Trading Twelves by Ralph Ellison

Author:Ralph Ellison [Murray, Albert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56074-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

The Comeback, Joe Williams and Count. If this doesn’t rock that Academy, it must be time for Nero or Atilla to take over again.

My Funny Valentine, in which old Duke redoes a pop watercolor in oils.

A Very Unbooted Character, the new Duke band doing one from the 40’s. I just think that this stuff is very very fine Ellington indeed. I don’t think you write this kind of stuff for money. Man, this stuff comes from down there where that cat lives, and he’s got 14 outright thugs up there voicing that shit as if [it] was a certified symphony, and you and I know good and damn well they don’t have to think symphony at all.

Rhum-bop, from A DRUM IS A WOMAN. This is a three-minute excerpt. The whole thing is a 12 inch LP. I don’t think it really comes off. It’s a sort of Peter and Wolf story about Jazz (Madame Zajj and Carribee Joe). Duke narrates, and in several places he works in a down home signifying grunt that is gassed no end, but the overall scenario strikes me as being slapdash. In some parts it seems that he’s about to do some thing all his own and in other parts he just seems to be knocking out a musical comedy routine. The possibilities are all there, but he does just enough to let you see how much he probably could have done if he had really buckled down. Am sending this particular part because I like the beat and also because it has old Joya Sherrill singing again (who was as right as Ivy). She’s married and settled down but she came back to do Madame Zajj and she’s up to par on all of her four numbers. Man, you should see the cover of this thing: two tall drums and a sock cymbal and a blonde in a red union suit (facing the other way) with her flat ass spread all over a little bitty talking drum!

“The Birdland Story” tape (Incomplete) is old King Pleasure singing one of James Moody’s tenor sax solos. What the hell does he care whether it’s poetry or prose, if it’ll fit it’ll swing.

Say, what about that goddamned Sugar Ray! Now there’s a cat making “history” in the Eubanks sense, meaning myth & ritual and all that hero stuff about the dying god of the repeating birth. Back in January when Fulmer10 outpointed old Sugar, a guy named Martin Kane wrote in Sports Illustrated as follows:

“So passes the brightly lighted Robinson era. It ended in the fifteenth round, when the plodding tortoise beat the flashy hare once again, as he always does in the fable. Sugar Ray Robinson thought he was living another fable, which is what the hare always thinks.”

So much for Mr. Martin Kane’s knowledge of Mose & Myths. On the other hand you always have to watch out for guys like Hemingway’s favorite boy, Red Smith, who in an interview with one of the big league managers a week or so ago was talking about some of Robinson’s prefight faith talks.

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