Duke's People

 

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.

 

 

Joya Sherrill

 

 

 

 

"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.

Timuel Black

*

 

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.