Duke
Ellington was riding particularly high in 1963. In January he
embarked with his orchestra upon a highly successful European tour through the
United Kingdom, France, Scandinavia and Germany. Simultaneously he
was enjoying the perks of a recording contract with Frank
Sinatra's new Reprise label which gave him complete
control over his own recordings; even more, he was given the unusual
authority to produce sessions for other artists as he travelled around
Europe. Ahead of him lay a unique opportunity to write, produce, and direct his
own show. During January in Sweden, between performances with symphony
orchestras, in hotel suites, or in the passenger seat of a white Volvo Amazon
Sport, he wrote much of My
People, an engagement commissioned by the
Century of Negro Progress Exposition in Chicago.
But by the time the band returned home in June, they
found a nation much changed from the one they had left only a few months
before.
It seems almost too great a coincidence that 1963,
the centennial of Lincoln's Emancipation
Proclamation, would also mark the crest of the modern-day civil
rights movement. The year began as Alabama Governor George
Wallace, after his January swearing-in at the State Capitol,
defiantly declared, "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation
forever!" In May the Birmingham campaign of the Souther Christian Leaddership Committee culminated
in televised images of vicious police dogs and fire hoses used against
peaceful protesters.
In the ten weeks before the famed March
on Washington in August, there would be 758 civil rights
demonstrations in 186 cities and 14,733 arrests. The year drew to a
close with the assassination of President
Kennedy in November to highlight a decade of racial turmoil in
America and the entire world that reverberates to this day.
In February, traditionally the occasion of Negro History
Week, the Kennedy Administration seemed to take a stance in favor of the civil
rights movement by marking the Emancipation centennial with a reception
attended by over eight hundred civil rights activists, intended to be
bipartisan and to bring individuals of all races together. Before the
event, the President had been presented with a document on Civil Rights
developments of the last hundred years, prepared by the United States
Civil Rights Commission. Some famous names, including Judge Thurgood_Marshall,
NAACP head Roy
Wilkins, and musicians Sammy
Davis, Jr. and Lionel
Hampton were in attendance at the White House that day.
Noticeably missing from the reception was the Reverend
Dr. Martin
Luther. King , Jr., who had declined an invitation after having
talked to the President about segregation, to no avail.
Subsequent to the White House event, several cities
celebrated the Emancipation centennial, but only Chicago marked it in a really
significant way. The idea for the exposition had begun two years
earlier with the formation of the American Negro Emancipation
Centennial Authority (ANECA), a young adult volunteer auxiliary
supervised by the historian and businessman James
E. Stamps. ANECAns were said to symbolize "a new dimension
in Negro thought" and "an example of Negro youth molding Negro
destiny." Nearly fifty young South Siders worked with the
Authority in developing a grand celebration to run August 16 through September
2.
The idea for the Exposition had taken root a full
two years earlier with the formation of the American Negro
Emancipation Centennial Authority (ANECA), a young adult volunteer
auxiliary supervised by the historian and businessman James
E. Stamps. ANECAns were said to symbolize "a new
dimension in Negro thought" and "an example of Negro youth molding
Negro destiny." Nearly fifty young South Siders worked
with the Authority in developing a grand celebration to run August 16 through
September 2.
The Exposition was sponsored by twenty-one major American
corporations, which together financed exhibits that traced Black
history from Africa to modern America. The President himself
conceived a commemorative postage stamp to be issued at the opening ceremonies.
The Exposition was expected to attract up to a million people, relying
upon the attendance of the Chicago Black community and the support of
business and social organizations. Along with Kennedy's gesture,
opening day featured the presentation of a manuscript copy of
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, protected by bullet-proof glass and
two state troopers standing beside it. In keeping with this theme the
biggest space was devoted to a Lincoln statue surrounded by red carpet, with
famous quotations displayed in the background.
*
Chicago faced its own challenge in its de facto segregation
of public schools. Just days after the Exposition's closing,
schools opened that year with public protests against the use of trailer-like
structures outside school buildings, dubbed Willis
Wagons after school board president Benjamin Willis. Amid
a "Freedom Day" boycott of schools by African American
students, picketers were at the homes of school officials, demanding
their resignation. Meanwhile, there were quiet negotiations
between Chicago businesses and Negro leaders concerning the crisis of
unemployment in the Black community.
Nevertheless, at a news conference in May, Mayor Daley
boasted that Chicago was "setting the pace for the entire nation in
race relations.” He had just returned from a junket to Hawaii
(a reporter from the Defender,
Chicago’s largest and most influential Black community news paper, noted Daley
had acquired "a heavy tan”) but went on to announce his support of
Superintendent Willis, nevertheless confirming the rumors that Willis, who at
$48,500 was the nation's highest-paid school administrator, was on his way out.
Daley praised Willis's job performance and said he had
"done much in his effort to make Chicago schools most
outstanding.”
Meanwhile, there were Black community
activists picketing in front of the Board of Education building on North
LaSalle Street to protest of the proposal of additional mobile classrooms
in several areas. A CORE executive explained, "We are protesting the
transfer of students from Farragut High School and the use of mobile classes
because both mean subtle plans to perpetuate segregation. This is just
their way of maintaining the practice." She cited another instance
in the proposed student transfers from Marshall to Orr High School on the
North Side of the city.
On Thursday night, August 15, the eve of the public
opening of the Exposition, there was a preview for VIPs, including hundreds of
professionals. Supervisor Stamps explained that the preview was part of a
plan to boost many of the businesses who were backing the event a chance to see
the results of their contributions. John S. Gleason, an official from the
Veteran's Administration, was the keynote speaker. Executive director
Alton A. Davis predicted a huge turnout.
After a great deal of ballyhoo in the press, both local
and national, the Exposition opened on Friday, August 16, at 2 p.m.
After Mayor Daley cut a symbolic paper chain across the main
entrance of the McCormick Place exhibition floor, attendees viewed
exhibits telling the story of Black Americans' achievements over the span of a
century. As they filed into the huge hall, they learned about the origins
of slavery in the Roman Empire and saw, according to the Chicago Tribune,
''a primitive African jungle village, with grass huts set beside a small
waterfall.'' Visitors then viewed exhibits that illustrated the
contributions of the Negro to the city, state, and nation.
Each day of the Exposition was planned around a specific
theme: over the ensuing two weeks, there was a Government Day,
Sports Day, Fine Arts Day ("the most representative collection of
paintings, sculpture and graphic arts by American Negro artists ever
assembled"), Women's Day, Youth Day, International Day, and so forth.
Customarily, each day presented celebrity athletes, singers, and
speakers, including gospel singer Mahalia
Jackson, Chicago Cubs infielder Ernie
Banks. and the Harlem
Globetrotters (whose origins actually were in
Chicago). The renowned children's songstress Ella
Jenkins performed at an afternoon workshop, followed by sports
exhibitions and dance recitals. Athletes Althea
Gibson and Jesse
Owens and musicians Oscar
Peterson and Dizzy
Gillespie were awarded plaques. A symposium on the
future of the American Negro and the promise of a second Negro
Renaissance included journalists Lerone
Bennett of Ebony and Les
Brownlee of the Tribune, among a parade of other
Black celebrities. Every day there were three performances of
the Larry
Steele radio show, hosted by the famed local songwriter and
impresario known as "the Black Flo Ziegfeld.” In all, one
hundred sixty-four citations were bestowed upon prominent Chicago African
Americans, including Gwendolyn
Brooks, already the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and who would be
named the poet laureate of Illinois.
Another Black Chicagoan to be honored was Margaret
Goss Burroughs, founder of the Ebony
Museum of Negro History (later to be renamed the DuSable
Museum) and co-founder of the Afro-American Heritage Association.
Meanwhile, Ellington's show was presented every afternoon and evening.
Reviews of the exhibits were mixed. "Although
a majority of the booths are interesting,” the Defender observed," the
only 'live' one is the National Aeronautical and Space Association's <sic>
offering. It provides factual demonstrations on how rockets operate and
why. It also explains our position in the race to the Moon."
The booth was operated by two NASA employees, one Black and the other
white.
A critic from the same paper noted approvingly the
variety of Negro occupations the Exposition put on display-- in business,
athletics, medicine, teaching, policing and all the rest.
Another obsessed about a list of spelling errors to be
found among the exhibits: “negro,” “Negros,” “who's" (instead
of "whose"), and a host of such egregious misspellings as “Richard
Right." She filed a direct complaint to Alton Davis, whom she
intended to harass for the remainder of the Exposition.
*
Duke Ellington was one of the most honored and revered
personalities of the twentieth century. Beyond music, from the
beginning of his career he had been very much a "race man,” but
strictly one of the old school: He believed that
by commanding -- not demanding-- respect, he could help advance his
people along with himself. He had never engaged directly with protest
marches or demonstrations or endorsed a specific idea in the struggle for civil
rights. "Say it without saying it" had been his motto in such
productions as Jump
for Joy in Hollywood in 1941, which consisted of musical
skits in satiric sketches such as "I've Got a Passport from Georgia (And
I'm Leaving for the U.S.A.)," and Beggar's
Holiday in 1947, which made its point by interracial
casting. Regarding My People more than a
decade later, singer Joya
Sherrill recalled that she had never seen Ellington more
excited and that "he felt he was making a racial contribution."
Ellington had been given carte blanche to
handle My People in any manner he chose. He relished the
challenge of writing, arranging and directing his own music. "I
enjoyed this as a challenge,” he wrote, "because I was the lyricist,
the composer, the orchestrator, I directed it, I produced it, I lit the show, I
did everything, and it was just a ball." He now had the rare
opportunity to display the full range of his talents.
Much of the planning for the show occurred in the South
Side home of Ellington's former guitarist, Fred
Guy, who had retired in 1949. Despite his long absence from
the music world, Guy remained friends with his old boss, who usually visited
his apartment when he was in town. Presently, discussion over the
production details of My People was centered over the coffee
table in Guy's living room.
Duke had yet to witness the vastArie
Crown Theater, an auditorium of more than 5,000 seats. As he vividly
recalled in his memoir, Music
Is My Mistress,
When I first went to work in the
McCormick <sic> Theatre, I was knocked out by the size of
the stage. I sat in the front row of the orchestra seats and looked up at
the stage, to get the audience's view... I sat and looked for a while,
and then came up with an idea to fill this big stage...
We would extend the sixteen-piece band just back of an
apron... Behind the band we would have an elevation twelve feet high which
would be carried all the way back to the back wall. On either side
would be stairs running down behind the band.
For the opening, I would have a boy and a girl dancing
at the extreme back end of the elevation-- a sort of Afro dance. Then
black out, fade up to green as backdrop silhouettes the dancers; fade up amber
cross lights at the point where the boy is doing the head-rolling thing, a
la Geoffrey Holder; slow fade to black and first slowly cross orchestra
pit, with ambers, purples, and reds, and then quickly bright up.
Instead of two tiny figures in the distance, the audience was suddenly
looking at forty-eight giant hands rising up out of the dark, towering over
them on the orchestra pit elevator. Some were shocked by the silhouette
and even cried out in fright. Thanks to Ailey and Beatty, Ellington had
achieved a choreographic masterpiece on his maiden voyage.
A challenge equal to producing the show was
maintaining a schedule to meet Ellington's other obligations. During the
run of the show, he was also writing music for the Stratford,
Ontario, Shakespeare Festival's production of Timon
of Athens and traveling with his band for a week of
one-nighters and a second week engaged at the Michigan State Fair in Detroit.
To top it all off, he was obliged to help work out the show's
choreography in New York with Alvin
Ailey and Talley
Beatty.
Meanwhile, My People would
be played by a seventeen-piece pit band liberally sprinkled with current
Ellington Orchestra members and alumni, with Jimmy
Jones at the piano and conducting. This unit was named
the Billy
Strayhorn Orchestra, as Strayhorn would function as Ellington's
deputy director throughout the run. From the current band
came cornetist/ violinist Ray
Nance, a Chicago native himself, trombonists Booty
Wood, and Chuck Connors, and alto saxophonist and
clarinetist Russell
Procope. Joining them was drummer Louis
Bellson, who'd had a regular place in Ellington's band a decade
earlier, and future band members Harold
Ashby on tenor sax, trumpeter Bill Berry, and
bassist Joe
Benjamin. Six local musicians filled out the balance of
the band, along with singers Joya
Sherrill (whose association with Ellington had begun in
the 1940s), Lil
Greenwood, and Jimmy McPhail, along with a choir directed
by the Irving
Bunton Singers.
Earlier in the year Duke had selected Bunton as choral
director for My People. At that time, he was the director of
the award-winning Englewood High School a cappella choir, and the all-city high
school chorus.
Over the ensuing two weeks, there was a Government Day,
Sports Day, Women's Day, Youth Day, International Day, and so forth.
Customarily, each day presented celebrity athletes, singers, and
speakers, including gospel singer Mahalia
Jackson, Chicago Cubs infielder Ernie
Banks. and the Harlem
Globetrotters (whose origins actually were in
Chicago). The renowned children's songstress Ella
Jenkins performed at an afternoon workshop, followed by sports
exhibitions and dance recitals. Athletes Althea
Gibson and Jesse
Owens and musicians Oscar
Peterson and Dizzy
Gillespie were awarded plaques. A symposium on the
future of the American Negro and the promise of a second Negro
Renaissance included journalists Lerone
Bennett of Ebony and Les
Brownlee of the Tribune, among a parade of other
Black celebrities. Every day there were three performances of
the Larry
Steele radio show, hosted by the famed local songwriter and
impresario known as "the Black Flo Ziegfeld." Meanwhile,
Ellington's show was presented every afternoon and evening.
To understand My People in the context
of Ellington's oeuvre, one must travel back in time. In
a sense, My People was his latest attempt to express a
narrative that was forever ahead of its time. As far back as the
1930s, Ellington's aim in music had been to tell the story of his race in a
larger format. Early in that decade he had recorded "Creole
Rhapsody" and a few years later "Reminiscing in Tempo," both of
which ran beyond the three-minute limit placed upon almost all jazz
records. At the same time he envisioned an opera, entitled Boolah after
its protagonist, which purported to tell the history of the African American
race.
A rare breakthrough at Paramount studios in 1935 afforded
Ellington an opportunity to produce a short film, Symphony
in Black, whose musical themes-- "The
Laborers," "Triangle," "A Hymn of Sorrow," and
"Harlem Rhythm"-- were to serve Ellington for decades to come.
"Triangle" is perhaps the most interesting part
of Ellington's suite. Appropriately, it is subdivided into three
segments: "Dance" shows a couple dancing indoors to the music of a
radio; in "Jealousy"the same couple encounter on
the sidewalk outdoors another woman, whom the man shoves roughly to the
pavement. Finally, "Blues" arrives in the form of Ellington's
"Saddest Tale," sung by the sixteen-year-old Billie
Holiday as the scorned woman of the love triangle.
The musical and historical themes of Symphony in
Black came to be repeated on an even larger scale eight years later
in Ellington's early masterpiece, Black,
Brown and Beige, a suite with three movements, running
around forty-five minutes. Here Ellington's long-held vision of "A
Tone Parallel to the History of the American Negro" found its
fullest expression. An officially declared Duke Ellington Week led up
to its Carnegie Hall premiere on January 23, 1943. Its audience
represented the entire spectrum of music, from highbrow musicians and critics
to Ellington's own peers. For the occasion, Ellington was awarded a ceremonial
plaque by many of the most celebrated names in music.
The immediate reaction to Black Brown and Beige by
the New York pundits, however, proved a huge disappointment to Ellington.
The esteemed jazz maven John
Hammond wrote that it wasn't jazz, and the classical critics
said it was a nice try, but a failure nonetheless. None of them seemed to
notice the integrity of the piece or the coherent and colorful story it tells.
Indeed, the reason for the tempest was that critics couldn't
categorize it. So obsessed were they by their own conceptions of music
that they never really listened at all. In a phrase Ellington often
used regarding musicians of the highest rank, the work was "beyond
category." But the loud objections to his most ambitious achievement
provoked a bitterness that did not fade. The complete suite was
performed only twice, at its New York premiere and at its Boston Symphony Hall
recital the following week. Ellington never made a studio recording of
the entire suite.
Black, Brown and Beige excerpts, RCA
Victor 1944
Henceforth, Black, Brown and Beige would
appear only in fragments that total about half the original's length.
Those same fragments, however, remained an inspiration for Ellington for
the remainder of his career. In effect, they became the
superstructure of My People twenty years later.
Ellington borrowed part of the "Work Song," the spiritual
"Come Sunday," and "Light," a montage of the
preceding themes which ends Black. "The Blues"
(a.k.a. "The Blues Ain't") from the end of Brown was
the fourth and final prop for his Chicago show. Of these themes,
"Come Sunday" has endured the longest and remains a jazz standard.
In 1958 Ellington recorded a version with his own lyrics, sung by Mahalia
Jackson. These lyrics reappear in My People.
Joya Sherrill with Duke Ellington, ca. 1944
The love triangle set forth in both Symphony in
Black and Black, Brown and Beige remained a pivotal
point in the new show. Notably, "The Blues" from the Brown movement is
not formally a blues at all, but rather a return to the love triangle
Although the piece contains a blues in its instrumental break, most of it
is constructed as concrete
poetry in a manner suggesting triangles or pyramids, the
metaphorical root of the blues:
The blues
The blues ain't
The blues ain't nothing
The blues ain't nothing but a cold, gray day
And all night long it stays that way.
The blues
The blues don't
The blues don't know
The blues don't know nobody as a friend
Ain't been nowhere where they're welcome back again.
Mean, ugly, low blues.
At this point, on the 1944 Victor recording, Joya
Sherrill sings a verse that leads into a tenor saxophone solo on an extended
instrumental break, whose theme was later retitled "Carnegie Blues."
Then she re-enters:
The blues ain't something that you sing in rhyme
The blues ain't nothing but a dark cloud marking time
The blues is a one-way ticket from your love to
nowhere
The blues ain't nothing but a black crepe veil ready
to wear.
Sighing
crying
Feel 'most like dying.
The blues ain't nothing
The blues ain't
The blues
Although the My People's tripartite structure
suggests that of Black, Brown and Beige, here
the parts don't tell a linear story.
Ellington remolded his old template as a triangle
or pyramid. Within this outline, he implants the themes of
family and religion, sexuality, and finally race. In effect, the
movements inform Ellington's self-portrait, which are devoted respectively to
his future, past, and present. It seems a paradox that, while he never
appears physically, Ellington's musical signature is unmistakable
from beginning to end.
The first act opens abruptly with a dissonant,
furious
"Jungle Triangle, recalling the "jungle"
coloration Ellington had created for Cotton Club shows more than twenty
years earlier. As Alvin Ailey had given him leave to choreograph the opening
number, Ellington wrote:
For the opening, I would have a boy and a girl dancing at
the extreme back end of the elevation-- a sort of Afro dance. Then black
out, fade up to green as backdrop silhouettes the dancers; fade up amber cross
lights at the point where the boys are doing the head-rolling thing a
la Geoffrey
Holder; slow fade to black, and first slowly cross orchestra
pit with ambers, purples, and reds, and then quickly bright up. Instead
of two tiny figures in the distance, the audience was suddenly looking at
forty-eight giant hands rising up out of the dark, towering over them on the
orchestra-pit elevator. Some were shocked by the silhouette and even
cried out in fright. Thanks to Ailey and Beatty Ellington created a
choreographic masterpiece on his maiden voyage.
Immediately following this garish opening, "Come
Sunday" calmly and quietly appears. In this
rendition Jimmy McPhail sings Ellington's 1958 lyric against a soft
choral background while Billy Strayhorn accompanies on celeste. The
lyric obviously inspired the show's title:
Lord, dear lord above,
God Almighty, God of love,
Please look down and see my people through.
The ensuing "Will You Be There" and "99
Percent Won't Do" continue the spiritual theme, featuring first
a dramatic chorale behind a male narrator followed by an old-fashioned
gospel shout by the choir. Still further, the religious motif continues
with "Ain't But the One," rendered in a faster vein, with a vocal by
Jimmy McPhail, accompanied by a great band arrangement. To conclude the
religious arc, "David Danced Before the Lord" featured tap-dancer
Bunny Briggs over a snappy version of "Come Sunday," first sung and
then hummed in accompaniment.
The religious theme that dominates the show's opening
reflects Ellington's past , of course, but it also forecasts the series of
Sacred Concerts he produced for the remainder of his life, which he
considered the music for these concerts the most important he had ever
done. It is no coincidence that these early songs from My People,
including "David Danced" and "Come Sunday," formed the core
of Ellington's first Sacred Concert two years later.
Then comes a final backward glance with a celebration of
Duke Ellington's family. "Heritage" has one of Billy
Strayhorn's's most sumptuous arrangements and a wry lyric deliciously
interpreted by Joya Sherrill. After a brief trombone introduction,
it begins with a short spoken narration over Strayhorn's celeste.
Joya is here joined by the orchestra:
My mother, the greatest and the prettiest
My father, just handsome but the wittiest.
My granddaddy, natural-born proud,
Grandma so gentle, so fine.
The men before them worked hard and sang loud
About the beautiful women in this family of mine.
Our homestead, the warmest hospitality
In me you see the least of the family tree
personality.
I was raised in the palm of the hand
By the very best people in the land.
From sun to sun, our hearts beat as one
My mother, my father, and love.
"Heritage"
The second act of My People explores
Ellington's musical roots. It begins with "After Bird
Jungle" (not a bop number, as one might expect from the title, but
rather an instrumental extension of "Heritage"), forming a
link to the middle section of the show. One may imagine a
dance number as a visual element to accompany the lush score. This theme
segues immediately into "Montage" (a.k.a. "Light") the
second pillar borrowed from Black, Brown and Beige, wherein
the two principal themes of Black, "Work Song" and
"Come Sunday," are intertwined in a straightforward rendition of the
original arrangement with the choir in accompaniment.
Blues Sequence
All of this serves to introduce the main theme
of the blues in its many hues and a nod to Ellington's past, from the
Cotton Club on. Tangentially the blues represents his sexual side, for in
addition to his stature as a musician and a race hero, he had been a sex
symbol for decades. Beyond his seductive manner, his practice
of bestowing four kisses upon women's faces ("one for each cheek"),
and other elements of his persona, Ellington was a notorious womanizer.
(A few years after his death he achieved the dubious distinction of being
listed among over sixty musicians from the seventeenth century forward in a
tome called The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People.)
When "Montage" comes to its climactic end, the
show suddenly changes gears, as Bunny Briggs reappears to give a straightforward
soapbox oration, accompanied by a choral response by the choir
My People!
Singing-- dancing-- praying-- thinking about freedom
Working-- building America into the most powerful
nation in the world
Cotton-- sugar-- indigo-- iron--coal-- peanuts--steel
The railroad, you name it.
The foundation of the United States rests on the sweat
of My People,
And in addition to working and sweating,
Don't forget that My People fought and died in every
war.
The speaker segues into a monologue about a wartime love
triangle among the soldier, his girlfriend or wife, and a bedazzled young male
who wants her attention.
Then chanting, with finger snaps from the whole company
in support, he continues:
The blues is the accompaniment to the world's greatest
duet,
A man and a woman going steady.
The blues is the accompaniment to the world's greatest
duet,
A man and a woman going steady.
And if neither one of them feels like singin' 'em
Then the blues just vamp 'til ready.
At this time the orchestra brings on Joya Sherrill to
mourn "The Blues,"reprising the aria that she first recorded in 1944.
Then, after a dramatic trumpet fanfare, there begins a six-song blues dialogue,
with Jimmy McPhail and Lil Greenwood alternating vocals on some of Ellington's
"mean, ugly, lowdown blues." The series begins with McPhail's
"Blues at Sundown" and ends with Greenwood's "I Love My
Lovin' Lover," wherein Harold Ashby's tenor sax introduces the first
verse, and at its conclusion, Ray Nance expounds a dirty-sounding reply on
cornet. The last chorus concludes:
I love my lovin' lover,
He's as sweet as he can be.
Please, somebody, send that lady's husband back to me!
"My People" into "The Blues," sung by
Joya Sherrill
The third act reflected the the present moment: the
struggle for civil rights. In this context, the Exposition itself
became a staging area for the upcoming March on Washington.
It had drawn more than 50,000 visitors in its first three
days, and attendance was expected to surge further, but in the final week of
August the attention of Chicago's Black community rapidly shifted to national
events as Martin Luther King urged action by Christian churches. As the
centennial celebration entered its second week, events and themes shifted to
the proposed march, which was quickly garnering support around the nation.
On Sunday, August 25, an evening rally was staged in McCormick Place
itself, featuring a Chicago minister and one of the local leaders of the
protest movement, Timuel
Black.
Black, the co-chairman of the Chicago Committee for the
March on Washington, reported to the Coordinating Council of Community
Organizations that 1,500 Chicagoans would go to Washington for the
demonstration. At another meeting at the Washington Park YMCA, Black told
the council that the Chicago Committee was facing a deficit of $3,000 in
administrative costs and urged ministers to take up a collection for the
committee at Tuesday night's prayer meetings. He asked Chicagoans
sympathetic to the aims of the march to turn on their auto headlights as a sign
of solidarity. Seven prominent clergymen of different faiths said they
would meet with Senator Everett
Dirksen in Washington after the next day's march and ask his
support of the administration's civil rights bill.
*
Ellington's third act reflected the the present moment
and the struggle for civil rights. In this context, the Exposition
itself became a staging area for the upcoming March on Washington.
It had drawn more than 50,000 visitors in its first three
days, and attendance was expected to surge further, but in the attention of
Chicago's Black community rapidly shifted to national events and the call to
action. As the centennial celebration entered its second week, events
and themes shifted to the march, which was quickly garnering support around the
nation.
The Defender announced on Tuesday,
August 20, that the Century of Negro Progress Exposition would sponsor a
"Civil Rights Night" the following Monday at 8 p.m. and that the
Reverend Fred
Shuttlesworth, one of the chief organizers of the Birmingham
movement, would be the guest speaker on the theme, "Why We March?”
Ralph Metcalfe, alderman of the Chicago’s Third Ward, was honorary
chairman of the program, while local and national civil rights figures and
organizations were to receive awards for their significant role in contemporary
history. In addition, many nationally known entertainers, including Oscar
Peterson and Dizzy Gillespie, agreed to appear on the program. It was
reported that, in a joking mood, the Centennial heads had selected a"'Hall
of Democratic Immortality,"' referring to the Dixiecrats in Congress.
In a page four article datelined New York, the Defender declared on
August 21 that leaders of the March on Washington had issued final plans
for the giant civil rights demonstration and demanded desegregation of all
schools that year. In a twelve-page organizing manual the leaders charged
that "the Southern Democrats that came to power by by disenfranchising the
Negro... They know that semi-slavery for one is semi-slavery for all.”
Monday, August 26, originally had been ordained
Negro History Day, but with whirlwind of national events, the day was renamed
Civil Rights Day. The program would feature its usual daytime fare:
citations were given to ANECA and Ebony.
Later in the day, even as alderman Ralph
Metcalfe presented achievement awards to an array of Black
celebrities, preparations were being made to galvanize the Black community into
action. At the ensuing Tuesday rally the Rev.
Shuttlesworth spoke in support of the March on Washington
and urged further demonstrations throughout the nation.
The Chicago rally was staged in the evening at
McCormick Place itself, featuring a Chicago minister and one of the local
leaders of the protest movement, Timuel
Black. As co-chairman of the Chicago Committee for the
March on Washington, Black reported to the Coordinating Council of Community
Organizations that 1,500 Chicagoans would go to Washington for the
demonstration. At another meeting at the Washington Park YMCA, Black told
the council that the Chicago Committee was facing a deficit of $3,000 in
administrative costs and urged ministers to take up a collection for the
committee at Tuesday night's prayer meetings. He asked Chicagoans
sympathetic to the aims of the march to turn on their auto headlights as a sign
of solidarity. Seven prominent clergymen of different faiths said they
would meet with Senator Everett
Dirksen in Washington after the next day's march and ask his
support of the administration's civil rights bill.
The rally, most uncharacteristically, was sponsored by
ANECA itself. "The march will be one of the most significant civil
rights demonstrations in the history of this country," said Sonja Hayes,
an ANECA official. "While we commemorate the Negro's contribution to
the growth of our nation, we must take equal notice of the history being made
today... It is imperative that we provide a forum for this march and that we
give it our full support."
The morning Tribune noted that
one speaker declared, "More progress toward complete acceptance has
been made by the Negro in the last nine years than in the 335 years since 1619,
when he arrived in North America and shackled by the chains of slavery."
It seemed somehow that the historical process of the past century had
been reduced to months, weeks, days. The centennial of Emancipation
embraced the ongoing struggle against segregation. Even as the Century of
Negro Progress Exposition was becoming a staging area for a national civil
rights action, the word "Negro" was itself rapidly losing its dignity
and usage.
Remarkably, all of this activity seemed to be reflected
in the third act of My People, which focused on the
contemporary struggle for civil rights. In recent interviews Ellington
had seemed to distance himself from the turmoil of the moment.
"I've only got about one minute of social protest written into
the script because while this aspect warrants notice, it unfairly tends to
overshadow the continuing contributions of the Negro to American life."
Elsewhere he noted, a bit disingenuously,"My People is definitely
not political. It has social significance, but the emphasis will be on
entertainment."
The final act begins with a second rendition of the
raucous "Jungle Triangle," complete with lighting effects and dancers
as before. Then comes the shocker: "King Fit the Battle of
Alabam,” a bitter parody of the oold spiritual which contains themes and
lyrics totally unprecedented for Ellington. Over Latin percussion
and a rhumba rhythm we hear:
Martin--Luther--King fit the Battle of
Bam--bam--bam!
King fit the Battle of
Bam--bam--bam!
And the Bull jumped
nasty--ghastly--nasty
Each verse adds another element to Ellington's narration,
while the choruses provide apt commentary. The lyrics directly summon the
television images broadcast all over the world, of the fire hoses turned upon
prayer vigils in the streets of Birmingham, of the violence done to Freedom
Riders throughout the South, of police dogs attacking
schoolchildren, as in the final verse:
Little babies fit the battle of police dogs
Po-lice dogs.
Little babies fit the battle of police dogs,
And the dogs came prowling, howling, growling.
The baby looked the dog right back in the eye
And said "bye" and "scram"
The baby looked the dog right back in the eye
And didn't cry and didn't laugh.
Now when the dog saw the baby wasn't afraid
He pulled his Uncle Bull's coat and said,
That baby acts like he don't give a damn
Are you sure we're still in Birmingham?
Toward the end, the band shifts into a more conventional
jazz rhythm to lead into the tag,
the choir and then a delayed final syllable:
"BAM!"
*
A delegation of religious leaders and public officials
chartered a plane for travel to the March early on Wednesday morning, August
28, the day of the March. Billy Strayhorn had already left the show on
Monday and began a three-day break to to join the March (In
the interim pianist Jimmy Jones was expected to conduct the orchestra, without
ever seeing Ellington's closely-guarded score.) Strayhorn first flew to
New York to preside over the annual benefit dance of the Copasetics, a social
and service organization consisting mainly of dancers. This year’s
entertainment was Strayhorn’s own Down Dere, a joyful topical show
to run parallel to My People. The next day he was in
Washington.
Strayhorn had always maintained support for Dr. King's
cause and had accompanied his close friend Lena
Horne to one of the movement's rallies. Other good
friends, the physician Arthur
Logan and his wife Marian, had already arranged for him to stay
at the Willard Hotel in a block of rooms reserved by the SCLC. Strayhorn
had already met Dr. King and here became a member of his retinue before
the March began. Said Marian Logan, "Martin and Strays got together
again, and Strays talked off his ear about Ellington's show and how wonderful
it was. Martin promised to go see it, and after that, he did.
Arthur and I took him, and that was where he met Edward [Ellington] for
the first time.”
While King's August 28 speech before the Lincoln Memorial
is best-known by its "I have a dream" refrain, there was more to it
than that. He spoke emphatically about the Emancipation Centennial to
emphasize what had and had not changed in the preceding hundred years:
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic
shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This
momentous decree came as a great beacon light to millions of Negro slaves
who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice... But one
hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years
later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of
segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the
Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of
material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still
languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his
own land.
*
Confirming the central theme of Black history and
identity, Ellington's first and only protest song was followed by a parade
carrying placards celebrating Black Americans, accompanied by"King,”
an uptempo instrumental version of the preceding. In the words of
Ellington's copyist Tom Whaley, "[Ellington] had them coming
up from the pit. They were in rags, my people, our people, in rags coming
up, and then at the end they were doctors, and lawyers and everything."
In an interview Ellington said, "We send
them out of the hall, the theater, on our closing number, 'What Color Is
Love, What Color Is Virtue?' which is a big question. If you answer the
question, it says everything you want to say," and in Music
Is My Mistress he recalled,
On the subject of color, we had a little girl tell the
story of the green people and the purple people... who fought and fought
till they both won and lived in a state of monotony since they both felt they
had won an empty victory. So they both fought until they both lost. They
were all dead, and there was blood everywhere, no purple blood, no green blood,
it was all red... After the little girl finished telling her story, we
had Joya Sherrill come out and say, 'We finally got on to the subject and
we're sorry. We tried to hold it back as long as we could so we're going
to discuss color now.' And then we had her sing 'What Color Is Love,
What Color Is Virtue?'
Bull Connor's assault on Birmingham demonstrators
Duke Ellington meets Martin Luther King
*
|
|
Billy Strayhorn and Tom Whaley
|
Joya Sherrill sings "What Color Is Virtue
As for My People, there was still one
epilogue. In 1997 Barbara Wright-Pryor, formerly a member of Irving
Bunton's chorus in the 1963 production, helped to revive the show at the New
Regal Theater on Chicago's South Side. "I was privileged
to restage his 1963 musical revue, My People, with Mercedes
Ellington," she said, as stage director and
choreographer. "It was my responsibility to pull together the
singers, the dancers, the entire production, which I remember virtually
from beginning to end." Dr. Robert L. Morris of the Leigh
Morris Chorale of Minneapolis joined as choral director. The process of
recreating the libretto took eleven months.
on the record:
- Duke
Ellington, My People (Contact, 1965)
Generally, the music of My People has
been undervalued, if not entirely discounted, among Ellington's oeuvre.
The performances by the Irving Bunton Singers, including their
participation in radically modified arrangements from Black, Brown and
Beige have seldom been mentioned, and Strayhorn's gorgeous
orchestration for "Heritage (My Mother, My Father and Love)" has
sometimes been disparaged. At this point, sixty years after the original
production, this music is in need of re-evaluation.
