Caine's Blog: January 2025

I was a child of the '60s and therefore came of age during the golden age of rock and roll. Three currents at once drew me to jazz at the age of eighteen: a school friend with a little collection of jazz recordings; my brother, an aspiring jazz trumpeter; and, in my freshman year at Indiana University, the tutelage of Dr. David N. Baker (later to become director of the Smithsonian Institution's jazz program). It was in David's class I first heard Duke Ellington's "East St. Louis 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.

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.

The process by which I arrived at Duke was a circuitous one, a rather strange and involved one, as it would have to be for someone my age. In the late 1960s, I began a gradual transition from rock 'n' roll to the likes of Archie Shepp, Ornette Coleman, and Sun Ra. From there, it has been a case of looking back ward, where Duke Ellington could hardly fail to attract my attention. There is a seductive quality in his work that is hard to resist.

Nevertheless, it was unlikely then that a person of my age would take to Ellington's music, nor is it likely that it will become any easier for generations following mine. You might call this the musical miseducation of youth; in the United States particularly, the laws of economics in the music business, or just the inevitability of change in styles. The Ellington Era is now firmly in the past, despite the talents and efforts of many to preserve it as America's "classical" music.

CHICAGO

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.

B. Alyce Claerbaut

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).

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?)

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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.

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.

Washington, DC, 1983

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.

Dan Morgenstern

Patricia Willard

presentation on Jump for Joy

Willard herself reported the Ellington Conference 2016 in DownBeat magazine.

Willard became the first woman to receive the

David Baker

I was fortunate in 1972, my final 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, however: I spent the first half of the show anxiously checking my wristwatch and left during intermission to make a political speech. The revolution could not wait, and besides the important music was being created by Miles, Trane, Ornette, and their cohorts.