Who was Duke Ellington?
Edward Kennedy ‘Duke’ Ellington was without doubt one of the most remarkable musicians of the 20th century. Universally regarded in the jazz world as one of the finest creative talents the music had ever seen, he also garnered considerable respect from classical musicians for his sophisticated compositions which, although obviously ‘jazz’ in their constant delight in rich, expressive timbres and a deep engagement with African-American music, were so impressive on a purely compositional level that they left both critics and musicians dumbfounded at the consistently high level of his artistry.
Duke Ellington... not a fan of improvisation
Ellington was notoriously ambivalent about the value of improvisation in jazz – not a view, perhaps, that would naturally endear him to jazz die-hards. When he visited the UK in 1958, and his band played in Leeds, his programme note declared: ‘It is my firm belief that there has never been anybody who has blown even two bars worth listening to who didn’t have some idea what he was going to play, before he started… Improvisation really consists of picking out a device here, and connecting it with a device there; changing the rhythm here, and pausing there…’ That sounds very much like a composer talking.
Duke Ellington... and The Washingtonians
Ellington started his career as a pianist specialising in the post-ragtime style known as ‘stride’ piano. His first band billed themselves as The Washingtonians, taking their name from Ellington’s home city, Washington DC. Unlike many early jazz musicians, he came from a middle-class background: his father worked as a butler at the White House. Little could Ellington Senior have realised that, in 1969, President Nixon would present Duke with the Medal of Freedom at a gala event staged at the White House to celebrate his 70th birthday. On this momentous occasion, Nixon noted that, although many heads of state had received this kind of reception, ‘never before has a Duke been toasted. So tonight I ask you all to rise and join me in raising our glasses to the greatest Duke of them all, Duke Ellington!’
The Washingtonians went to New York in 1924, but gained little attention. All this changed when Ellington hired two musicians from New Orleans, who brought a more bluesy and spontaneous feel to his music. They were Barney Bigard (clarinet) and Bubber Miley (trumpet). Miley in particular transformed the band’s sound, with his ‘growl’ style of playing: an uncanny imitation of the human voice, created by simultaneously using two different kinds of trumpet mute while producing a guttural noise in the throat. At the same time, drummer Sonny Greer – using a huge array of exotic percussion instruments – helped expand what became known as a ‘jungle’ style of jazz.
Residency at Harlem's Cotton Club
The quasi-primitive idea of jungle jazz was, regrettably, inextricably linked to a racist view of African-Americans, but this style nevertheless became a staple feature of the Ellington band’s tenure as house musicians at Harlem’s famed Cotton Club (1927-31). The residency earned them considerable international attention, but the venue catered for an exclusively white audience (up to 700 of them), watching stage routines by black performers that portrayed stereotypically exotic scenarios.
Creatively, however, the Cotton Club years allowed Ellington to compose music for dance routines that were very different from the demands of the commercial swing that came to dominate the popular music scene in the 1930s, an opportunity that helped him to develop as a composer. His most popular pieces to emerge were the band’s signature tune, ‘East St Louis Toodle-oo’, ‘Black and Tan Fantasy’ (with a tag ending based on Chopin’s funeral march, in honour of the New Orleans marching bands), and the vocalise ‘Creole Love Call’.
Duke Ellington... recognition as a composer
Ellington and his band went on tour to Europe in 1933, where they caught the attention of the composer Constant Lambert. In the following year, Lambert included in his provocative book Music Ho!, the first serious essay devoted to Ellington’s achievements. Comparing Ellington’s music to what he felt was the repetitiveness of even the greatest jazz improvisers, Lambert declared: ‘The best records of Duke Ellington … can be listened to again and again because they are not just decorations of a familiar shape but a new arrangement of shapes.’ He continued: ‘The first American records of his music may be taken definitively, like a full score, and are the only jazz records worth studying for their form as well as their texture.’
The reference to definitive versions of Ellington’s music reflected Lambert’s puzzlement that the bandleader constantly recomposed his pieces in sometimes markedly different guises. And, while Lambert was complimentary about Ellington’s genius in writing three-minute miniatures that would fit onto one side of the 78rpm disc that was the industry standard at the time – ‘Ellington’s best works are written in what may be called ten-inch record form, and he is perhaps the only composer to raise this insignificant disc to the dignity of a definite genre’ – he was perturbed by the idea that Ellington might dare to write longer pieces in a jazz idiom.
Duke Ellington... from composing miniatures to full-scale works
But Ellington was not going to be held back in this regard, and in 1937 he recorded Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue. More important than the unusually extended length of the piece (listeners had to flip the disc to hear the second half) was the fact that this extraordinary music disconcertedly engaged with techniques from modern classical music, with clear evidence of the influence of Stravinsky and others.
Fragmentary ideas were thrown around the band in a seemingly incoherent but always compelling way. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the piece was not a hit, though it gained belated exposure when Ellington’s band performed it at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956. Somewhat ironically, given Ellington’s views on improvisation, on that memorable occasion he allowed his tenor sax player, Paul Gonsalves, the opportunity to improvise a mind-blowingly virtuosic (and very long) solo.
Duke Ellington... 'I will no longer be limited by jazz'
Two crucial events in the early 1940s were to shape the rest of Ellington’s career. First, he hired Billy Strayhorn as co-composer, a collaborator who intimately understood his style and contributed much wonderful music to the band’s repertoire, including a new signature tune (‘Take the “A” Train’). Second, his band started making annual appearances at New York’s Carnegie Hall, from 1943 onwards. On the first of those occasions, he showcased a new 53-minute symphonic poem entitled Black, Brown and Beige. Never before had such an ambitious composition been presented by a jazz band.
Instead of being celebrated as an extraordinary creative achievement, however, the piece fell between two critical stools: elitist classical musicians thought it was pretentious, while jazz critics dismissed it because it wasn’t jazzy enough. Clearly hurt by this mixed reception, Ellington declared in the same year that he would no longer be using the term ‘jazz’ to describe his music, as it was too limiting. And this experience had a longer-term consequence. Instead of developing his innate desire to write longer pieces, all of his later works were cast as suites, which meant short movements could be strung together in the context of a concept album. Among the most memorable were his Three Sacred Concerts (1965, ’68 and ’73), intended for live performance in cathedrals and large churches.
Duke Ellington... 'jazzing up' Tchaikovsky and Grieg
At the start of the 1960s, largely in a spirit of fun, Ellington recorded his and Strayhorn’s witty interpretations of music by Tchaikovsky (Nutcracker Suite) and Grieg (Peer Gynt). Nobody seemed offended by the Tchaikovsky project, but the Grieg stirred up a veritable hornets’ nest in Norway, where it was banned by the Grieg Foundation. This was ostensibly because Grieg’s copyright (then still in force in his native country but not elsewhere in the world) had been infringed – but also reflected distaste at the idea of ‘jazzing up’ such nationally revered music in a way which had (as the Foundation’s own wording put it) ‘damaged the author’s reputation’.
Debate about the cultural and artistic implications of this decision raged on Norwegian state television and radio, while Norwegian jazz fans stole furtively across the border to listen to the album in Sweden. A satirical cartoon in a Norwegian newspaper showed two hip young trolls gleefully bopping to the strains of the illicit LP while an elderly troll turns his back on them in disgust, covering up his ears. Visiting Bergen in 1969 while on tour with his band, Ellington told the press he would never perform the piece again because all the fun had gone out of it and he’d been made to look like a fool.
Duke Ellington... a bold innovator, ahead of his time
All of which is a sad reminder that, in those days, anyone bold enough to originate a meaningful bridge between the worlds of classical music and jazz was sticking their head on the block. But we can be thankful that Duke Ellington made the attempt, and enriched all our musical lives in the process.