Toodle-oo," and my term paper on jazz bassists inevitably led me to Jimmy Blanton; hence, my first Ellington album was Things Ain't What They Used to Be, a compilation of Ellington small groups led by Johnny Hodges and Rex Stewart in 1940 and 1941.
A year after Elis's death, her brother Rogerio extracted all the tracks in this album; the vocals were then overdubbed on a prerecorded backing track and given a lot of echo, with only one exception, All of the selections are excellent but from this perspective the tracks sound dated '80s-style, full of synths and drum machines and tinny effects. But Elis, even posthumously, didn't seem to care who was in accompaniment.
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| David Baker |
My early jazz education was backwards, in the sense that my first jazz heroes were contemporary masters of "free jazz": Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, John Coltrane, and Archie Shepp, among others.
I was fortunate, in 1972-- my senior year at Indiana University-- to attend a performance on campus of Duke Ellington and His Orchestra. I didn't really know what I was hearing: I spent the first half of the show anxiously checking my wristwatch and left during intermission to make a political speech. This was, after all, the impending revolution
Graduate studies led me in 1979 to join Chicago's Duke Ellington Society (dubbed the Ray Nance chapter). Another component in my Ellington education was"Dick Buckley's Archives of Jazz," on WBEZ radio nightly. At some point around this time, Buckley also devoted four to Ellington recordings alone for four hours each Sunday afternoon.
On one particular show, Buckley played a taped interview with Benny Aasland in New York, from what was to become the first of many international gatherings of the Duke Ellington Study Group.
Dick Buckley doing what he did best
In 1979 or 1980 I interviewed drummer Louis Bellson at his gig at Rick's Cafe Americain, at the Lake Shore Holiday Inn. Unfortunately, I didn't tape the interview, but I do remember his utter enthusiasm when he recalled his time with Duke. When I asked how he fared in the segregated South while touring with the band, he replied sincerely, but ludicrously, that he was able to pass as an albino.
A few months later, in the Chicago Jazz Festival in the late summer, of 1981, Bellson returned to perfom in a quartet with his fellow Ellingtonian, Clark Terry. To WBEZ radio host Neil Tesser, neither had a bad word to say about Ellington.
By that time I was attending Northeastern Illinois University's Center for Inner City Studies in Chicago to earn a Masters in Education degree. Within two years, I wrote a 250-page tome, saddled with the cumbersome title, THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY AS EXPLOITER OF MUSICAL TALENT, AS REFLECTED IN THE CAREER OF DUKE ELLINGTON.
Why Ellington? My first serious interest in jazz had been Bud Powell, as I was earlier deep into bop. The explanation was given in the thesis itself: "By and large,...it must be said that the overwhelming preponderance of [jazz] writing has been little more than a history of Black failure in the American music business.... What we propose to do here is examine America's cultural apparatus by focusing on the career of a Black 'success': Duke Ellington." My approach was close to that of Harvey Cohen's Duke Ellington's America (2010) : to give as much attention to the social and political background as I did to Ellington himself. (Although Duke was to declare countless times, "I live in the realm of art. I have no monetary interests," I have never believed that. Unfortunately, every human being has monetary interests.)
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| from the copy of Ulanov's book I bought at Toad Hall |
In the 1970s, there were few books about Ellington. I began with Barry Ulanov's 1946 biography of Duke, Mercer Ellington's memoir, Duke Ellington in Person , and a few years later Gunther Schuller's Early Jazz to give myself a foundation, especially with the discography Ulanov appends to his biography. There was also a book from the UK called Jazz on Record, which contained extensive commentary on Ellington and reference to over a hundred Ellington recordings on vinyl LPs. After I'd achieved a basic understanding of my subject, I knuckled down to the real work, finding primary sources.: news clippings, advertisements in library stacks and microfilm reels. There was no inkling of even a home computer in the 1970s.
Into the 1980s my searches took me far and wide. I remember several visits to Toad Hall in Rockford, a short drive from Chicago, to buy Ellington records, and I found plenty, almost all 78-rpm. I bought a collection of four discs on the Columbia label called Ellington Special and a splendid double-twelve inch masterpiece, the original issue of Black, Brown and Beige on RCA-Victor. I paid a small fee to have perhaps a dozen shellack discs, recording's I never heard, copied to cassettes on a big variety of labels to open up new vistas of Duke to me.
Mercer Ellington became, in 1979, one of my staunchest allies. Research led me to an interview with him between sets at a performance at the Park West, on the North Side of Chicago.
I felt it had been a good interview (it later became an appendix to my thesis), but I had a stroke of good luck that night: A man who had overheard the conversation approached me and offer to sell his Ellington record collection at a very tempting price. I wound up buying only half of it, and I chose to take the oldies from before the Second World War. One of my purchases was a three-record Columbia box set called The Ellington Era. It was a compilation of the work Ellington had recorded for the label, and it became the cornerstone of my record collection. It also contained a beautiful booklet with fine essays by Stanley Dance and Leonard Feather.
Later the same year, Mercer returned to Chicago for the orchestra's performance at the Auditorium Theater downtown. We conversed casually until the band came onstage, during which time he introduced me to the great Cootie Williams, who went out with me for coffee in the nearby Palmer House hotel on Wabash Avenue.
After the Ellington band began to play I wandered backstage to meet the main attraction of the evening, the divine Sarah Vaughan. When I knocked on the door, I was surprised to discover her without her show clothes, including her wig. I timidly asked for and received her autograph on a piece of paper I had with me.
What I really wanted was to ask her to run away with me forever.
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| Cootie Williams |
Harvey G. Cohen
Almost immediately after writing my thesis, I wanted to expand it into a larger, more up-to-date book, so I mailed copies out to prospective publishers. For a while I received nothing but rejection slips, until I caught the interest of Oxford University Press editor Sheldon Meyer. (I was naive; as it turned out, Oxford sat on my manuscript for months, in order to come out later with a lackluster book by James Lincoln Collier, in order to avoid potential competition with my own work.)
.
The Chicago chapter of the Duke Ellington Society (dubbed the "Ray Nance chapter by our unofficial leader, Don Miller). As far as my listening was concerned, Don was indispensable; he had a sizeable collection of Ellington records and was happy to make cassette copies for me.
"All for the love of Duke"
"I have only two heroes: Duke Ellington and Thomas Jefferson."
lived alone in the Hyde Park area.
1. getting acquainted; her 12-year old daughter.
2. "If you want to know Ellington, listen to the music; if you want to know Strayhorn, listen to the words... longing and loss
3. visiting her in hospital (appendectomy?)
4. rehearsing "Lush Life" with her.
5. invited her to speak to my Honors class.
6. She has elected to devote the rest of her life to religion, but her name still turns up on the Duke-LYM email list with pertinent comments and announcements (she still keeps a hand in the Ellington game).
"Salute to Strayhorn": Interview with Bill Charlap and Alyce Claerbaut
CA. 1979, I SPOKE WITH LOUIS BELLSON AT RICK'S CAFE AMERICAINE AT THE LAKE SHORE HOLIDAY INN. GEORGE DUVIVIER WAS IN HIS TRIO. BELLSON'S STORY ABOUT PASSING FOR "ALBINO" IN THE DEEP SOUTH.
1981 CHICAGO JAZZ FESTIVAL IN GRANT PARK: Bellson & Clark Terry were interviewed after their performance (by Neil Tesser?)
HELEN ENNICO, of TDES in New York, gave me all the contact information I needed for my journey to Southern California in the summer of 1982, from Patricia Willard to Stanley Dance.
B. Leonard Feather, at his home, Sherman Oaks, CA
1. mic set-up in his living room. We sat on armchairs, my Dad seated a few feet away.
2. for about half an hour we spoke in generalities: BB&B controversy, John Hammond, etc.
3. I had come prepared with FBI records, notes on Duke's 1950 European tour and his signature on the antiwar Stockholm Peace Petition, Ellington's lawsuit against the CPUSA and article in the right-wing The New Leader. When I raised questions about DE's subsequent reaction to the Red Scare, Feather became defensive; after another 15 minutes, he was shouting at me and practically threw me out
DE'S SON-IN-LAW? Daniel James, probably wrote the New Leader piece.
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| Duke with Sid Kuller, 1941 |
C. Sid Kuller, at his home in Beverly Hills
1. revival of Jump for Joy, at Miami Beach's Copa City, Jan. 20-Feb. 8, 1959
a. large cast, including singers Barbara McNair, Timmie Rogers (accompanied by a vocal trio and full choir on "Show 'Em You Got Class."
b. Timner: "It appears that one entire show in the time span... was recorded live for the Columbia label; however, nothing has been released as yet [1996?].
"There is a tape circulating among collectors, which contains some of the material listed..."
c. during our interview, Kuller played 3 tunes from his own cassette tape: I was able to hear an updated "I Got it Bad," Barbara McNair and Timmie Rogers on "The Natives Are Restless Tonight," and another song I can't remember. To my everlasting regret, I lost my own recording of the interview, including the songs.
2. Kuller with DE&HO touring the Soviet Union, 1971
a. hostility of USSR govt?
b. students from Patrice Lumumba University call Harry Carney a "nigger."
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RETURN TO CHICAGO, AUGUST 1982
Joe Igo, Kenosha
John Steiner, Kenosha
Tribune obit: Howard Reich
John Steiner, 91, widely regarded as the world's foremost authority on early Chicago jazz, Died Saturday, June 3, 2001...
Mr. Steiner, who was smitten with the music during the first great blossoming in Chicago in the 1920s, amassed a unique personal collection of about 35,000 records plus sheet music, newspaper articles and related ephemera. The collection will be housed in the Jazz Archive of the University of Chicago Library... Born in Milwaukee and trained as a chemist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Mr. Steiner nourished his emerging passion for jazz by spending weekends in the nightspots of Chicago's South Side. Early on he came to know key figures such as pianist Earl Hines and drummer Baby Dodds, and befriended members of the fabled Austin High Gang (including cornetist Jimmy McPartland and saxophonist Bud Freeman.
"He would take the train down from Milwaukee or Madison and make it a weekend in
Chicago, absorb as much of the club scene as he could, then sleep in the train station, recalled Richard Wang, professor of music at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"It was through his contacts with so many musicians he was able to begin to build his collection, and he was doing it in the 1930s, when most people were not interested in this music and its history in Chicago," added Wang.
"Without his research and appetite for Chicago music, we would be bereft information upon which future histories of this music will be based. He was the seminal figure in documenting the history of Chicago jazz."
Though Mr. Steiner worked full time as a research chemist and, in the 1960s and '70s, taught at UIC, he used his off-hours to document music in Chicago. In 1946, he dragged a portable recording machine to the Civic Opera House, climbed the catwalk above the stage, dangled a microphone below and captured the DE Orchestra on recordings that would not have existed without such efforts.
As self-styled oral historian, he taped hundreds of hours of interviews, but the exact contents of this will not be known for years, since U. of C. archivists will have to catalog two truckloads of material.
"It's a treasure-trove, said curator Gillespie, "but it's also a preservation nightmare."
In the 1940s, Mr. Steiner promoted concerts featuring McPartland and Freeman, among others, and with Hugh Davis started S&D Records to issue Chicago jazz recordings. By leasing and, in 1949, purchasing the catalogue of the old Paramount record label, Mr. Steiner was able to reissue historic recordings of Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, among others.
Descriptive summary of John Steiner Collection
471 boxes
contains sheet music, articles, photographs, scrapbooks, correspondence, interviews, ephemera, and publications
Steiner: 7/21/1908, Milwaukee - 6/3/2001, Milwaukee
at the age of 12 he became the hat-check person at his father's music lodge in Milwaukee
took piano lessons at home and while at UWIS; also attended Axel Christianson's music school
as a teenager fixed his friends' radios and would hear a variety of music
his aunt Juliana, who worked qat a music store, would bring home chipped phonographs for him to listen
the ODJB made an impression on Steiner early on
Steiner was present at one of our Ellington Society gatherings when he gave me a copy of Duke's "Jig Walk on an ancient-looking 78 rpm record; he held the rights to that transcription of a piano roll from the 1920s. I recall Dick Buckley being there, too, along with Henry Quarles, all the way from Pewaukee, Wisconsin. Henry handed me a copy of an Index to Music Is My Mistress, an eighty-two page pamphlet by H. F. Huon, which was packed with useful information. I wish it were still in print.
Within a month of my sojourn in Southern California, along with other Chicagoans I attended what turned out to be the second annual international Ellington convention in Detroit (the first had been in New York the year prior). The first Ellington experts I met were Brooks Kerr and Jerry Valburn. Jerry was proud to show me the Ellington logo he'd fashioned for one of his several record labels.
Dick Buckley interview of Benny Aasland at the 1981 conversation in NY
described
Aasland's "chiseled features" description
remembers his thick Swedish accent: "Echoes of the "Yoongle"
Benny relates the enthusiasm for jazz all over the world
He said that he enjoyed "the entire spectrum of Ellington," not just the Cotton Club band, the Blanton-Webster band or the Newport band.
I knew next to nothing about Brooks Kerr, save that he was reputed to be a walking encyclopedia of Ellingtonia. He was a few years younger than I, but from the age of 28 was totally blind due to a degenerative retinal disease and glaucoma. He learned to play piano by assigning colors in his mind for each key. He studied formally at nearby Yale University and the Foote School. For a few years in the 1950s, he took private lessons from Jean Brown and a few years later worked with Russell Regain New Haven. Starting in 1964, he studied for eight years with Sanford Gold, at the Dalton School, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Juilliard School in New York. At points along the way, Kerr studied jazz with pianists Lucky Roberts and Willie "The Lion" Smith.
Following Ellington's death in 1974, Brooks recorded an album with Sonny Greer on the Chiaroscuro label, Soda Fountain Rag, and now in 1982 he honored my request for New World A-Comin' at the grand piano in the hotel lobby. For his presentation the following afternoon, however, he used his portable Cassio electronic keyboard. He entertained us with stories and demonstrated a couple of rarely-heard. post-"Soda Fountain Rag" Ellington composition, first one titled "Bitches Ball" (a fragment of which appeared in the final movement of Black, Brown and Beige), and with lyrics the self-explanatory "Whatcha Gonna Do When the Bed Breaks Down." Following these, he proceeded to demonstrate the ribald lyrics of "The Boy in the Boat," whose cleaned-up successor was Fats Waller's famous "Squeeze Me."
Washington, DC, 1983
*
In 1984, the annual convention was held in Oldham, England. I couldn't make that trip, but I caught a break when it moved to Chicago in May,1985. Willis Conover, famed jazz d.j. for the Voice of America overseas, was present, as was Gunther Schuller. He too had received a copy of my 1980 thesis, but he'd had no time to read it. Mark Tucker, just lately out of the University of Michigan's college of music, talked about his still-unpublished study, Early Ellington. (He was not impressed by my attempt at "Black and Tan Fantasy" between sessions on the piano at the conference dais.). John Steiner, along with his Chicago cohorts, spoke to the assembly as well. But the most interesting talk of all was that of Robert E. Johnson, the former executive editor of Jet magazine.
Through his career as a journalist, Johnson became a longtime and intimate associate of Ellington, as close to Ellington as anyone outside his family could be. When speaking to Johnson, Duke always addressed him as "Ro-Bear," in the French manner). His presentation, "More Conversations with Duke,"concerned Ellington's opinions on almost everything: journalists in general, as a parent, on education, his band personnel, consistency, religiosity; as a "libertarian," on race; as a role model, and finally the way he was portrayed by Johnson Publishers the parent company of Jet.
Eddie Lambert, one of the UK's foremost Ellington experts, spoke the same day. I had the pleasure of meeting him and his companion, Elaine Norsworthy, between sessions. It had been Eddie Lambert's Ellington entry in Jazz On Record that had given me a great start collecting records, but he was surprised to hear that a relatively short piece could have impressed a jazz enthusiast halfway around the world. Eddie's presentation to the. convention concerned his findings leading up to the publication of his Duke Ellington: A Listener's Guide in 1992.
Then it was my own turn to speak on the subject of Ellington's first visit to Chicago in 1931. (The audience couldn't see my knees trembling at the start, and they laughed at a joke I told while a reel of recording tape was replaced.) I began with the need of a multi-dimensional look at Duke's career and then proceeded with my account of Ellington's first visit to Chicago in 1931, built of clippings from the local press.
Rutgers University Newark, Institute of Jazz Studies, 1986
Author and curator of the Institute, Dan Morgenstern, Martin Williams, one of the world's most admired jazz writers. I don't remember much about Morgenstern's conference presentation, I still remember and agree with his opinion that the music for Anatomy of a Murder was almost too good for the movie.
presentation on Jump for Joy
Willard herself reported the Ellington Conference 2016 in DownBeat magazine.
Willard became the first woman to receive the
Klause Stratemann's. Duke Ellington: Day by Day and Film by Film was published in 1999.
3. Sjef Hoefsmidt
DEMS memorial to Eddie Lambert and Claus Stratemann
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| Benny Aasland |
VI. The 1990s forward
phone call to Joya Sherrill in New York; her own lyrics to "Take the 'A' Train." We agreed that Duke Ellington was "larger than life."
A. I realized I'd got in over my head in the ocean of Ellingtonia and took a break to listen to other music and restore my balance.
B. took out a subscription to Blue Light from 2016 until the COVID pandemic in 2020.
C. found out this year that the editor is interested in my stuff, so there should be new articles ahead, old and new.
D. a colorful, interactive version of this piece can be found on my blog at
http://dancai.blogspot.com/2021/12/memories-of-alice-babs.html
IN ROTATION:
Brian Wilson,What I Really Want for Christmas (Arista, 2005)
Coming on the heels of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE, Brian's solo Christmas album is one to put under the tree. It doesn't really compare with The Beach Boys Christmas Album from 1964, one of the finest yuletide albums ever. But it does have a some delights of its own, particularly three new, charming "Christmasy" songs.
- Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Mike Love, Bruce Johnston and Special Guests, Symphonic Sounds: Music of The Beach Boys (Platinum Entertainment, 1998)
The jury is still out, but I believe this one will far out shine the following recording:
- The Beach Boys with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Capitol, 2018)
Yecchhh! The Beach Boys and Capitol Records agreed to piss on the group's greatest hits.
- Miles Davis, The Columbia Years, 1956-1985 (CBS 5-LP box set, 1988)
- Elis Regina, Luz Das Estrelas (Som Livre/ Gala, 1982)
A year after Elis's death, her brother Rogerio extracted all the tracks in this album; the vocals were then overdubbed on a prerecorded backing track and given a lot of echo, with only one exception, All of the selections are excellent but from this perspective the tracks sound dated '80s-style, full of synths and drum machines and tinny effects. But Elis, even posthumously, didn't seem to care who was in accompaniment.
The one exception I mentioned, "Velho Arvaredo," is a perfect demonstration, in its first verse, of how beautiful a woman's voice can be while accompanied by a solo guitar.
NEXT: Ellington's Harlem Suite
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