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Authors: Terry Teachout

Duke

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Duke Ellington, London, 1958

GOTHAM BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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Copyright © 2013 by Terry Teachout

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Gotham Books and the skyscraper logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Teachout, Terry.

Duke : a life of Duke Ellington / Terry Teachout.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-698-13858-2 (eBook)

1. Ellington, Duke, 1899-1974. 2. Jazz musicians—United States—Biography. I. Title.

ML410.E44T38 2013

781.65092–dc23

[B]

2013011138

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

To Mrs. T, who was never in doubt

There is one very good thing to be said of posterity,
and this is that it turns a blind eye on the defects of greatness.
W. Somerset Maugham

We wear the mask that grins and lies.
Paul Laurence Dunbar

CONTENTS

DEDICATION

EPIGRAPH

PROLOGUE
“I WANT TO TELL AMERICA”

1
“I JUST COULDN’T BE SHACKLED”

Fortunate Son, 1899–1917

2
“SOFT AND GUT-BUCKET”

Becoming a Professional, 1917–1926

3
“ONLY MY OWN MUSIC”

With Irving Mills, 1926–1927

4
“THE UTMOST SIGNIFICANCE”

At the Cotton Club, 1927–1929

5
“I BETTER SCRATCH OUT SOMETHING”

Becoming a Genius, 1929–1930

6
“A HIGHER PLATEAU”

Becoming a Star, 1931–1933

7
“THE WAY THE PRESIDENT TRAVELS”

On the Road, 1933–1936

8
“SWING IS STAGNANT”

Diminuendo in Blue, 1936–1939

9
“THE EYES IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD”

With Billy Strayhorn, 1938–1939

10
“THE SEA OF EXPECTANCY”

The Blanton-Webster Band, 1939–1940

11
“A MESSAGE FOR THE WORLD”

Jump for Joy, 1941–1942

12
“I DON’T WRITE JAZZ”

Carnegie Hall, 1942–1946

13
“MORE A BUSINESS THAN AN ART”

Into the Wilderness, 1946–1955

14
“I WAS BORN IN 1956”

Crescendo in Blue, 1955–1960

15
“FATE’S BEING KIND TO ME”

Apotheosis, 1960–1967

16
“THAT BIG YAWNING VOID”

Alone in a Crowd, 1967–1974

AFTERWORD

APPENDIX

Fifty Key Recordings by Duke Ellington

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

SOURCE NOTES

PERMISSIONS

INDEX

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

“I WANT TO TELL AMERICA”

H
E WAS THE
most chronic of procrastinators, a man who never did today what he could put off until next month, or next year. He left letters unanswered, contracts unsigned, watches unworn, and longtime companions unwed, and the only thing harder than getting him out of bed in the afternoon was getting him to finish writing a new piece of music in time for the premiere. “I don’t need time,” he liked to say. “What I need is a deadline!” Nothing but an immovable deadline could spur Duke Ellington to decisive action, though once he set to work in earnest, it was with a speed and self-assurance that amazed all who beheld it. At the end of his life, he left behind some seventeen hundred–odd compositions, a number that is hard to square with the memories of his collaborators, who rarely failed at one time or another to be frustrated by his dilatory ways. That was fine with him. He knew what he needed in order to create, and as far as he was concerned, nothing and no one else mattered. “As long as something is unfinished,” he told Louis Armstrong, “there’s always that little feeling of insecurity. And a feeling of insecurity is absolutely necessary unless you’re so rich that it doesn’t matter.” Few of his pronouncements can be taken at face value—he was never in the habit of telling anyone, even those who supposed themselves to be his friends, what he really thought—but this one has the ring of truth. “He wants life and music to be in a state of becoming,” said the trumpeter Clark Terry, one of the many stars of the band that Ellington led from 1924 until his death a half century later. “He doesn’t even like to write definitive endings to a piece.”

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