Duke (87 page)

“Duke was passing by”:
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
139.
DE’s “Kinda Dukish” ends with a quote from Monk’s “52nd Street Theme”:
This was pointed out to me by Ethan Iverson (personal communication).

DE didn’t even place:
“The Critics’ Choice: The World’s Top Jazz Critics Name the Musicians Who Excite Them,”
Down Beat,
Aug. 24, 1955.

“It looked like he might not be able”:
Ellington,
Duke Ellington in Person,
111.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I WAS BORN IN 1956”

SOURCES

Documents

George Avakian, liner notes for
Ellington at Newport,
sound recording (Columbia); “Duke Ellington’s
A Drum Is a Woman,
”
United States Steel Hour,
TV program, May 8, 1957 (CBS); DE, unpublished interviews with Carter Harman, 1956 and 1964, EC; Norman Granz, oral-history interview, EC; Brooks Kerr, oral-history interview, OHAM;
Person to Person,
TV program, Mar. 15, 1957 (CBS); Clark Terry, oral-history interview, OHAM; Irving Townsend, liner notes for
Such Sweet Thunder,
sound recording (Columbia).

Books

Balliett,
Collected Works;
Cohen,
Duke Ellington’s America;
Dance,
Johnny Hodges;
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington;
Davis,
Outcats;
Mercer Ellington,
Duke Ellington in Person;
George,
Sweet Man;
Gleason,
Celebrating the Duke;
Hajdu,
Lush Life;
Jewell,
Duke;
Jones,
Jazz Talking;
Morton,
Backstory in Blue;
Traill,
Just Jazz 3;
Traill,
Just Jazz 4;
van de Leur,
Something to Live For;
Wein,
Myself Among Others.

NOTES

“I had to scuffle”:
Dance,
Johnny Hodges
, 22.
Norman Granz devised a face-saving deal:
Granz, oral-history interview.
The band would cut an album for Granz:
John McDonough, “Pablo Patriarch: The Norman Granz Story Part II,”
Down Beat
, Nov. 1979.

Around the time that Hodges resumed his chair:
Researchers have established that Sam Woodyard joined the band three weeks before Hodges, but both Woodyard and Mercer Ellington recalled in later years that he and Hodges reported for work on the same day, and it is tempting to prefer the legend to the fact (see Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
191, and Ellington, 109).
“Scared”:
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
190.
“Play four bars introduction”:
Ibid., 197.
“Get in the alley”:
Ibid., 198.
“No crash bang”:
MM,
227.

“The end of the recent slump”:
Nat Hentoff, “Duke Ellington: Café Society, New York,”
Down Beat,
Mar. 7, 1956.
“Practically reborn”:
“Music: The Duke Rides Again,”
Time,
Jan. 23, 1956.

“I talked to Edward”:
Hajdu, 146.
“Mr. Townsend, you’re so fortunate”:
Ibid.
Prompted by George Avakian:
Morton, 42.
“Having ‘Passion Flower’ on there”:
Hajdu, 149.

“A hideous copy”:
André Hodeir, “Why Did Ellington ‘Remake’ His Masterpiece?,” in
Reader,
299.

“No industry buzz on Ellington”:
Morton, 5–6.
“Look, the festival is making it”:
Hajdu, 151.

“Look, we’ve got to be ready”:
Cohen, 322.

“Oh, nothing special”:
Wein, 152.
“You better come in here with something new”:
RIT,
305. Other sources suggest that this conversation actually took place between DE’s two sets on Saturday (see, for instance, Morton, 123).
“Kind of a disaster”:
Ibid., 114.

“What are we—the animal act, the acrobats?”:
Nat Hentoff, “The Duke,”
Down Beat,
Jan. 7, 1957.

“After we finish [the suite]”:
George Avakian, quoted in Morton, 126.
An ad-lib “wailing interval”:
For a discussion of the evolution of the wailing interval, see Charles H. Waters, Jr., “Anatomy of a Cover: The Story of Duke Ellington’s Appearance on the Cover of
Time
Magazine,”
Annual Review of Jazz Studies
(1993).

“Paul, it’s the one”:
Avakian, quoted in Morton, 126.

“He had to change the energy”:
Ibid., 129.
Gonsalves stepped to the microphone:
In fact he stepped to the wrong microphone, the one with which the Voice of America was taping the performance. As a result his solo was off mike (though clearly audible) on the version of
Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue
that was later released on
Ellington at Newport
(Morton, 154–55). It was not until Columbia’s master tape was synchronized with the VOA recording for the digitally remastered version of
Ellington at Newport
released by Columbia in 1999, resulting in a two-channel stereo recording, that the resulting sonic imbalance was rectified.
“I’d never heard a rhythm section like that”:
Ibid., 190.
“What you and the band played”:
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
173.

“A platinum-blonde girl in a black dress”:
Avakian, liner notes for
Ellington at Newport.

“Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Woode and Sam Woodyard”:
MM,
227.

“Within an hour”:
Avakian, liner notes for
Ellington at Newport.
“Magnificent frenzy”:
Whitney Balliett, “Jazz at Newport: 1956,”
Saturday Review,
July 28, 1956.
An exclusive three-year contract:
According to Townsend, DE’s new agreement with Columbia was “a three-year contract at regular royalties with a thousand-dollar advance for each recorded side” (Irving Townsend, “Ellington in Private,”
The Atlantic Monthly,
May 1975). It was renewed in 1959.
“I am afraid the music”:
Quoted in Morton, 209.

“I wrote this article”:
Charles H. Waters, Jr., “Anatomy of a Cover.”
“I told those guys in 1927”:
“Music: Mood Indigo & Beyond,”
Time,
Aug. 20, 1956.

“I think it’d be better for you”:
DE, Harman interview, 1956.
“The event last month”:
“Music: Mood Indigo & Beyond.”

“At the Palladium in 1933”:
Jewell, 87.

“Am I late?”:
Irving Townsend, “Ellington in Private,”
The Atlantic Monthly,
May 1975.
“I mean, he made it very clear”:
Granz, oral-history interview.

“Rarely were even his closest friends”:
Townsend, “Ellington in Private.” (Except as indicated, “Ellington in Private” is the source for all subsequent quotes from Townsend in this chapter.)

They enlisted BS and John Sanders:
Presumably Tom Whaley also took part in the creation of the presentation scores, but Townsend does not mention him.

“I was born in 1956”:
Jewell, 87.
“He not only doesn’t live in the past”:
Nat Hentoff, “This Cat Needs No Pulitzer Prize,”
The New York Times Magazine,
Sept. 12, 1965, in
Reader,
367.

“My competitors in the band business”:
Art Buchwald, “A Chat with the Duke,”
Paris Herald Tribune,
n.d. (clipping, EC).

“He’s seeing stars again”:
Hajdu, 153–54.

“It will be the most ambitious thing”:
Quoted in Hajdu, 158.

DE kept his word to BS:
Starting with
A Drum Is a Woman,
all of the Ellington-Strayhorn suites were jointly credited.
“Our largest hunk of collaboration”:
Paul Worth, radio interview with DE and BS, 1962; Hajdu, 158.
“
It is an allegory”:
Townsend, “Ellington in Private.”

“A drummer is a skin whipper”:
Quoted in Hajdu, 158.

“Do whatever the hell you want”:
Ibid., 161.
A black-and-white kinescope:
A copy of this kinescope can be viewed at New York’s Paley Center for Media.

“Of the big things”:
Jewell, 96.
“Shrilly pretentious”:
Jack Gould, “TV Review: Jazz Fantasy, ‘A Drum Is a Woman,’ Staged,”
The New York Times,
May 9, 1957.
“An almost embarrassingly flimsy affair”:
Balliett, 17.

“He had everything by Shakespeare”:
George, 136.
“Ellington has always been intrigued”:
Traill,
Just Jazz 3,
46.

“We used to call him Shakespeare”:
Ibid.
“We were with literally the top Shakespeare scholars”:
Ibid., 163.
“Clark [Terry] = Puck”:
van de Leur, 134.
Irving Townsend claimed to have found the title:
Traill,
Just Jazz 4,
18.

“All we did is just little thumbnail sketches”:
Quoted in Jack Chambers, “Bardland: Shakespeare in Ellington’s World,”
DEMS Bulletin,
Apr.–July 2005.

“Though she was a lady”:
Townsend, liner notes for
Such Sweet Thunder.
“Half the Fun” and “The Star-Crossed Lovers” were preexisting compositions:
“Half the Fun” was previously known as “Lately,” while “The Star-Crossed Lovers,” whose original title was “Pretty Little Girl,” had already been recorded for Verve in 1955 by Johnny Hodges and a small band of Ellington sidemen. (None of the critics who later wrote about
Such Sweet Thunder
seems to have noticed that the song was recycled.)
“We were rushed”:
Traill,
Just Jazz 3,
46.
“We spent two months talking about [
Such Sweet Thunder
]”:
Chambers, “Bardland.”
“It was such a straight crowd”:
Hajdu, 161.

“A long work in the finest Ellington tradition”:
John S. Wilson, “Jazz: Ellington,”
The New York Times,
Oct. 15, 1957.
“Uncomfortably thin”:
Balliett, 43, 44.

Clark Terry “speaks” Puck’s line:
All currently available compact disc transfers of the complete
Such Sweet Thunder
incorrectly contain an alternate take of “Up and Down, Up and Down” in which this passage is not included. The originally issued take can be heard on
Ralph Ellison: Living with Music,
a companion CD to Ellison’s essay collection of the same name (Columbia/Legacy).
“Almost as confident”:
Balliett, 44.