"More Conversations with Duke"

By Robert E. Johnson

The annual DESG convention in Chicago, May 16-19,1984 brought together Ellington fans and scholars of all stripes:  Mark Tucker, Willis Conover, Gunther Schuller, Eddie Lambert...  It was also the first of two conferences in which I myself made a presentation.

On May 19, the final speaker was Robert E. Johnson (1922-1996), the former editor-in-chief  of Jet magazine, bringing the entire proceedings to a close.  His was a spirited, imaginative and reflective talk, which I reproduce here.

 

Ellington.  Even when you say the name, Duke is here.  I was struck by Willis's presentation, flattering Duke, but flattery:  that's Duke's forte.  He made a lot of flattery by his use of music when he was with us, and he left us a lot of flattery in music.

I've been fortunate to have known this man close-up as a journalist, because there weren't many journalists who can make that claim, that they, as journalists, were able to come close to Duke.  If there was any breed, any category of people Ellington did not embrace in his "four kisses" society, it was journalists.   And if you've read some things that have been written by journalists about Ellington, you could understand why he felt that way.  Ellington was the kind of person who really liked to be open and free, but had difficulty talking to the media, because for the most part, whenever he decided to do an interview, he very seldom recognized himself when it came out in print.  I think this is true of Michael Jackson, too.

I first met Ellington as a fan in 1944, as a sailor.  I served in the United States Navy at Treasure Island, in San Francisco.  I first met him person-to-person, face-to-face in 1948, as a journalist.  I began my journalism career working for the Atlanta Daily World.  I’m very fortunate to have known this man.  There are not many journalists who could make that claim.  I got a chance to meet with him and talk with him in 1953, until he decided to "move off the scene," as we knew him.

During those years, I can hardly recall only a few interviews that I was able to get from Duke-- "Maestro," I called him, and he called me "Ro-bear"-- He said, "Ro-bear, just bring your tape recorder and we'll record our conversation.  I don't feel like being interviewed."  We usually started in his dressing room and, after his performance, to his hotel, where there were sometimes parties with his friends.  Usually, the moments that I cherish most occurred in his dressing room, where he laid back flat on the floor with his feet on the wall -- he had a scientific explanation for it—and we’d turn on the tape recorder. Sometimes we'd sit for one or maybe two hours, and I'd say to him, "Maestro, I'm going to make a copy of the tape and send it back to you, because some of the things we’ve talked about will go into publication."  He would say, "Now Ro-bear, do you expect me to sit down and listen to an hour or two of every damn time we have one.  Why don't you pick out what you would like to use and go ahead and use it, because I trust you."

In some of the tapes, Ellington, as eloquent as he is with the King's English, sometimes would use non-theological lingo, and you would have difficulty extricating that from the flowery, pretty parts of the conversation.  Yet I think some of that kind of conversation was really essentially Ellington.  He would leave himself vulnerable; there were not many people Ellington would allow himself to become vulnerable to.

Even now, the Maestro is here, and he would say, "Ro-bear, gee, looking back on some of those tapes, you could get some good kiss-and-tell books out of them.  It seems that's what journalism is about these days."  But I would smile back and say, "Maestro, I'm not Milton Coleman, so what Milton Coleman did to Jesse Jackson, you would never have done to you.  Whatever we talk about in confidence, we'll keep it in confidence.”  But much of what Ellington and I talked about is a matter of public consumption, because it's just another type of dimension.  It would take everyone who's ever met Ellington to really talk about him.  If you really want to know him, that's what you would literally have to do:  get the universe to come in, because no one ever had a chance to really know this man.  You're talking about an enigma, wrapped up in one, and trying to extricate and untangle that and put it out is indeed difficult to do.  Sometimes when he was really trying to make himself vulnerable, he'd catch what he was doing.  Then he would turn it in a humorous way and say, "Gee, did I really say that?  Is that true?  Is that the way I really feel about that?  How are we going to treat that?" he would go on sometimes.

He meant a lot to me as a journalist, as a philosopher, as an educator, as a religionist.  I always like to use the term "libertarian" when it comes to Ellington, about the Four Freedoms.  I still think of Ellington in the present tense, because he was one of the freest in this universe in thought, because he had that way of trying never to be locked in his mind when he came to a bind.  He was in a certain stir about people who wanted to contain him, to categorize him and put him into certain compartments so they could deal with him.  His philosophy had a lot of transfer value for me about how to do the work I'm involved in.

I can think of one occasion when Esquire Magazine used to give out awards to soloists and bands.  For about a decade or more, Esquire would give out the awards, and the number one trumpeter would be Cootie Williams, number one baritone Harry Carney, number one tenor Ben Webster, later Paul Gonsalves, number one trombonist Lawrence Brown.  You could just go down the Ellington roster; it just dominated the Esquire and Down Beat polls.  One day I said to him, "Maestro, how do you get along with a band full of bandleaders?  Look at any one of these guys, because if he decided to leave,  he could start his own band." 

I remember him saying to me, "Ro-bear, when I was in Washington, I was a soda jerk, and I put a little group together and hit the road to see what we could do.  I decided something right there:  I wasn't going to let no son of a bitch give me ulcers.  I discovered that ulcers are not so much about what's eating you, but who's eating you."

He explained that by saying, "Whenever there are problems that are professional, you can solve them as a professional.  Personal problems are a little more difficult.  Say I'm writing some music, and the band's getting ready to discuss it.  Johnny Hodges looks at the sheet music and says, "That A-sharp should be a B-flat."  I said, "No, Johnny, that's A-sharp.  I'll ask Tom Whaley, who writes it out, ‘What is it?’  Tom says A-sharp.

“Johnny says, ‘I don't give a damn what Tom Whaley or anybody else says.  Hell, it's B-flat.’

“As of that moment I know I’m not having a professional argument.  Johnny Hodges is pissed at me about something; it’s personal.  So instead of arguing with Johnny Hodges, I’ll walk away and write music and make money for all of us.”

Basically, that’s the way Duke tried to deal with conflicts, in his own organization or wherever, always tried to be a professional, and when it’s personal, try to avoid it and try to avoid ulcers.

Of course, Ellington was probably the world’s top practicing physician without a license.  He used to amaze me.  At first, I approached Ellington’s home remedies with a great deal of trepidation.  But I finally got into Ellington’s medical bag, and some of that stuff really worked for people who were not Duke Ellington, because he had his remedies and prescriptions.  On the major things, he relied upon a doctor, and sometimes he would have to fly around the world, for a seizure or any kind of major problem.

Ellington was a philosopher who talked a great deal about life.  One of the things he always said to me, “Ro-bear, life is a gift.  What do you do with it?  You use it.  You can’t take it to the bank and put it in a safe-deposit box.  When you feel you’ve got all the money you want, you’ve got your career where you want it, and then go to that safe-deposit box and pull it out and say, ‘Now I’m going to live it.’  See?  You have to do this every day.”

After the seventieth birthday concert that President Richard Nixon gave to him—When I say “Nixon,” in my community, the name raises a lot of emotions.  I don’t want to talk about Nixon as a political person; I want to talk about what he did for Ellington, and some personal things with me, because I did travel to Russia and Iran with him, and a number of countries as a journalist.  But when he, the President of the United States paid tribute to Ellington on his seventieth birthday, it was really the first time the United States of America really recognized where the crowned heads and royalty around the world had known this man, revered and honored him.

And so, this was great.  Afterwards, I said to him, “Maestro, you’ve hit the big seven -o.  The President in the big house has laid it on you.  I guess there’s nothing left for you to do but retire.”

“Retire? Retire to what?” He asked me the question.  I scratched my head to think of a place to retire to.  “Probably one of those New York studio jobs where you can sit down and just write.  Or maybe go to Hollywood and just write.”

He’d say, “Ro-bear, you know my music.  I would die in a studio.  We’d get nothing accomplished.  People and things, sights, sounds:  that’s where I get my music.  And retirement?  Death is retirement.”

But now I’d say, “Maestro, we’re still listening to your music,” and he hasn’t really retired yet.

Duke talked about parenting.  That was a funny scene, because that’s a sensitive chord, when you talk about his wife or his mother, about the family.  Edna:  he’d rather not talk about it.  He’d rather not talk about parenting.  He said, “You know, Ro-bear, virtually my whole life, I’ve been my mother’s son.  I could probably say more about her parenting me than my own parenting of Mercer.”

We had this conversation at Ravinia.  I remember Mercer came in while we were taping our own talk.  He was bringing in the report on the band receipts, money and this kind of thing.  Duke said, “I need a little more money to go somewhere.”

Mercer said, “No, I’ve got you on a budget.  I already gave you money for this period of time.  I know you’re going to spend it on friends and this and that.”  Duke said, “Listen to this cocksucker here.  He’s got all my money and telling me what and how he’s going to give it to me, and what I’m going to do with it.

“But, you know, Mercer’s the best thing that ever happened to me.  He’s pretty tight-fisted now.  Hell, I don’t even know what he’s doing with it; he may be stealing it.  But if he’s stealing it, it stays in the family, and that’s more than I can say about what happened previously.”

Mercer was the best thing that ever happened to his dad, in the last decade or so of his life.  It was a beautiful relationship between these two men.  It was at some points adversarial, but not much from Duke, because I don’t think Duke really wanted to be a real father.  He was a different kind of man.  He listened, but he jokingly would say it was easier for himself to attract women, because Mercer had all that white hair.  “He looks like the daddy; I look like the son.”  But Mercer would measure out his fair portion, and Duke survived because he had a friend.  Mercer was the best thing that ever happened to his dad, in the last decade or so of his life.  It was a beautiful relationship between these two men.  It was at some points adversarial, but not much from Duke, because I don’t think Duke really wanted to be a father.

I was always fascinated by his ideas on education.  I wonder what would have happened if he’d been on the board of education of a high school, or college, or university.  Some of his notions were rather unorthodox; trying to deal with a kid wandering around, trying to find himself, he’d say, “Give him a little rope until he makes up his mind what he wants to do.  Education never begins until that moment you decide what you want to do, and then go in pursuit of that.  Then you become educated.”

There was a lot to be said about such an approach.  I remember when I was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, when George Washington carver came on one occasion to give a lecture about education.  He said, “Learn to do what you know you should and have to do, even though you don’t want to do what you shouldn’t ought do.”  That had the ring of Ellingtonia to me, so those things to me served to validate George Washington Carver’s, even though he needs no validation.

I understood when I was angry at my daughter.  My youngest daughter, Janet, was studying flute and did pretty well.  She had started in grade school, and by the time she was in eleventh grade, she became lead flautist in an all-city orchestra.  She received a summer scholarship to the University of Kansas in Lawrence.  She had recorded with the orchestra, the marching band, the swing band, and so on.

I had the recording of Ellington’s “Black Swan,” with Norris Turney’s beautiful flute solo, and I put it on just to play it. Janet came into the room and started listening.  I just walked out of the room, and the next thing I knew, I heard it recycled, all over again, and then a third time, “Black Swan.”  She then left the room to pick up her flute, went back to listening.  I got my tape recorder and, without her knowing it, put it on the floor. “

I took the tape to Duke and said to him, “Maestro, my daughter heard your ‘Black Swan” and got her flute, and this is what she was trying to do with it.”  I put it on, and he said, “She plays like that?  She plays pretty well.  I’ll tell you what I want you to do, Ro-bear:  when I get to Ravinia, I want her to do the solo for me.”  Johnny Hodges was in the room listening and said, “I’ll give her a gift of a new flute.  She probably likes the one she has, but I’ll get her a new one,” from whatever company that made his alto saxophone.

So, I was bursting with pride.  I got home to Janet and said, “I got you a date with the Duke at Ravinia.”  She asked, “What for?” and I said to play “Black Swan.”  She said, “Daddy, you know I can’t play “Black Swan.”  I said, “Yes, you can.  I taped it."  Then I pushed the button to play it.  She got angry with me.  "I didn't know anything about this!"

The point is that she just got cold feet and would not play that part, and her daddy never got a chance to say, "I have a daughter who played with Duke Ellington."  That young lady is a lawyer; she did not go into music.  But this is what Ellington said:  Don't try to mold them in your direction.  Let them find what they want to do, and then let them do it.

I never got tired of talking to Maestro about his musicians, how well he knew them individually.  Most bandleaders would pass out sheet music to the musicians and rehearse.  They would want to hear an alto or a baritone, just the instruments.  But Ellington was listening to men, and he would talk about them.  That always amazed me; I don't know if he told them some of the things he told me about them.  He felt the best way to honor an individual was to respect that individual, to listen to him.

His own role was discovering talent. He always felt if a person had one talent and worked at it full-time, he had more regard for him than one who had ten talents, who would give you ten one day, eight another day, some days three, and some days, you don't even know that he'll show up.  The consistency of that one talent was something he gloried in and felt good about.

 He always tried to gauge his musicians so that he would know what day he's going to get three, what day he'll get five.  Of all the people in his band, Johnny Hodges; you didn't know what talent on any one day or given performance, because sometimes Johnny-- Rabbit-- would walk on the bandstand while the band was playing.  I've been at performances when Rabbit would put his alto on the piano, and he'd listen to the intermission pianist and wouldn't play.

 

But Ellington was never offended.  He had a nice way of dealing with things like this.  I remember one occasion, not in Chicago but somewhere, he said to Johnny, "The people love you and want you to play 'All of me.'  They've heard the recording of it."  He tried to flatter him, but he didn't respond, so Ellington picked another soloist, Lawrence Brown.  I think that rubbed Johnny the wrong way.  Ellington had a way of handing solo parts to various musicians.  Sometimes you wonder why he'd do that.

 

You really have to listen to the members of the Ellington band to hear and appreciate them.  But I had problems with this, because sometimes we would talk, and I didn't know whether he was putting me on.  For example, we were talking about "Take the 'A' Train" once, and I asked him who he liked best on trumpet on the "'A' Train."  He waffled and said, "Whoever's playing it.  Who's your favorite soloist?"  I said my favorite soloist was Taft Jordan.  Then he asked me, "Did you ever hear Ray Nance play it?"

 

I said, "Yep."

 

"Did you ever listen to Cootie play it?"

 

I said, "Yep."

 

"Did you ever hear Clark Terry play it?"

 

"Yep."

 

"Did you ever hear Shorty Baker play it?  Did you ever hear Willie Cook?"

 

I said, "Yep."

 

"But Ro-bear, you never heard anybody but Taft Jordan.  When these guys get up to play it, you never hear it, because you're only listening to Taft Jordan, so you're being unfair."  I thought about that for a while.  Whenever I asked who his favorite soloist was, he'd say, "Whoever I'm listening to," because that's who he's paying attention to.

 

I asked him once about his male vocalists.  "Maestro, you've had Hibbler, you've had some male vocalists, but why the dry run through here?"  He said, "It's hard to get a male vocalist, and I'll tell you why, because Billy Eckstine has fucked up about ten generations of male vocalists.

Everybody wants to sound like Mr. B.  So, I just rely on my instrumentalists to take care of my solo responsibilities."

 

The Maestro was always attentive, listening to his musicians.  I had the pleasure of attending a number of recording sessions and just watched the guy work.  Here in Chicago, he recorded at Universal Studios the album Will the Big Band Ever Come Back?  On this day, he was rehearsing a song and had Mercer out, conducting the band.  Ellington said, "Hold it, hold it, hold it!" and walked over to Jimmy Hamilton and said, "What have you got against finishing with the rest of us?"

 

Jimmy said, in effect, "Look, Duke:  you've crowded all these notes in this measure, give me this tempo, and you expect me to play them and get there on time with everybody else."  Duke said, "Oh, so that's what's bothering you, all those notes in the measure.  I'll tell you what:  why don't you leave some of them out?  Pick out the pretty ones, the ones you like."  Then he went out and gave the downbeat.  Afterwards, he went over to Jimmy and said, "Hey, you picked out the pretty ones!"    To see this man motivate and work his individual musicians was just a pleasure I envied myself, because I had no business going there.

 

But for Ellington, above all else, the basis was religiosity.  I don't mean this in any formal sense.  My assessment is that Ellington feared God, illness, death, especially the fear of God.  He wasn't a fanatic about it.  He didn't go out to proselytize or convert.  If you could talk to him you would know that. The very last conversation I had with him in life was in Chicago, before he left to play his Sacred Concert in England.   He had just finished his book, Music Is My Mistress, and he wanted a book party at Johnson Publishing.  I talked to my publisher, Johnny Johnson, about it.  He looked forward to that; he would finish his book, and we would have some little part in this.

 

I said, "Maestro, why don't we have lunch, and we'll talk about it."  He said, "No, Ro-bear.  I'm trying to finish up my Concert of Sacred Music, which I'll do when I leave here."  I said, "Maestro, I remember talking to Dr. W.E.B. DuBois on one occasion.  He never made an apology for using the best thought ever uttered on this subject matter.  For example, 'The problem of race is the problem of the Twentieth Century.'  He expressed that thought many times, and when he stole it from himself, it wasn't plagiarism.  Maestro, you've written a lot of sacred music, and you could borrow some of what you've done, and the people would never know the difference."

 

He said, "But Ro-bear, you can't jive God.  I've got to stick with it.  I have no problem with that, because I'm writing new music.  If it hadn't been for that, I would have the time, but I have to write this new music."  That's what Ellington was, because of his religiosity and his God and his feeling.

 

 Politically, Ellington was a great libertarian.  He didn't talk about race, because he tried to make statements in his music:  "What Color Is Love?"  He was a universal man who looked upon human beings, rather than as Jews or gentiles, blacks or whites, Mexican or Spanish, and so on.  They were all God's children.  But he knew the reality of what he'd lived and what he could do.   

 

Jump for Joy was probably the great statement he made on race.  I once asked him, "Do you ever go out to shows on Broadway?  Leslie Uggams has a show on called Hallelujah, Baby.  Did you see it?  What did you think of it?"

 

He said, "Damn, in Jump for Joy we buried Uncle Tom in the first movement.  To see this cotton-pickin', braids, and this kind of crap back on Broadway.  I was shocked.  Things I hate-- Oh, did I say that?  Oh, Leslie baby, you were given your talent, and you were exquisite in the way you used it.  Love you madly for that."  The first observation was what Ellington really felt, and he felt that way about what was really going on in the Black community.

 

We had some laughs about that.  One of those papers, The Afro-American, had made a cartoon of Duke sitting at the piano.  He had a bandanna on his head, and his song was, "We ain't ready yet."  Much of what Ellington had been talking about was the concept that Blacks should get some economics together, millions of dollars, and cooperating in joint ventures together, in order to enhance their respect in the community.

 

He said, "You know, Ro-bear, there was a time I could come to the South Side and shake hands with umpteen Black millionaires." This was now in the '70s.  "Now, I shake hands with your boss, John Johnson and Percy Julian and maybe a couple of others, then I just run out of hands. "Now when I go to the South Side to visit some longtime establishments, I find they're all gone downtown.  'Integration' is what they call it.  Is that all that integration is about?  If it is, I can't understand it.  That kind of integration doesn't make sense.  If your music is a commodity, and it's worth selling on the market, then it seems to me the community should cross over and make you a millionaire."  Duke lamented that some of the leadership in the Black community had taken that way.

 

He mostly was apolitical, but he came out once in a while.  When Barry Goldwater was running for President of the United States, and he made a statement about "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice," Ellington said to me, "Did you hear that guy?  Did you hear what he said?  The last time I heard talk like that, six million Jews died.  We can't have somebody like that as President."   He didn't ask me to erase that.

 

Ellington was the kind of guy who, if you got to talk with him and know him as a journalist, would say, "How come you all ask the same question?  Do you all have a big meeting and say, 'Ellington is going to be on tour.  If you meet him in Stockholm, ask him this; if you meet him in New York, ask him this; if you meet him in Atlanta, ask him this.'  You all ask the same questions, and you find yourselves repeating yourself.  I have enough trouble writing music and dealing with people.  I feel like I'm twenty-five years ahead of everything and everybody musically.  But there are things that I've forgotten or left in the trunk, or people have just learned it and start requesting it, so I have to play it. That's one of the reasons I keep my band together.  When I write, I can always hear it come right back to me."

 

To me, Ellington represented all that is, in terms of a human being.  He's so human; he's so great with so much that had personal transfer value, and a lot of what he talked about I liked to share with our readers.  They read it in Ebony, they read it in Jet, and we had a publication called Negro Digest.  Sometimes he said, "Why don't you give me a pen and let me write the article, without the interview?"  And he'd write some pieces for us.  Some of the articles we treasure most from our files were articles that Ellington sat down and wrote himself.  We also cherish a lot of interviews we did.

 

But the man himself taught me a lot about life and living.  When we started talking about eating-- food-- that to me was probably the most humorous and yet the most unorthodox, most meaningful conversations we had.  Ellington would violate the format:  he would start with a dish of ice cream and work his way back to the main course.

 

Another reason we got along was that he knew he wasn't a banker, and he wouldn't be keeping banker's hours.  If you, as a journalist, could stay up until three or four in the morning and be alert-- yes, you can do a lot of talking and get a lot of stories that way.  But Ellington would say, "Ro-bear, when we wake up, we've got to get a good meal.  This may be the last one before we finish our gig."  There's a lot to be said for that.  Whatever time you wake up, get your best meal, because you may or may not have the time, depending on your profession.  He said, "You know, the real luxury in this business would be able to find time for three meals a day and eight hours of sleep.  That's a luxury."

 

I don't know if the Maestro ever achieved that in his lifetime, especially eight hours of sleep, because part of the time he wanted to sleep his music was waking him up.  He'd have the urge to write.  I'd think, "You could wake up tomorrow morning and write it down."  He said, "It doesn't work that way.  Whenever the musical idea comes, you have to write it down, or you'll lose it.  I've lost a lot of songs, saying I would get to it tomorrow morning."

 

Imagine Ellington losing a song, as many songs that he wrote.  This man represented to me, as a journalist, probably the greatest experience I've had, the pleasure of knowing this guy.  To document and perpetuate and extend what he gave a lifetime doing is really commendable.  He's almost ready to slip off the coils of mortality, just long enough to enjoy our recessional, and then return to immortality, where he exists and will exist forever.