Ellington Meets Chicago

I gave the following presentation to the Duke Ellington Music Society's fourth international convention, in Chicago, Illinois.  The event took place over four days in May,1984, and was put together by Richard Wang, head of the music department at the University of Illinois in Chicago, assisted by members of the Ray Nance Chapter of the Duke Ellington.  Luminaries present included Gunther Schuller, Willis Conover, and Robert E. Johnson, the former chief editor at Jet Magazine.  Mark Tucker, fresh out of graduate school at the University of Michigan, was also present.  From the U.K. came the author George Edward "Eddie" Lambert with his companion, Elaine Norsworthy.

The first few minutes of my talk was not related to the topic, so I omit it here. 

To Ellington, Chicago in the 1950s meant the Blue Note.  The archives of that legendary establishment, permanently archived at the Chicago Historical Society, reveal a partnership between Duke and the club's owner, Frank Holzfeind, that lasted over ten years.  It culminated with the band's appearance there in 1955 was for six weeks.   In 1956 and 1957, seven weeks.  And before the Blue Note closed for the last time, the Ellington band played for a full eight weeks in 1959:  that is, roughly one night out of every six the band resided at the Blue Note.

What else comes to mind concerning Chicago?  Well, there was the Civic Opera House during the years of Ellington's "social significance" thrusts, as Duke put it.  There was Ray Nance, and there still is the exquisite Kay Davis, both Chicagoans.  There was the little-remembered bassist, Hayes Alvis, who was born and raised in Chicago.  Freddie Guy died in Chicago tragically, in 1971.  There was the Congress Hotel series from 1936, when we had the Mills organization and a young Toronto debutante named Hellen Oakley, and a bunch of traditional jazz nuts called the Chicago Rhythm Club, all working overtime to put the wind in Duke's sails in the mid-30s.  The very first Ellington recording to originate outside a recording studio, as far as we know, was taken from the WMAQ and WENR broadcasts of the band playing in the Urban Room of the Congress Hotel.  There was My People at McCormick Place in 1963, and sadly there was Duke's last public performance in DeKalb, just a few hours north of Chicago, on March 20, 1974.

We might also recall the magnificent records Duke waxed in Chicago.  Imagine, if you will, Duke here in the Windy City getting in the mood to bring to perfections gems like "Rude Interlude," "Daybreak Express," "Solitude" in its very first recording, the furious "Ko-Ko," "Jack the Bear," Betty Roche singing scat on "Take the 'A' Train," and that's just to name a mere handful of the Ellington masterpieces that were recorded here in Chicago.

With all of that said, although Washington will always be Duke's birthplace, and New York became his home base and springboard, Chicago, quite simply, hosted his most glorious achievements.  Period.

Perhaps the most glorious was Duke's first appearance here in 1931.  It was part of his first theater tour away from the east coast.  The 1931 edition of the Ellington band was already famous as the Cotton Club Orchestra, yet it was clearly on its way toward another incarnation altogether.  This was, as recordings document admirably, a time of tremendous creativity for the band, still evolving toward what would be known as the Famous Orchestra of the '30s.  Otto Hardwicke was temporarily out of the band, pursuing his own career.  He would rejoin in 1932, and then Lawrence Brown would complete the trombone section, and there we would have the classic Famous Orchestra.  Under the astute management of Irving Mills, the band took its first step in the hinterland of the Midwest, but this step was anything but tentative.  Duke came strutting into Chicago with pomp and ceremony:  look out Pops Armstrong, look out Fatha Hines.

The centerpiece of the Ellington band's Chicago debut included the beginning of the first three weeks of an eighteen-week contract to play movie theaters on the Midwest Publix circuit.  This was, in fact, the second leg of the very first tour of picture-houses by any big band, Black or white, a fact that Duke credits to Irving Mills.  At that date, the fact that the tour took place at all was a small miracle, for 1931 was a very bitter year for jazz in general and for Black jazz orchestras in particular.  Variety wrote that year that "colored showbiz can shout at only a few spots.  In all the other spots, it hasn't the strength to shout; it can't even whisper."

Oriental Theater, Downtown Chicago

All this was no small challenge, even to the formidable resources of Duke Ellington, Incorporated.  The stark social realities of the Depression, which dictated the demise or decline of many superior bands, only to add still more luster to the fame of Ellington, and many more doors were to be opened for him during the run of the Chicago tour.  The major engagements here included a week's booking at the Balaban and Katz Oriental Theater in the Loop with a matinee performance on February 13.  According to the original Publix contract, the Ellington band was to spend the following two weeks playing at the Regal Theater, on the South Side.

In January, about two weeks before the tour hit Chicago, the contract was amended to include the B & K Uptown Theater on the opposite end of town for its final week in Chicago, and the Regal stay was shortened to a single week.

Apparently, there was one other important change in the Publix contract, for originally the shows in Chicago were supposed to import a portion of the Cotton Club's floor show, along with Ellington, to perform during the band's intermissions.  Although Ellington's program at all three theaters included supporting acts similar to the Harlem fare, accounts from the Chicago papers of that time indicate that local talent filled out the remainder of the billing. Perhaps this was the basis for some of the premature speculation that Ellington was about to leave the Cotton Club permanently for the greener pastures of theater tours.  The Publix contract reportedly carried a stipulation bearing more than four figures, so financially it was a very wise move for Ellington to have made at that time; at the same time, it seems the Cotton Club management was threatening cuts in the band's salary.

For its part, the Balaban & Katz chain had already earned a reputation for giving breaks to Black performers, and here, no doubt, Irving Mills sensed a golden opportunity.  At the beginning of February, they cast the comedy team of Chilton and Thomas to head a stage production called Whirl of Luck at the Oriental, and from there until Ellington's premier, the show went to the Uptown Theater, and then out of town on a Publix tour.  From their point of view, Ellington could generate the kind of interest that could yank B & K and Chicago out of the doldrums of the Depression.

The public in Chicago was well-acquainted with Ellington, from musicians to ordinary radio-listeners, a market that included just about everybody.  The Mills office publicity, coupled with broadcasts from the Cotton Club, was largely responsible for the ever-increasing ballyhoo over Ellington.  Moreover, many Chicagoans had already seen the band in its early film appearances, including the new Pathe studio revue then showing in town.  Word of mouth, the most reliable of all publicity, had it that, at a theater in Boston the week before the Chicago opening, the audience gave the band a standing ovation lasting twenty-two minutes after the curtain went down on the show.  The Bostonian audience, never known as the most demonstrative kind, continued to applaud until the picture was stopped and Duke came out for another bow.

With this kind of momentum, Duke Ellington, couldn't miss in Chicago.  Many of the important components of what would become the standard Ellington p.r. sheet was already filling the local show-business columns.  One such piece in the Chicago Defender, whimsical in tone and bearing a strange byline, "Anonymous Weineshenk.," may have been the first of a long line of capsule biographies of Duke.  It dubbed Ellington the "the leading exponent of what is known as dirty and hot music," and chronicled.his rise from Washington salons to the pinnacle of celebrity at the Cotton Club, "one of the places Mayor Jimmy Walker takes visiting swimmers to see."

Duke's first recording of "Creole Rhapsody" appeared in January that same year, and this article may have been the first to reveal Ellington's intention to complete, in an extended form, his musical history of his race, an idea that was to occupy Ellington for many more years.  Even at this date, there appeared in Ellington's career a dichotomy between serious art and popular success.  He had been a popular success at least since "Mood Indigo" became the first of his hit songs.

The band's opening on Friday, February 13, kicked off an engagement that broke all the attendance at the Oriental Theater.  For the matinee performance, as the theater opened its doors at 1:33, Chicagoans "pushed, shoved and thronged the entrance to get a peek at Harlem's king of jazz," some of them having stood in line for three hours in the February weather.

That phrase, "the Harlem king of jazz" was surely the brainchild of Ned Williams then doing B & K publicity and soon to become the heart of the Mills office's promotion of Duke Ellington.  Ned's most obvious talent was his rapid-fire compression of images, phrases and slogans to gain an effect. His ad copy in the Chicago Tribune and the other big daily papers was filled with such things as, "Today!  The Hottest Music, the Most Sizzling Stage Show in the World!"  "Come on! Get Hot!  Get Happy!"  "Harlem's Jazz King Blaring, Crooning, Burning Up the Stage with His Red-Hot Rhythms, Moaning Saxophones, Wailing Cornets, Laughing Trombones, Screaming Clarinets!"  "Sensational Stars of Radio and Records in an All-Colored Jamboree, High Low-Down,Wild, Mad Dancing Girls!"  "Low-down Hilarious Comedy!  Blazing Blues Singers!"  "Furious and Fast Stage Show, Hotter than Blazes!"  All this and a movie, The Truth About Youth, starring Loretta Young, for thirty-five cents.  

According to the review of the Friday opening show in the Defender, "The patient crowd was amply repaid by Duke, once they took their seats.  Some of the little femmes, after grinding at their typewriters all day, relaxed under that beaming personality and smile that the Duke emulates.  But more soo, thing than his smile was the music that he and his band dispensed.  What rhythm, what harmony, what unison!"

Regal Theater, South Side

The Regal Theater Chorus opened the show with a strike-up-the-band dance routine.  They then sang a special number, introducing the great Ellington.  A second curtain ascended to reveal Duke under an amber spot, cuing the band into "Ring Dem Bells" and "Three Little Words," which they had performed in the feature film Check and Double Check the year previously.  Then came a bit of magic:  Ivie Anderson, aged twenty-five, was already a show-business veteran, having been a professional singer for ten years, both at home and abroad.

She had most recently worked as a featured attraction in Earl Hines's Grand Terrace Revue on Thirty-fifth Street, and she expected her current tryout with Ellington to last no longer than his Chicago booking.  For eleven more years, Ivie was to spark the band's appearances with her verve, wit and dignity and would become a star in her own right, but nowhere would she move an audience more effectively than at the Oriental Theater on opening night.  Recalling Florence Mills, Ivie gave her rendition of "I'm a Little Blackbird," and the cheering mob wouldn't let her go.  It took four bows and a speech to get her off the stage in the opening show.

Third on the bill, Duke returned as an emcee with "If I Could Be With You."  The reviewer wrote, "and the femmes sigh and close their eyes."  Then, against lurid jungle scenery, the Regalettes come back to dance to Duke's arrangement of "Tiger Rag."  They were followed in the fourth spot by the old vaudevillian dance team of Ford, Marshall and Jones.  The Ellington band closed out the show with a set of Duke's own compositions:  the mournful "Black and Tan Fantasy," with a blue klieg light full upon the entire band, and then the astounding "Old Man Blues" as a rousing finale.

Duke's opening on the South Side did not go without fanfare, either.  For Friday, February 20, the Defender carried notice of a "monster parade to be held in Duke's honor," inviting "everyone with an automobile and a heart full of welcome for Duke Ellington."  The throng stretched all the way downtown from the Regal Theater on Forty-seventh Street by noon.  The matinee opening at the Regal was billed as the biggest in the history of that theater.  Advance publicity, proclaiming Ellington's as "the only band in the world that plays jazz, with a primitive rhythm that thrills to the fingertips, with harmony blending soft, warm jungle melodies in perfect syncopation," was undoubtedly again the doing of Ned Williams.

I might add that some of Ellington's publicity in the Negro press directly reflected Black America's hunger for race heroes and champions it could call its own.  One item in the Defender went so far as to depict Duke as a sort of Black Jack Armstrong.  The article was slugged, "Duke Ellington Proves Mettle in Cotton Club Blaze."  The story informed South Side readers how Ellington, "rushing in, loaded with pails of water, saved the chorus girls from a dressing room fire at the Cotton Club" showing "he could cool things down as fast as he could warm them up."

The band closed at the Regal Thursday night, February 26 and opened at the Uptown Theater the following day.  The show there was essentially the same as the ones presented at the Oriental and Regal, except that the Ford, Marshall and Jones dance team was replaced by the Four Blazes.  The week at the Uptown brought Duke's first Chicago stay to a fitting conclusion.  The band would go on with its Publix tour to the Paradise, Tivoli, and Fisher Theaters in Detroit, before returning East for an engagement at the Brooklyn Paramount, but it was a different band than the one it had been three weeks before.  Chicago was the origin of many new motifs in the Ellington story.

Uptown Theater, North Side