Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington by Terry Teachout

Author:Terry Teachout [Teachout, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Composers & Musicians, Music, Individual Composer & Musician
ISBN: 9780698138582
Google: uJbWImNOj3kC
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2013-10-17T21:20:43+00:00

Recording for Victor in the midforties. Though the Blanton-Webster band of 1940–41 is generally regarded as Duke Ellington’s strongest group, he continued to turn out first-rate compositions during the rest of the decade, and the band, despite the loss of several key players, performed them with undiminished authority, both on record and in person

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The band was still up to its old tricks. The old reliables were as temperamental as ever, and they continued to make trouble for new players who did not yet understand that merely reading the music on their stands was not enough to make them Ellington men. Harold “Shorty” Baker, who shuttled in and out of the trumpet section at frequent intervals between 1942 and 1962, described his own hazing as follows: “When I first joined that band, they let me sit there playing wrong notes for a week without telling me the parts had been changed! Nobody ever marked changes.” Unflappable as always, their leader made the most of whatever they cared to give him. George Avakian, who became Ellington’s record producer when the band signed with Columbia in 1947, looked on in amazement as the composer threw together an impromptu gem called “New York City Blues” in the studio:

The musicians trickled in very slowly. Duke was not among the first to arrive, and something like two hours after the session was supposed to begin, the engineer and I were still discussing yesterday’s baseball scores with the musicians, and Duke said, “All right, let’s start.” And he began setting up a blues with whoever happened to be there. There was some kind of odd instrumentation—as I recall, there was only one, possibly two, brass players, and about three saxophones.

Nor had much of anything changed on the road, where black musicians, however famous they might be, were subject at all times to unexpected degradations. Early in his run at the Hurricane, Ellington learned that the restaurant’s headwaiter refused to accept reservations from black patrons, telling them that the club was sold out, and had to complain to the owner so that his friends could come and see him play. When he played Ciro’s, one of Hollywood’s most expensive nightclubs, in 1945, his very presence there was news. According to Billboard, “Booking Ellington into Ciro’s sets a precedent, in that it is the first time that any of the swank [Hollywood] strip spots have gone in for a high-priced, big-name Negro band.” But nothing was said about how the club’s manager had warned Ellington, “We don’t allow the help to socialize with the guests.” George Raft, who was friendly with Sonny Greer, demanded that his own table be set up in the alley outside the club so that he could enjoy the musicians’ company, and got his way.

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