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 1947 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.”[39] During the war years, sin p. 190.ce 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.[40]
Ellington’s lowest ebb came in 1951, with the firing of Sonny Greer and the almost en masse defections of Tyree Glenn, Al Sears, and his outstanding 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.[41]
Whatever the impact of all this upon Ellington, 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 go purge the various propaganda media, particularly motion pictures and television, of any dissidence 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 paralyze 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, was 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.”[42]
Ellington’s name in the updated version of the Cumulative Index, published in 1968, indicated three “offenses” he had committed against Western civilization. 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.[43] 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 Commjunist, followed closer to it than anybody could by outright joining the party.”[44]
The third, and most interesting, 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.[45] 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.[46]
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 Flage…
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.[47]
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.”[48] 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.[49]
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.[50]
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 hooped 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
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. At the very least, one must wonder how purely coincidental was the desertion, within a matter of months, of so many of his sidemen.
It might also be instructive to question the motives of those 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 modernists 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.”[51] In 1958 the influential French critic Andre Hodier judged Ellington to be “creatively dead,” and even as late as 1963 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.”[52]
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 question 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…”[53]
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.”[54]
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.[55]
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. Certainly, they were compatible with his aristocratic temperament and an archaic political philosophy which distrusted mass movements of any kind, particularly when they interfered with his ability to earn a living. 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 political 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.[56]
It would be years before the 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.
In any event, the climb upward from this low point in his career was long and arduous. Happily, 1952 marked the silver jubilee of Ellington’s show-business career, 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.[57]
The November 5 issue of Down Beat, devoted to the celebration of Ellington’s twenty-five years in the band profession, included articles by Billy Strayhorn, Leonard Feather, Irving Mills, Ned Williams and Ellington himself, each reminiscing upon some aspect of the maestro’s past glory. It was, by and large, a rather routine show-business salute; the names of numerous celebrities appeared along with their favorites among Ellington’s records, and the entire issue had something of the quality of an obituary for a famous person.
In December, another Duke Ellington salute was held in Chicago. He received 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.[58]
To 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.[59]
The early 1950s were also years of management conflicts, particularly with Norman Granz, with whom Ellington had never been on the best of terms. 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 label Musicraft (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.”[60]
The Duke Ellington Orchestra was virtually the sole survivor of the trend in jazz that decimated that decimated the big bands in favor of small combos—even Count Basie was forced, for economic reasons, to reduce his orchestra to an octet in the summer of 1950. Forced to accept the sort of engagements he could hardly have imagined in his glory days, by the middle of the decade, that he 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:
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.[61]
