.
You were familiar enough at that time to travel with the band?
SD: It was a big place, but I don’t suppose it was bomb-proof. It might have been at the beginning of the war, but certainly not by the end. It was a big place. It couldn’t have been bomb-proof. I was going back to New York, but the venue cancelled. Then Ellington came back in 1948.
They couldn’t play in England because of the musicians’ union.
SD: That was because the American union wouldn’t allow British bands. Americans always made it sound as though the British union was bad, but actually it was the fault of the American union.
What I remember is that in 1939 Rex Stewart made that record for Swing in France. They couldn’t find a drummer that morning. Barney [Bigard] wanted me to play drums, but all they had was a military side-drum with one stick and one wire brush.
You were that well-acquainted that they would let you sit in?
SD: Yes. By this time i was getting to know them fairly well. We would all hang out in the daytime.
Didn't they meet Django Reinhardt at about this time?
SD: Django was on that date. The studio was a place with a sliding door, like a garage. They were halfway through this take, and there I was, banging away on this tin drum...
I came over here in 1946; I'd been in the service from 1939 to 1945. . I met Helen and visited her sister in Toronto. I went back and forth to England a couple of times. Helen and I were married inn 1948.
At that time, were you still living in Essex?
SD: [30 seconds inaudible] You could go in Duke’s dressing room and find ties that were all bright colors and garish, trying to find something conservative. Actually, I picked out two. He said, “Don’t you like more exotic ties?” “Not where I live,” I answered.
It was around this time you developed a friendship.
SD: I was able to have him in my house. He went to Helen’s house; she and her brother used to play cards with him. When was it he played at Leeds?
1958.
SD: By this time, we had got to know Gerald Lascelles, who was a jazz fan. [to Helen:] What was the name of Gerald Lascelles’s brother?
HD: The Earl of Harewood.
SD: The other partner was an opera fan. They were going to put on a festival at Leeds,,, but that got a very rough answer from Norman Granz. So Gerald asked us if we could have a meeting with Duke to explain. Duke asked, “Are you coming?” So we came. Helen knows more, because she did publicity.
But starting in 1959, I was nearly always around Duke.
How long did you live together in England before coming here?
SD: Twelve years, I think.
[At this point, the three of us moved to the kitchenette for lunch. Off the record, Helen told me directly that Fredi Washington married Lawrence Brown to get to Duke.]
When Duke travelled to England with only Ray Nance and Kay Davis, did he have a complement of local musicians?
SD: The Melvin Mitchell Trio.
[The conversation changed to a discussion of a tape we both had of a seminar with Gunther Schuller in Chicago.]
SD: That’s like the Duke Ellington Dance Society. They talk and cackle all the way through the music. I thought he [Schuller] made a good point, though, when he said Ellington’s music won’t survive by records alone. I think that’s quite true. People of our generation, of course, want the real thing. We don’t really like recreations.
I can’t imagine a substitute for Ellington.
SD: Well, other saxophonists can play like Johnny Hodges. But it’s not quite the same.
I don’t know how long Ellington’s music will last. It could be in another thirty or forty years, nobody, except historians, will know his name.
SD: Some of the songs will carry on.
HD: Thirty or forty years on, people still talk about the Original Dixie Jass Band, and they’re bit really not worth the interest of posterity. I imagine Duke’s name will last as long, because he was an innovator.
I read an article by Duke where he claimed that posterity is like a roulette wheel.
SD: Everybody talks as though jazz will go on forever. I never have thought that. It will be played more ore less like Dixieland is today. They’ll still know how to do it. It will be like the Viennese waltz period.
I don’t imagine anything will last forever, not Beethoven, not Shakespeare.
[We return to the living room.]
SD: I hope you’ll keep that Fredi Washington stuff confidential.
I’m not really interested in that stuff. I thought Don George’s book [Sweet Man] was atrocious. No one I’ve talked to who has any knowledge of Ellington at all had anything kind to say about this book.
SD: It would have been very interesting if he’d said something about writing lyrics for Duke. He hardly mentioned that.
Just a little bit about “I’m Beginning to See the Light.”
SD: I always thought he was quite a good lyricist, really. A lot of people put him down. They were quite pretty.
DISC 2:
Please take me from Toronto to Chicago.
HD: I first heard Duke in Detroit. Then, when I was in Chicago, there weren't many people doing research on him. He seemed to be interested in what I was writing.
Were you working for Mills at that time?
HD: No. I owed my recommendation to Mills from Duke. That was one thing about Duke: he always had an eye out for talent. I don't necessarily mean in my case, but he could read things in people and was always charitable, very generous. He always brought out the best in everyone, and not just in the band. He was a very inspiring person; I remember his saying to Irving Mills, "You've got to hire this girl." Of course, Irving was used to following Duke's tips, because they were always pretty good. I was writing for DownBeat, but I was also freelancing for the Chicago
Herald-Examiner.
You weren't faced with the problem of making a living then?
HD: I was, in the sense I'd left home, and I was completely wrapped up in the kind of jazz that I liked. That's why I left home.
What was the turning point that pushed you in that direction?
HD: From the very beginning, when I was very small, living in a family that didn't know anything about music. There were these downtown record stores where you could cjhoose what to hear. When I was eight years old, I would hear things I liked that everybody else thought was terrible. I was allowed to make only one choice. What I asked for was Louis (to SD), not Johnny Dodds, but Jimmy Noone?
SD: Living in Toronto, Helen also heard radio broadcasts from Chicago a lot, including Earl Hines.
HD: You could catch Hines at the Grand Terrace or Claude Hopkins from New York. By the time I was fourteen or fifteen, the only way I could find out anything was to go to parties; my sister and I were debutantes, so we would hear society bands, which were awful. But every once in a while, there would be an instrumentalist from Canada who would play outstanding solos, so I could talk to musicians of this kind, learn about the instruments, so that when I heard Benny Goodman, I knew that was a clarinet. In a little while, I established the facts for myself. I was seventeen, and I was determined that was going to be my life. There wasn't anything in Canada, so I made my way to Detroit and then to Chicago. I just thought thee world of Coleman Hawkins and McKinney's Cotton Pickers, so I went to the Graystone Ballroom. I was bitterly disappointed, because this was the biggest moment of my life at that point, but there was no Hawk. He'd just gone to England, and I was heartbroken.
Lester Young had replaced him.
HD: Yes, but Lester was very unhappy, and didn't belong there. I was glad to hear the other musicians, but no Hawk. I don't think Benny Carter was in the band then. Anyway, I made my way to Chicago, where the musicians were always playing. But nobody knew who they were or where to find them, so it was hard to make a living. I met Jess Stacy, Bud Freeman, George Wettling, Davey Tough; they were all good musicians, what I was looking for; they were all playing, but they were scuffling. Glenn [Burris] had just started passing out a music street on the street, on Randolph Street, just around the corner from the musicians' union. It was just two sheets of paper, four sides, passed out to the musicians on the street. I said, "Glenn, why don't you get to work and put stuff in about these musicians?"
What was he concentrating on?
HD: He was just saying that Ted Weems was playing at the Blackhawk, things like that. It was just a little trade sheet for musicians.
SD: No criticism whatsoever.
Wasn't it lurid in its early years?
HD: Not yet. Carl Conns brought that about. Glenn was very nice and said to me, "Do you want to write in it?" This was my ideal. I loved music, so whatever I could do to enhance it and make it more available would be good for the musicians. So this is what I did, and it got to people like Squirrell Ashcroft.
Tell me about Squirrell Ashcroft. He was from one of the Ivy League schools, wasn't he?
HD: Yes, Princeton. He was a very nice guy, and so were the others in the Chicago Rhythm Club from Princeton. They were all very nice people. They came from wealthy families, and their names were well-known. And I knew people in Toronto, so we had something in common. They were genuine fans, but not in the same way I was. They weren't exactly Dixieland fans.
SD: It was that white Chicago jazz.
HD: He did tend toward Jimmy McPartland and that sort of thing. They were out for the music.
SD: The Austin High Gang. Frank Teschemacher, Joe Sullivan, they were all involved with it. That was really their main thing, don't you think? Judging from what they continued to hear, year after year.
HD: Maybe by contrast, it was a little more Dixieland than it seemed at the time. They liked Benny [Goodman], too.
SD: Bix people.
HD: That's right. Anyway, I could see that Squirrell and company would be very useful in establishing a trend of popularity. Benny had just had the "Let's Dance" program from New York City, broadcast coast to coast. It was the first time anything was available: real music out of a band, not a small group. You could hear Bunny Berrigan, Hymie Schertzer; all of the musicians in that band were good, to the extent that they tried to make it, cross-country.
The music business then was very precarious; no one had done that. You had to play waltzes and hot tunes of the day and not make too much row. Benny was trying to see if he could be "Benny Goodman." Even the office, MCA, was trying to see if he could be Benny Goodman. They didn't realize they were gambling on something; they just thought he was like everybody else.
But the business was very precarious. They fell flat over and over, they were booed when they came out. We thought, if they don't have a hit and make it, that was the end of it all. Then people like Jess Stacy would say, "This has never been done before. It's hopeless." We decided we had to make a big hit in Chicago.
SD: This is before they had the big hit at Palomar [in Los Angeles].
HD: We didn't know it, but they'd had a big hit at the Palomar.
So everything seemed to change suddenly?
HD: It depends. Those broadcasts had been caught on the West Coast. They didn't know it, but they had a following.
When they came to Chicago, I built it up in the Herald-Examiner on the society page, as well as the music page. I said to the Rhythm Club, "Now you've got a role to play. Make a big success of whatever we do, and everybody will follow suit, and we'll be a big success in Chicago."
But then I had to contend with Benny Goodman, and he was a character, very hard-headed. Of course, it was all new to him. We went into the Congress Hotel, the Joseph Urban Room. I think there had been food poisoning there. Anyhow, it had a bad reputation. Kaufman, the owner, was naturally very pleased to have anyone help the hotel.
No one had ever given a concert. I said to Benny, "Let's give a concert." Well, nobody had ever given a concert. That was a new concept here. They'd given them over in England.
What was the Urban Room? A supper club?
HD: Yes, it was a ballroom for dinner and dance. Benny thought the idea was ridiculous. I said to him, "Make it a benefit." There was no money, because I didn't want Benny to charge money, anyway. I asked, "If the union allows it, will you do it?" I'd already fixed things up with the union, the same way I did with Kaufman.
The Rhythm Club had never done anything where they sold lots of tickets.
Was John Hammond involved in this?
HD: No, but Hammond was very much involved with Benny Goodman.
With that as an opener, and it was coming up on Easter Sunday. I said to Benny, "Let's get Teddy [Wilson]." Teddy, Benny, and Gene Krupa had just started the trio. The records were wonderful, but you couldn't get away from Black and white together onstage. I said, "If Kaufman agrees, would you put it on as an intermission act?" I thought if we make it extra special, it would do something for the concert.
I sent Teddy the fare, and he came out. That's exactly what we did, and it was sensational. Benny saw that, musically, there was never anything better. Then I organized a party at my apartment for Duke and Benny, who had never met. We brought Benny down to hear Duke.
What year was that?
HD: That was in 1936, wasn't it, Stan? It was an Easter concert.
SD: It must have been '35.
HD: Then we organized a concert for Fletcher Hendersson. We'd do a concert every month, including Duke. When Kaufman booked Duke Ellington into the room, it was a huge success, wonderful.
Was that in May of '36?
HD: I imagine. Have you got the dates on that?
Had you become acquainted with Ellington before this?
HD: Yes. I met Duke while he was playing a theater in Detroit; I can't remember the name of the theater. He was terribly nice. That began our friendship. This is incidental, but when he played Toronto, I had an older brother up there who also liked the music very much. Between Duke and his then-wife Mildred Dixon, they'd come out to play bridge, and it became a friendship. Wasn't that around the time the Rhythm Club gave him an award?
Who made the presentation? Barry Ulanov wrote that there was a lot of trouble finding someone to make the presentation; a lot of jazzmen around town refused to do it, presumably because of race.
HD: Well, Barry must have got it all from me, because he wasn't there. I introduced him to Duke in New York. Duke didn't like his book at all, because he didn't authorize it.
Was it something in particular about the book? Or was it the idea of anybody writing his biography?
HD: Without permission. He didn't have anything from Duke himself, because Duke didn't know he was doing it. In fact, I was a little bit in dutch, because I brought Barry into the picture. I didn't realize it, either. My memory is poor, but whatever Barry had, he got from me.
A review I read was titled "Africa in Tails." That says a lot about the attitude of those times.
HD: One thing I want to say to you, just to go back in time and the circumstances. In the context of the concert, it got coverage in Time Magazine; I think it was the cover, but it might not have been. It was Frank Norris. He was in Chicago at the time.
What was it like? Tables and chairs? Dancing?
HD: No dancing. Everybody stood, and they introduced the program and the numbers. Everybody, of course, was just terribly taken with the audience. Stanley and I thought, "What have we introduced to jazz? Concerts instead of dancing? Because dancers are far better, because it has that beat; let's keep that beat going.
But anyway, that was rather marvelous. Time Magazine said, "listening to jazz without dancing to it." That's when Duke said to Irving, "You've got to give this girl a job."
SD: This job came about because there was a position to make records. Mills told you he had a publication called "Melody News," didn't he?
I've read about it. John Hammond refers to it in his book. He once wrote for it.
HD: Hammond wanted to run anybody he was interested in, but nobody ran Duke; even Irving didn't.
Was this the cause of bad feelings between Hammond and Duke? Hammond never had anything positive to say about Duke.
HD: Oh yes, of course. Hammond eventually said that Irving Mills was a crook who took advantage of poor, innocent Duke. Well, yes, he did take advantage to the extent he was making money, but Duke was a realist. He knew he had to have an Irving Mills. He said, "I have someone who is dedicated to me and helps to mold me into what I want to be. I wouldn't have gone anywhere without him."
I think Duke was absolutely right. He was never really bitter about Irving Mills; you know, he might laugh about how Irving put his name on everything. Anyway, Irving was a genius in his own way.
Was the relationship between the two relatively placid?
HD: Yes. Irving saw Duke as the greatest, sold him as the greatest and knew there was genius in his ideas. And Duke thought that was fine; Irving came up with lots of good ideas. He bought a company out, just to establish a record company to get the Ellington music going.
I don't want to scapegoat John Hammond. John was enormously successful at taking over people, and people did do what he suggested and became successful themselves.
You mean Fletcher Henderson, Billie Holiday...
HD: Yes, all of them. He even took over their personal lives. But Ellington was a much bigger human being and a bigger personality and a greater talent than any he'd been dealing with. Nobody pushed Duke around. Nobody manipulated Duke. Duke would never say so, but Irving knew it.
You mean there was a line he would not cross.
HD: So, John said, "I'll fix this, I'll write it publicly; I'll say, 'Duke Ellington is being made a fool of by Irving Mills. These are the facts," and so on. Duke totally ignored the thing. "Is it true?" he'd ask. "Maybe Mr. Hammond's got some inside information, because I've never known such circumstances. I'm happy in our situation and doing very well." So John came up against a stone wall with that.
What exactly was his problem? Jealousy?
HD: That was John's personality. He was a Svengali, or whatever you want to call it.
Sour grapes.
HD: In a sense, yes.
SD: Hammond did nothing for Earl Hines or Louis {Armstrong], for that matter. He couldn't manipulate them.
HD: Well, that's past history. That really moves us to New York.
Well, we were in Chicago, at the Urban Room.
HD: The next thing was that Benny sent for me to come to New York. He was very pleased by what had happened at the Urban Room.
Benny's band was wonderful. They had Bunny [Berigan]; it was a white band that was very good. I was thrilled to work with him, because his music was so marvelous. He said, "Come with me." I knew we'd have an enormous success at the Pennsylvania [Hotel?], so I was tempted. But Benny's a very difficult person to work with. I was fond of the whole Goodman family; I stayed with them in New York, but I wouldn't work for Benny.
I thought Benny Goodman was from Chicago.
HD: Yes, they were from Chicago, but they moved to New York. They lived on Long Island, around the corner from Bunny. Benny said, "Come and stay," and I did, but I went to work for Mills. Personally, Ellington was the most meaningful thing there was. I thought very well of Irving, too. He was an instant-idea man. It was like working for a little genius. He needed only about three hours of sleep, and many of us who worked for him put in twenty-one- hour days. There was always something going on. He was also very generous with gifts and champagne.
SD: Ned Williams told the story of how he'd buy up stocks of goods to give out at Christmas time. Boxes and suitcases of them!
There was something else I wanted to ask. I got the impression from Hammond's book that Mills's office was decorated strangely, with murals.
HD: Yes, that's right. I think there were. There we all were working, using things we'd picked up here and picked up there.
Ned was a character himself, a very nice man and a very good newspaper man. He took me under his wing.
So, you got into the business of selling Duke Ellington?
HD: No, not really. I was in a position where I didn't have to. I was entitled to act as a critic and write things that were much harder than that. But he put out that magazine [Melody News], and it was a very good magazine. There was no "house organ-y" thing about it.
I was also writing for DownBeat, so I came in as a critic, an independent critic of the Mills organization.
If you didn't like something, you could say so.
HD: Yes, but mind you, there were limits. I was picked by a board. Nowadays you don't have that management stuff, but Irving did. He'd have conferences with lawyers and brain trusts. On Mondays, everyone would sit at the round table. Basically, the idea was to make money, but my role was to pipe up and say disruptive things, something I could get away with, because I was hired for that. This proved that there was liberty in the Mills office!
Every now and then, Irving would get ideas from me and other people, because who knows? "Give me some ideas; I'll tell you if I can do them or not." He gave me the recording thing, which was my idea of heaven. I'd been doing some recording in Chicago for Brunswick.
SD: Brunswick and Okeh. I think they were joined by that time.
HD: Anyway, I'd had some experience with recording.
You mean, as an A and R kind of person.
HD: Right. And I definitely wanted go get in on that. I didn't want to be a big shot on the big label [Master]; that was going to have to make money. So I went to the Variety label.
I read that there was a party to launch those labels.
HD: Yes. That was a big break for me, because I was informed that I was to be the hostess. It was my party.
Was it given at your place?
HD: No. Stanley was there; it was at the record studio. It had everybody: Basie had just come to town. They were all just out-of -town boys, just hitting the big time. Anybody who was anybody was there. We had Chick Webb, Benny; I think Stanley has some of the photographs.
SD: There was a spread in Life [Magazine], I think.
Yes, "Life Goes to a Party." That was it.
HD: That was it. I had Chick on drums,
 |
| "Life Goes to a Party": Chick Webb, Artie Shaw, and DE. Helen Oakley stands at DE's left. |
HD: You're up against it, in a way. Now they ask, 'What can you do?' Making records is not that easy, not for any of the groups. Where you know you've got something is a group that has been working together. Now you know, like the small-band Basie records. You have no worries there, but when you start working from scratch, with these and those ones, it's great for a jam session. But when you put it on a record, you can't be sure that something's going to live. But if you get it, that's great, because you can see what you have to do to further that.
Irving Mills knew a multitude of songwriters and publishers in New York, and he would sometimes insert a singer or hire a songwriter who would come up with doggy tunes for recording sessions, and she would be stuck with that.
HD: "You would be stuck with doggy tunes, especially in jazz, where a singer has to sing lyrics to a doggy tune. I had certain singers, like the Palmer Brothers, who sounded like the Mills Brothers, or Hot Lips Page to throw the song at, and they'd say, 'Okay.' And then they'd sing it their way and it comes out jazz. Of course, it had nothing to do with what the publisher thought he was going to hear.
"The men I liked most in the band were Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams, Harry Carney, and Tricky Sam, as musicians and also as people. This is what you want to hear. Any time you hear any one of those musicians, with the rest back there, it gels. That's it. "
HD: "It was a transition period, really. When you take a talent that's aware of everything that is inside him, that has to expand and move forward. Things that he knows about, but you and I don't know about. We don't know what's driving him, but he does. But when he does something [new] the public and fans are all going to hold him down. We're all going to say to him, 'Oh no, that's not what you were meant for. We're close to you r own talent. Listen to us. We'll tell you where to go and what to do."
*I mention Irving Mills's DownBeat article in 1952: "I Split With Duke When Music Started Side-tracking"
"There he was, picking up on what the critics had said. On the whole, Irving was one who didn't. Irving wasn't in the picture in those days, but if Duke had said to Irving, 'I want to do a Sacred Concert,' Irving would have said, 'Do a Sacred Concert.' Everybody else would say 'Don't.' Irving would have said 'Do it. Let's see what happens.
"Actually, several months went by, and I was champing at the bit. The whole idea was to do Johnny and Cootie, and Johnny and Cootie together. But he would put it off, and do what was possible before coming to the big stars. And by the time he came to things like "Jeep's Blues," everybody in Harlem knew it. It was booming out of the juke boxes. Everywhere you moved there was a big haze of Johnny Hodges. It was really wonderful. And, of course, Cootie. It was the making of those things that was absolutely marvelous.
SD: "That's an interesting point. There were none under Lawrence's name.
Yes, there was one: Lawrence Brown on "Yearning for Love." It was written for Lawrence but not issued under his name.
SD: At that time, there were only four: Rex, Barney Cootie, and Johnny.
But not Harry.
Harry wasn't really a soloist.
HD: That's what I mean. Duke could really see the nuances, and that's why people idolized him. Carney was a marvelous musician, even though he couldn't play like he couldn't play like Cootie or Johnny. But he didn't even know it, because of the way Duke handled it. Everybody got so much to play, and Carney got so much to play. It was just an education, with Duke at the piano. The guys didn't have the faintest idea of what they were. It was beautiful, I can remember. It was just an education. Duke was at the keyboard, but nobody else had the faintest idea of what they were going to do.
And then the big band things. Duke would just come in; it was cold. All this marvelous mu8sic would come out of him. They were knit together like a fountain at the keyboard and all these little fountains around him. He just took all those beautiful threads. At first the guys might be worried, but in time they were not, because Duke was always able to create parts for them.
You saw him as a galvanizing force?
HD: You couldn't have known. He was absolutely unique. You may get a Lawrence Brown not to cooperate, but that was a personal thing. But Duke was just so sky-high above. It was extraordinary; he just had them in his pocket. It didn't how difficult the guys were. Duke's musicianship would just put everyone in awe of him.
SD: He started with musicians who didn't seem to fit the band. He had Tizol. And then later you take somebody like al Sears. He replaced Ben Webster, but Duke brought out his talent.
H.D. He really reached his maturity then. In a sense, Duke was part of each one of them. He wrote parts for them that brought out things they didn't know they had. Ben used to fight his instrument. He hadn't found himself technically. He was a very temperamental guy, A brilliant emotional guy.
And Duke never said anything to anybody. They found themselves with him. They fought now and then, but whatever they were trying to do, Duke knows it even if they don't know themselves. From the piano he pushes them right into that thing they were trying to arrive at.
The period you're describing sounds like a happy time for them. But later on, was there more conflict in the band?
SD: Not as much as you might think. When I moved here there were factions within the band. Johnny and Barney were not talking, but that didn't mean anything.
HD: Everybody in the band knew that it was like belonging to a very unique club. They were honored to be in it.
SD: I couldn't talk about a period other than the last fifteen years. The band inevitably declined. There were so many departures. But generally speaking, it was a happy band.
HD: I'd like to get back to that experience of the small groups, just to show you how it did happen. It happened on a bigger scale with the big band: there was nothing ever written for that either. Duke would come in, and they didn't know what kind of number. Duke might have heard Johnny do something the night before. It might have been only two bars, but it was probably four. He would start up the tempo at the keyboard, and everybody's listening. Then Cootie would noodle or do something. Everybody was waiting to see where Duke was going. He'd say, "Hey Rab, remember?" And then Johnny would start blowing. Now everybody knew what was going to happen. He'd picked out a little pearl, something that Johnny does, and he's going to give it a setting. They're all going to make it.
That's extraordinary.
HD: If anybody wondered where they were going, he'd stay on the piano. It's being put together, the first chorus. After that they decide whether Johnny or Cootie should take the second chorus, or whether they should split it. And that was that.
And the next one would be totally different. He'd start way down in the bass, and then he'd say, "Put it in the gutter." And then the third one, maybe it's going to be soulful. He'd say, "Carney, I want a bottom." And before you know it, you've got four wonderful records.
SD: Later on, he would give a title to a song. When we were doing a radio program and needed a theme, he called to Johnny and said, "Bring that thing up here." We said, "What will we call it?" He said, "Layin' On Mellow." People were always fussing about those titles. It was just a blues, and it didn't have an ending because it didn't need one. Duke was always very casual about that.
HD: Duke had a great joie de vivre with everybody. When he'd hear someone come in with a bass, he'd work that loeft hand on the piano. I'd be up in the control room, and he'd look at me and say, "She left her mad money behind, and here she is, stomping home [stomps her feet]. What was that?
SD: Something "Gal Blues."
HD: That's how it always was.
Who would finally title it? Mills himself?
SD: In those days, that kind of copyright was done efficiently, but afterwards, when he made records for himself-- not Columbia or anybody else-- he'd just put them in what he called his "stockpile" and the title would get garbled up. That's why some of them were titled twice. For Piano in the Foreground he went off to Europe. They called and said they didn't have any titles. Ruth called in me and Mercer, and we put titles on them. When Duke came back, he started yelling, "What the hell are these stupid titles?"
HD: But if you read perceptively the book Stanley did with Mercer, you want to see Duke in his true dimensions and not interpret things that would be perceived by ordinary people, you'd see he was filled with admiration.
Duke stirred people up all the time, just for the fun of it and to see what would come of it. Not to create mischief, not just ordinary things like ordinary people do. In a variety of situations see what will come of it, and then he said, "I got what I need."
SD: Mercer said that he liked to manipulate people, and that was true. He made a game of it, very likely creative from his point of view and yours. You could do something you didn't know you could do.
HD: People say, "Oh, he liked to manipulate people, dear, dear, dear." You never knew what was going on with Ellington. It's an enchanting, engrossing world, so you mustn't look at it like it was ordinary things. This was no ordinary person.
I don't know if either of you is in a position to know, but my impression of his later years is that he felt like his life was a fairy tale, that God had given him a mission, and he was the king of the court. Do you think I'm off the mark on that?
SD: You have to see the hedonistic side of Duke's life and also a melancholy side. He had days of just sitting around. He wasn't gay and cheerful all the time.
HD: I think what he says is quite true. Certainly, he did think he was gifted by God, that he had a destiny. And he fulfilled his destiny. He felt that God hadn't put any limits on him and he had a mission to do everything he could, go as far as he could. As such, there was a court around him. He not only thought it, he lived it.
Did he feel alienated from the world around him? I'm thinking of the student protests that I came up with. Of course, he wouldn't have anything to do with Black nationalism or anything like that. He was not in the world at that time. He was a kind of anachronism.
HD: No. What you have to realize is that he had very strong racial feelings. I know more about that than Stanley does, because I came up with him long before the student protests. We knew all about it. Duke, like everybody else, was subjected to all kinds of humiliation.
SD: Not when he got that degree from Yale. The speech was all very funny. So, “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Mood Indigo….”
You mean somebody introducing him.,
SD: They were patronizing.
The White House was patronizing, too.
SD: But everybody was thinking what a great honor this was for a Black jazz band.
HD: If you look carefully into Mercer’s book, you’ll see. When you say that Duke was an anachronism, not part of this world, it’s not true. He knew everything that was going on in the world; it was a part of Duke Ellington. Malcolm X, everybody was close to Duke: they understood Duke knew the role that he could play. From Jump for Joy, which preceded all of that, the Deep South Suite, everything he ever did, I believe.
I understand that, but I mean what an irony it was that he be identified with Richard Nixon, and in the public mind he always will be.
HD: When he had his 70th birthday, the President just happened to be Richard Nixon. Prior to that, he’d been to the White House many times.
SD: It had nothing to do with who the President was. It was the fact that it was the President of the United States, no matter if it was Nixon or Ford or anyone.
*
HD: Well, people would look at it, as you say, as if he were associated with Nixon. It just so happened that on his 70th birthday, they had to find a way to honor him.
I mean, from Nixon's point of view, it was just such a transparent attempt to woo Black support, and he fell right in with that never touched the ground.
HD: He put Nixon in his place, too, at the dinner.
SD: Duke didn't resist it, not because of Nixon, but because nobody was aware of the extent of Nixon's iniquity at that time. Ultimately, Duke felt it was the President of the United States, not because he wanted to appear in support of the Republican Party.
HD: Duke's reply to Nixon's speech was very good, very eloquent, from the hear t. Nixon had read a speech that I suppose someone had written for him, and Duke said this was the true American Dream. Ellington's father had buttled at the White House. Duke got up and said, "How I today I in this building might not be as great as you think, because of the gifts God gave me and the place He put me in life. However, nothing much could happen to me in comparison with having the mother and the father that I had. My feet never touched the ground, I was brought up with such love and devotion."
SD: He said, "There is no place I would rather be, except in my mother's arms."
HD: That was typical Nixon.
SD: No, that's not fair, because you know what happened afterwards.
HD: I always hated him.
SD: Yes, but Nixon that night made a good emcee.
I saw him from a different point of view myself, because he was a racist and a war-maker, well before Watergate. For young people like myself, it didn't do Ellington any good to see Nixon embrace him.
HD: Who but Ellington would give the President of the United States four kisses and say "One for each cheek!"
Parting advice; Ruth Ellington Boatwright= a socialite, others claim to be closer to DE than they really were. Jump for Joy: I see it as a turning point in DE's life, but SD doesn't find it so important; HD calls SD "Stanny" on her way out.
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