The years following the Second World War marked a sharp change in jazz
and popular music generally; the so-called big band era, largely for economic
reasons, came skidding to a close: by
1950 even Count Basie’s band was reduced to an octet, while most others
dissolved entirely in favor of the small groupings of modern jazz. Largely because of his accumulated
songwriting royalties, Duke Ellington was the exception, but even he faced some
hard times in the decade to come.
Even so, the postwar years witnessed in the Ellington Orchestra a series of significant, and often dislocating, changes in band personnel. Barney Bigard, the inimitable clarinetist, departed in 1942, eventually to be replaced by Jimmy Hamilton, a musician almost his opposite stylistically. The following year, the orchestra lost valve-trombonist Juan Tizol, heretofore the rock of the trombone section. Rex Stewart left in 1945, and Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton died in 1946; both of these men were, in a certain sense, irreplaceable. Ben Webster’s tenure with the band was brief, and Fred Guy’s retirement in 1949 signaled an end for the guitar in Ellington’s band.
Certainly, the players who replaced these men were more than able musicians. Over the next few years they were to include trumpeters Harold “Shorty” Baker, Taft Jordan, William “Cat” Anderson, Al Killian and others; trombonists Claude Jones, Wilbur De Paris and Tyree Glenn; saxophonists Al Sears and Russell Procope; and a plethora of vocalists (Ivie Anderson had left in 1942) including Betty Roche, Joya Sherrill, Marie Ellington (no relation to Duke), Kay Davis and Al Hibbler. The loss of his famous soloists, however, meant that Ellington had to face less devoted and less receptive audiences, and again he found his most formidable competitor to be his own past.
Although the new recruits were often exceptional talents, as Mercer Ellington admitted, “these were near sounds, but not the real heavy, individual sounds people had come to expect.”[1] During the war years, since there could be no foreign tours, the orchestra was restricted to repeated circuits around the United States. As the decade progressed and attendance in ballrooms began to diminish, Ellington was often forced to accept less desirable engagements. Then too, after the war jazz performances in a concert setting became rather commonplace, Norman Granz’s Jazz At The Philharmonic series being the most notable example. As Ellington was to recall later:
By
1950 everybody was giving concerts, and even a concert at Carnegie Hall no
longer had the prestige value it had in 1943, but our series there had helped
establish a music that was new in both its extended forms and its social
significance.[2]
On a more personal note, Ellington elsewhere declared,
The changes World War II brought about stay
remarkably fresh in the mind... It was the poorest time to be leading a big
band, and I have always been grateful that ours was lucky enough to survive.
The radical changes in taste didn't affect one
of the mysteries that has attended the band's progress. We were puzzled
for a long time because whatever we did this year was compared unfavorably to
what we did last year-- or 10 years before. After a while, we got used to
it and decided that so long as we were still on our feet, we had a
future. I continue to feel, though, that criticism should be more
concerned with what the artist does than what he ought to do.[3]
Perhaps the perfect example of such criticism was an article by the French
writer Andre Hodeir, who had earlier written an expansive essay on Ellington’s
1940 recording of "Concerto for Cootie,"
where he characterized Duke Ellington as a composer, not just a
writer of tunes or arranger, "a capacity which might be defined as
that of endowing jazz with an additional dimension… Jazz history may be summed up as
follows: Armstrong created jazz, Ellington created form in jazz.
Parker and Davis re-created jazz, while Monk is trying to re-create form in
jazz."[4]
When Ellington released Historically Speaking on the Bethlehem
label in 1955, however, Hodeir was shocked, calling the album “an
insult to his great name”:
[The]
Duke was once a great musician, but now fatigue seems to have gotten the best
of him... The fact that for the past ten years he has written nothing
worth-while-- has so declined, in fact, that there have been doubts that he
actually wrote certain pieces of trash signed Ellington.
He takes pains to compare the 1940 version of "Ko-Ko"
("Ellington's music had reached fulfillment at last") to the
Bethlehem recording, "[one] of the most painful ordeals imaginable to
anyone for whom jazz and music are living experiences...
What was once magnificent becomes grotesque, the epic spirit gives way to
stupid gesticulation, and the sense of mystery to mere vulgarity."[5]
Nevertheless, the new decade brought promise to
the Ellington organization. Within the
bounds of their 1947-1952 contract with Columbia Records came the emergence of
the vinyl 33 !/3 r.p.m. long-playing record along with the 1950 release
Masterpieces by Ellington on the prestigious Masterworks label. The album,
one of the first twelve-inch LPs ever issued, consisted of expansive new
arrangements of the classics, “Mood Indigo,” “Solitude,” and “Sophisticated
Lady,” along with the more recent Carnegie Hall piece, “The Tattooed Bride.”
Because Sonny Greer had become unreliable, Ellington hired a
second drummer, Butch Ballard, for the orchestra’s European tour. Upon their
return, Ellington fired Sonny Greer, his bandmate since their youthful days
together in Washington. In March, 1951, however, Ellington was blindsided with
the en masse defections of tenor saxophonist Al Sears and star soloists
Lawrence Brown and Johnny Hodges. Many
reasons have been advanced for this debilitating exodus, including musical
disagreements, personal squabbles, and simple fatigue from the rigors of a
musician’s life. Producer Norman Granz also confessed playing a role by tempting musicians out of the Ellington fold.[1]
The following year brought one of Duke’s most
popular recordings, Ellington Uptown, whose opening salvo was “Skin
Deep,” a driving, up-tempo number climaxed by a thunderous drum solo by its
composer, Louie Bellson, whose presence signaled a new direction for the
Ellington orchestra. Likewise, the old
Juan Tizol warhorse “Perdido” served to showcase the talents of the new
trumpeter, Clark Terry, who was able to match Bellson for speed and execution.
Louie Bellson
The album is also memorable for a new rendition
of “Take the ‘A’ Train” with a sly vocal by Betty Roche, newly returned to the
band and a tenor sax solo by Paul Gonsalves.
“The Mooche” was likewise revisited with a new arrangement, but the
album’s true masterpiece was the first recording of Ellington’s A Tone
Parallel to Harlem (a.k.a. The Harlem Suite), which was to
remain in the orchestra’s book for more than twenty years.
 |
| Betty Roche |
 |
| Paul Gonsalves |
 |
| Willie Smith |
 |
| Britt Woodman |
Whatever the impact of all this upon Ellington himself, the really crucial events of this period happened not within the orchestra, but as a result of social and political pressures from the outside. Perhaps more than anything else, the political turmoil of America in the early 1950s nearly destroyed Ellington’s career. The rightist offensive which culminated in the McCarthyite hysteria of the 1950s began its momentum in 1947, and its first target was the show-business industry. The onset of the Cold War was accompanied by the efforts of the U.S. Government to purge the media, particularly motion pictures and television, of any dissent in the face of America’s crusade against communism. The official investigative bodies were abetted in this endeavor by private individuals who, profiting handsomely from the moral cowardice of the entertainment industry, established an effective blacklist against persons accused of harboring radical sympathies. The result of this intensive campaign was to stymie whatever intelligence and creativity existed in entertainment for a decade to come.
The purge
produced an extensive list of victims, among whom were many who had been
associated with Ellington. Screenwriter
Henry Blankfort, who had produced Jump for Joy a decade earlier, identified
by his own brother as a Communist, was blacklisted through the House Committee
on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1951.
Many of Ellington’s associates from his 1947 Broadway venture, Beggar’s
Holiday, were effectively blacklisted from the new medium of
television. As HUAC began to spread its
net in the 1950s, it began freely to impugn the names of many persons connected
with Russian War Relief, the sponsor of Ellington’s 1943 Carnegie Hall debut.
Nineteen
fifty-five became a vintage year for the red-baiters and blacklisters upon
HUAC’s publication of the first edition of its Cumulative Index to
Publications of the Committee on Un-American Activities. The volume consisted of a long list of names,
arranged alphabetically, of those persons mentioned, by way of hearsay or
otherwise, in numerous HUAC hearings from 1938 until 1954. The new names it “exposed” proved a goldmine
for the show-business red-baiters; as one historian of the period put it: “Thus
Aware Inc. [one of several leading red-hunting companies of the day] and
Vincent Hartnett could charge for a report on the radical backgrounds of Gladys
Cooper and Duke Ellington, Charles Laughton and Jane Pickens, Xavier Cugat and
Bela Bartok, Pavel Tchelitchew and Zero Mostel.”[2]
Ellington’s
name in the updated version of the Cumulative Index, published in 1968, alleged
three “offenses” he had committed. The
first reproduced a lengthy list of show-business sponsors, including Ellington,
of a musical benefit for the Artists’ Front to Win the War at Carnegie Hall in
1942.[3] In the second, his name was dropped by radio
and television writer Allen E. Sloane in HUAC testimony concerning an unnamed
song lyricist who had “collaborated with Duke Ellington on very, very popular
songs,” and who “if not a Communist, followed closer to it than anybody could
by outright joining the party.”[4]
The final
reference was the inclusion of Ellington’s name, among hundreds of others, on a
list of supporters of a 1950 document known as the Stockholm Peace Appeal.[5] The appeal was simply a statement condemning
the use of nuclear weapons:
We demand the outlawing of atomic weapons
as instruments of intimidation and mass murder of peoples. We demand strict international control to
enforce this measure.
We
believe that any government which first uses atomic weapons against any other
country whatsoever will be committing a crime against humanity and should be
dealt with as a war criminal.[6]
Drafted in Stockholm in March, 1949, the
document became the basis of a campaign launched by the World Peace Congress in
April of that year. The American
Communist Party began a drive to collect five million signatures in support of
the Stockholm Peace Pledge, including an intensive effort to garner the
endorsement of prominent Blacks. With
the onset of the Korean War in June, 1950, the petition ran into frenzied
opposition from the mass media. The
Black press joined the general orgy of redbaiting; an editorial from the
Pittsburgh Courier was typical:
It
is unfortunate, in the present frame of mind of most loyal Americans, that a
number of Negroes could be induced to endorse this anti-American petition, and
it is even more deplorable that a man of the stature of W.E.B. DuBois should
agree to serve as head of the Peace Information Center and superintend the
gathering of these signatures.
It
is true that the overwhelming majority of the world’s people want peace, but
they also want freedom; and most of those people able to think know that the
peace desired by the USSR is that of the slave pen under the Red Flag…
Fortunately
the loyalty of colored citizens is so well-known and well-established that a
handful of Negro signers to a Moscow-inspired petition will not threaten race
relations even in a time of intense
anti-Soviet feeling; but the appearance of widely-known Negro names among the
signers is disquieting.[7]
The May 31, 1950, issue of the Daily Worker reported
Duke Ellington’s endorsement of the Stockholm Peace Appeal and quoted him as
saying, “It is quite unimaginable that people should think of using the
A-bomb… It is essential to defend
peace.”[8] For some
months previously, the Ellington Orchestra had toured Europe. When he returned to the United States,
Ellington denied the authenticity of both the signature and the quotation. In an interview for a New York daily, he
condemned
Negro
leaders … who signed the World Peace
Appeal and who urged their people to do likewise.” The enraged composer and
bandleader blew up. “I threw the guy out
when he asked me to sign up.”
The
record shows that Ellington has singularly avoided any tie-ups with Red-front
organizations which often seek out big names as sponsors. “I never allow these Communists to exploit
me,” he said.[9]
Throughout the month of August, the Daily
Worker continued to repeat its claim that Ellington had signed the
petition, despite his denial and a threat to initiate a lawsuit against “those
who are trying to defame my name and reputation.” In its September 30, 1950, issue, the
rightist New Leader rushed into print a cover story by Duke Ellington
(most likely drafted by his brother-in-law, Daniel James), entitled “No Red
Songs for Me.” An editor’s preface to
the article portrayed Ellington’s career as
That of the pure artist, totally
unconcerned with political—or even cultural or racial—movements of any
kind. It remained for the Communists to
seize upon this utterly apolitical past, and to try to besmirch and exploit it
for their own despicable ends.[10]
In September, the editorial commentary
continued, both the Daily Worker and the literature of the Stockholm
movement continued to list Ellington among the signatories. A New Leader reporter, sent to the
Peace Information Center in New York to inquire about the matter was allegedly
told by the person in charge that “Using his name was an error on our part,”
and that the names of signers received from Paris prior to the Center’s opening
had not been checked for authenticity.
It was promised that Ellington’s name would be removed “after we use up
the literature in print.”
Fulminating against the failure of the
“Communist defamers” to correct their errors instantaneously, the editors
expressed their sympathy for “the many artists, and others, who are being daily
duped and exploited by the Communists and do not know how to fight back,” and
hoped that Ellington’s article would “set the perfect example.”
According to Ellington’s own account of these
events, in the spring of 1950, while in Stockholm, he received a proposed
script from Orson Welles for a musical adaptation of Faust. While in a private dining room of the Grand
Hotel, he was interrupted during a work session by a student who asked, “if he
could interest me in signing a paper.”
Annoyed, Ellington listened to the man explain that he wanted him to
“join with millions of other people in opposing the atom bomb.” Finding it ludicrous “that people signing a
piece of paper could dictate to two nations who have atom bombs,” Ellington
claimed that he asked the man to leave, never having seen a piece of paper to
sign. It was upon his return to the
United States, he continued, that he first received word that his name was
being used on the Stockholm propaganda.
What followed was not simply a denial of
support for the Stockholm Peace petition, but a total repudiation of the social
awareness that had informed his work for over twenty years:
As anyone knows who has followed my career,
movements of a political nature—Stockholm movements or Moscow movements—have
never been a part of my life.
And
I never sign petitions. Not even
petitions circulated by bona fide Negro organizations. Such matters are just not in my line…
What
burns me up, most of all, is that they have me leading “millions of Negroes” in
this thing. My answer to that is
this: I might be great, but I’m not that
great. I don’t lead anybody but myself.
The
Communists make out a big case about the way Negroes are treated in
America. But… there is somebody in every country whom
somebody else doesn’t like. Every nation has its minority. I, personally, fare far better as a member of
my minority than any member of any other minority I’ve ever seen in any
country. And I’ve been around quite a
few countries in my time, which goes back a long time.
Sure,
the situation of the Negro isn’t what it should be. I think I know that better than the
Communists. But the position of the
Negro in America and the position of the Communists are no more related to each
other than “The Blessed” and “The Damned.”
I’ve
never been interested in politics in my whole life, and I don’t pretend to know
anything about international affairs.
The only “communism” I know is that of Jesus Christ. I don’t know any other.
As
for war, during the last war I had a radio program every Saturday which sold
bonds for the United States Treasury for the purpose of helping to defeat
Germany, Japan and Italy. In the next
war—if there is one, God forbid—I’ll have another program to sell bonds to
defeat whoever is then America’s enemy.[11]
The issue of whether or not Ellington actually
signed the Stockholm petition has long since been forgotten and, like the other
phobias of its time, is of little importance.
What remains is a statement as self-abasing as any confession wrung by a
congressional tribunal. It clearly
suggests that the political fear which seized the entire entertainment industry
in the early 1950s was a factor in the decline of the Ellington organization and perhaps on Ellington's own creativity.
It might be instructive to question the
motives of jazz critics who, for many years after this episode, attempted
to destroy Ellington’s career. It was a
credit to Ellington’s courage that he persevered in spite of all the calumny,
adding such talents to the band as Paul Gonsalves, Clark Terry and Louis
Bellson. The jazz press, however,
continually portrayed Ellington as a relic from the past. In 1951 a Down Beat writer went so far
as to call for Ellington’s retirement, and two years later Ralph Gleason
lamented, “One of the favorite indoor sports of jazz aficionados in recent
years has been to complain about the Ellington band.”[12] Gleason was able to
point out “plenty of examples in jazz of educated and articulate cannibals
whose main purpose regardless of their posture, is to chop down and devour
great artists like Erroll Garner and Duke Ellington."[13]
*
The African-American press, which for some
years had cooled noticeably toward Ellington, suddenly erupted against him in
the late fall of 1951. A parade of
shrill headlines, which continued for months, was initiated by the appearance
of an interview with Ellington by Otis N. Thompson in the November 10 St. Louis
Argus. Thompson’s interview was
titled “’We Ain’t Ready,’ Duke Declares,” and in the version circulated by the
Associated Negro Press to Black papers around the country, is here reproduced:
Declaring
with pointed emphasis, “We ain’t ready yet,” Duke Ellington, world famed
orchestra leader, declared last weekend that the fighting being carried on by
some Negroes in an effort to gain integration is a “silly thing.” Said the Duke, with reference to segregation.
”It’s something nothing can be done
about.”
The
remarks were made in Ellington’s dressing room backstage at Convention Hall
[St. Louis] during the intermission at the matinee performance of the “Biggest
Show of ’51.” The Duke was approached
for a statement about the incident in Atlanta when Negroes learned a few
minutes before curtain time that they would have to use a side door to
Municipal Auditorium there to see the “Big Show.” Atlanta citizens were highly indignant and
many walked away.
It
was Ellington’s expressed opinion that “This thing about Negroes sitting
anywhere they want to,” is so much bunk.
He used stronger language to get his point over and much of his suavity
seen from an audience was lost as he intimated that Negroes knew the law and
might as well stay in their place.
“What
does it get us?” If you go South, don’t
you have to sit in the rear of the street car?”
According
to Duke the fighting being carried on by some people is getting us
nowhere. He could see no particular
progress over the last few years and questioned the “good it’s doing us” to get
one or two people in a few white schools or certain jobs.
Several
times during the conversation he referred to “those people” but would call no
names. He did mention the Richmond, Va.,
incident when the Richmond NAACP picketed the Mosque theatre where he played to
a segregated audience. The same thing
happened to Marian Anderson and it was Duke’s impression that it didn’t make
much sense in light of the fact that segregation laws existed there.
“Besides,
who’s eligible to boycott Marian Anderson?” he asked. As he prepared to return to the stage he
said, “No, we ain’t ready yet… Get
together one hundred million dollars and then we can do something…”[14]
The newspaper which made the most noise of all
was probably the Baltimore Afro-American, which levelled two blasts at
Ellington in its issue of December 1, 1951.
The first of these, an editorial headlined “Duke Ellington’s Views on
Jim Crow Shock Nation,” printed quotations from the Thompson interview and
expressed disbelief that this was “the same Duke Ellington” who, on behalf of
the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax, had in 1944 described that evil
as “the most important issue since Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.” The article concluded that “the civil rights
battle was getting “under [Ellington’s] skin,” that he had “deserted the ranks
of those fighting for first class citizenship.”
On the same page appeared an article alleging
that “in most cases when Duke ‘came to the aid of colored people’ through such
organizations as the NAACP, it was Duke and not the NAACP or colored people who
usually ended up with the most aid.”
Citing a benefit performance Ellington had given for the NAACP the
previous January, the article labelled Ellington’s reported donation of $13,000
to the civil rights organization a lie:
the NAACP received only $1,500 after expenses, the story read, while
Ellington received “a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of publicity and good
will in the nation’s capital of show business.”
(In fact, a letter from Henry Lee Moon, NAACP Publicity Director, in the
December 15, 1951 Afro-American, set the net profit of the organization
at $3,129,89, to which Ellington promised an additional contribution of
$3,000.) Never before had such vile
epithets been seen in print against Ellington:
…Since
he is booked through a white agency, and most of the places in which he is
booked are controlled by white people, he speaks like these white people want
him to speak, without considering that what he might say may be like sticking a
knife into the ribs of the colored people who made him.
And
believe you me, colored people “made” all the top colored performers today,
whether they will admit it or not
After
reading Duke’s statement that “We aren’t ready,” one can only conclude that
Duke, like so many others of our great artists, has succumbed to the theory
that it is better to live on his knees in show business than to die on his feet
in a job where he can work and maintain his self-respect and that of his
people.
And
like a dying man clutching at a straw, when he is told that his people are
going on ahead without him if he clings to that theory, he stews in his own
juice and cries: “We ain’t ready.”[15]
In the ensuing weeks, the Afro-American
printed a deluge of correspondence from its readers denouncing Ellington. Not until December 15, two weeks after the
appearance of the original charges, did the paper give Ellington a chance to
reply. The rebuttal, in the form of an
ANP release dated December 3, was run on the front page alongside a column
giving the final word to Argus reporter Otis Thompson, who continued to
insist upon the accuracy of the interview that started the furor.
In response to the “We ain’t ready” statement
attributed to him, Ellington wrote, “I categorically deny having made any such
statement,” and further asserted that “what has been published is the exact
opposite of what I actually said.” With
reference to the NAACP boycott of Marian Andersson, he admitted having told
Thompson
that
I thought it was too bad that Southern colored people picketed only colored
artists, but never protested when white artists came down to play to segregated
audiences. Since Southern colored people
live in segregated conditions all year round, I continued, why do they wait for
colored artists to come before putting on the demonstrations?
To the charge that he had called the civil
rights movement “a silly thing,” and that “colored people were making no
headway,” Ellington explained that he had meant “that colored people are not
doing all they can to abolish segregation, and that much more can be
done.” He repeated his contention that
“breaking down… segregation is a
full-time job” which “requires the full-time services of many more leaders than
we have,” and that efforts ought to be made to amass a fund of 100 million
dollars to sponsor “new legislation in every state” in order to abolish
segregation. Regarding the incident in
Atlanta, Ellington insisted that legal contracts over which he had no control
forced him to play to a segregated audience, and that “Refusal on my part to
honor them… would bring on suits for
breach of contract, as well as other reprisals, the effect of which would have been to put me out of the band
business.”
While the accuracy of various points raised in
his statement remains questionable, there is no doubt that Ellington felt
deeply wounded by the allegation that he had turned his back upon Black
people. With genuine indignation he
concluded,
First,
it saddens me that the AFRO, with which I have always had friendly relations,
did not accord me the courtesy of trying to get in touch with me or with any of
my representatives, to check the facts or ask me for a statement of any kind…
Second,
it saddens me also that people have rushed into print with things that conflict
with my whole past record. In my nearly
thirty years in public life, no one has ever impugned my devotion to the fight
for first-class citizenship.
Even
my critics admit that I have given generously of my time, energy and talents to
that fight. If they think I have now
gone back on all that, they don’t know me.
I am not the sort who makes speeches—or even statements of this
kind. Instead, as always, I stand on
what I have done and will continue to do.
The
public can rest assured that Duke Ellington, and every member of his
organization, will always be in the forefront of any effort to combat
segregation or any other form of racial or human injustice in the North or the
South, in America or in any other country.[16]
The significance of this episode lies not in
whether Ellington actually made the statements attributed to him, or even in
what he may have meant by them if he were quoted accurately. It is entirely possible that Ellington,
momentarily angered by what he considered recklessness on the part of civil
rights groups, would have expressed such sentiments. His attitude was clearly that of another,
older generation of African-Americans, and it was perhaps for this reason that
he had fallen out of favor with those who were pursuing the strategy of direct
action.
In fairness to Ellington, it must be admitted
that singling him out in such a fashion for a few off-the-cuff remarks he had
made during an intermission, was an act of demagoguery and opportunism. It was the height of
hypocrisy for Claude Barnett, the man responsible for publicizing the “we ain’t
ready” story in the first place, to send a letter of consolation to Ellington:
Dear
Duke:
Permit
me to congratulate you upon your statement.
It was a clear, reasonable and effective document.
The
position of the artist who finds himself hoisted upon the petard of the
enthusiastic supporters of “down with segregation” is unfortunate. He does not want segregation any more than
those who howl do. Indeed many of them
have been entirely content with their lot in the past and don’t stop to try to
work out some reasonable plan which will salvage the dignity of the artist and
protect him financially as well.
I am
glad you sent us the statement and we did the best we could by it.[17]
It would be years before official representatives of African-American society would attempt a reconciliation with Ellington, and never again would there be the sort of cordiality that characterized his relations with the Black press in the 1930s. The Claude Barnett file, in the archives of the Chicago Historical Society contains no further correspondence with Ellington after 1951.
Happily, 1952 marked the silver jubilee of Ellington’s opening at the Cotton Club, and many tributes from the entertainment world were soon forthcoming. Early that year at Chicago’s Regal Theatre a committee of distinguished Americans honored him for his “outstanding contribution to world culture” and “significant worth to and championship of his race.” Ellington was presented with a silver cigarette case inscribed with the names of Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Lena Horne, Nat “King” Cole, Mahalia Jackson, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine, which was presented on behalf of the committee by Alfred A. Duckett, the former Chicago Defender music critic who was now the managing editor of Tan Confessions.[18] To cap the celebration, the November 5 issue of Down Beat was devoted to Ellington’s past twenty-five years in the band profession. Ellington himself submitted an article listing what he considered the most important events of his career, and there appeared a survey to compile critics’ and musicians’ top choices among Ellington’s recordings (all but one tune, Louie Bellson’s “Skin Deep,” were issued before 1941). The issue also included articles by Billy Strayhorn, Leonard Feather, Irving Mills, and Ned Williams, each reminiscing upon some aspect of the maestro’s past glory. Strayhorn’s piece, “The Ellington Effect,” offered much he had learned:
Ellington plays piano, but his real instrument is his band. Each member of his band is to him a distinctive tone color and set of emotions, which he mixes with others equally distinctive to produce a third thing, which I like to call the Ellington Effect.
By letting his men play naturally and relaxed Ellington is able to probe the intimate recesses of their minds and finds things that not even the musicians thought were there.[19]
 |
| Clark Terry |
Ellington’s former
publicist, Ned Williams, was another contributor with a unique perspective on his long career. The first time
Williams was truly impressed by Ellington's band was when they opened at the
Oriental Theater in Chicago in 1930, the year of "Mood Indigo."
The event happened to occur on a Friday the thirteenth, Williams wrote,
"which fixed that date as a lucky one in his normally superstitious mind,
for he played the same theater five more times in that one year with an
increased gross business each return. To this day a Friday the thirteenth
is his favorite date to make decisions, sign contracts or open engagements.
"Another instance of the 13 (Friday or not) superstition in the
Ellington make-up comes to mind. It was the year [1938] he was writing,
with the collaboration of Henry Nemo and others, the entire score for a Cotton
Club show. He had completed twelve songs, but he decided that unless he
turned out 13, it wouldn't be lucky.
"So he composed a thirteenth song, 'I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart.’”
Williams also had some fun with the titles of Ellington’s tunes. He recalls that at one point the BBC
wouldn't allow the tunes titled "Hip Chick" or "Dinah's in a
Jam" to be broadcast in the United Kingdom. Williams then wonders
what their reaction would have been if they knew the origins of such titles as
"The Skronch, "T. T. on Toast," and "Warm Valley."
Williams vividly recalls the night at the Cotton Club when Paul Whiteman and
his arranger Ferde Grofe visited to hear Ellington. They revisited the
Cotton Club nightly for over a week. The night during which Ethel
Waters was introducing "Stormy Weather," Ellington's brass section
performed an arrangement intricate enough to floor pianist Eddie Duchin,
literally.
He further claims that Ellington himself invented such band nicknames as "Posey"
(Freddy Jenkins), and “Rabbit” (Johnny Hodges). Ellington nicknamed his valet, Richard Jones, “Elmer”,
and in turn, Jones dubbed Ellington “Dumpy.” Ellington often attached the
suffix “May” to women’s names. His revolver (never used) was nicknamed “Sweetie
May.”[20]
In December,1952, another Duke Ellington salute was held in Chicago, an award from the National University of Music, which established a scholarship in his name. The festivities included a luncheon at the Johnson Publishing Company, which honored Ellington with lifetime subscriptions to Jet and Ebony, and a Silver Jubilee party held on the city’s West Side.[21]
In the meantime, Ellington’s career was foundering. Although he had reportedly signed in 1950 for an eighteen-week television series starring Sarah Vaughan, he became embroiled in a battle with network executives over issues of what he called “independence” and “freedom from censorship,” forcing the cancellation of his plans for a television musical and an all-Negro revue.[22]
The early 1950s were also years of management
conflicts. Recording
contracts were obtained with considerable difficulty and the various labels on
which the orchestra recorded sometimes demanded stipulations to which Ellington
was unaccustomed, concerning the type of music to be played. After the expiration of his contract with
Victor in 1945, Ellington recorded for a short period with the small Musicraft
label (when the company folded, Ellington, as a major investor, lost a
considerable sum of money), and with Mercer Records, a disastrous venture owned
jointly by his son Mercer and Leonard Feather.
In Mercer’s opinion, “Having gone into the record business as a
competitor with the majors didn’t do Ellington any good, and it was some time
before he got back into their good graces.”[23]
*
 |
| Wendell Marshall |
Upon the expiration of his contract with Columbia Records,
Ellington signed with Capitol Records in 1953. As
it happened, the orchestra’s first session in April produced “Satin Doll,”
cowritten by Ellington with Billy Strayhorn and Johnny Mercer, which was to be
Ellington’s last huge hit and a permanent part of the great American song book. But otherwise the Capitol recordings over the
next three years were, for the most part, either covers of tunes the band had
recorded previously or songs made popular by other orchestras. Nowhere did they attempt anything as
ambitious as the Liberian Suite or Harlem Suite. The
only exceptional recordings from the Capitol years were a series of piano trio
sessions with bassist Wendell Marshall and either Butch Ballard or Dave Black
on drums. Twelve solos on Ellington titles old and new, including the exploratory
excursions “Reflections in D,” “Melancholia,” and “Retrospection.” were compiled
for the album The Duke Plays Ellington, later retitled Piano
Reflections. The album represented
some of the best Duke Ellington piano solos on record.
Forced to accept the sort of engagements he could hardly have imagined in his glory days, it seemed by the middle of the decade that Ellington was on his last legs. For the entire summer of 1955, the Ellington band played backing to the “Aquacades” show at Flushing Meadows, Long Island, formerly the site of the 1939 World’s Fair: The orchestra was in a sorry condition: as Derek Jewll wrote,
 |
| Quentin "Butter" Jackson |
Five
men in the band, including Paul Gonsalves and Willie Cook, were temporarily
dropped from the lineup because they didn’t hold cards with the right branch of
the union. A string section, an extra
pianist, and two girl harpists (doing water effects which went with the
swimming angle of the show) augmented the thinned-out Ellingtonians. It really did seem that the end might be in
sight.
In
later years Duke always evaded too many questions about the year of 1955. The reason why he went to be a backing band
to a summer show must have been primarily economic. He hadn’t been drawing large audiences for
some time. Around the college circuit,
which was now an important factor in jazzmen’s finances, the kids wanted small
groups like those of Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck. Norman Granz was concentrating increasingly
on Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald.
Count Basie, too, was making a comeback and getting the dates which Duke
was missing. Duke was even left out in
the cold by the aqua-show format. They
allowed a piano solo by him, and then his musicians took over with a house
conductor in charge.[1]
When circumstances seemed worst, however, fundamental
changes were occurring in Ellington’s
rhythm section, with bassist Jimmy Woode replacing Wendell Marshall and a new
drummer aboard, Sam Woodyard, who would remain with Ellington’s orchestra for
the next decade. Most fortuitous of all was the return to the Ellington
fold as a harbinger of great times to come.
The following year, in fact, inaugurated an Ellington renaissance which
could hardly be foreseen. It was just a
matter of luck, by Ellington’s own definition being in the right place at the
right time, doing the right thing in front of the right people. All four “rights” converged at the 1956
Newport Jazz Festival.
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