Duke (78 page)

“Just as soon as possible”
: “Souvenir of Duke Ellington.”

“
Duke directed his orchestra”:
Hughes Panassié, “Duke Ellington at the Salle Pleyel,”
in Reader,
84.
“Duke never shows the slightest sign of life”:
The Melody Maker,
Aug. 12 and 19, 1933, in
RIT,
146, 147–48.

“Some society woman”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
Mercer thought it to be apocryphal:
Ellington, 61.

“Pianist Percy Grainger”:
“Hot Ambassador,”
Time,
June 12, 1933.

“Ellington has never compromised”:
“Introducing Duke Ellington,”
Fortune,
Aug. 1933.

“The atmosphere in Europe”:
MM,
85.
“The main thing I got”:
DE, “Jazz as I Have Seen It.”
“If they think I’m
that
important”:
Ulanov, 151. In Ulanov’s book, this remark is presented as part of a single quotation attributed to DE that begins with a slightly different version of the preceding two sentences from DE’s 1940 article for
Swing,
thus indicating that some of Ulanov’s “quotations” derived from previously published sources. (Ulanov had access to DE’s scrapbooks.)

“Europe is a very different world”:
Ibid., 217. A slightly different version of this quotation also appears in “The Hot Bach” (244), attributed to Rex Stewart, not DE. I thank Brian Priestley for pointing out the discrepancy.
“You know, I love this place”:
Max Jones, quoted in Cohen, 247.

CHAPTER SEVEN
“THE WAY THE PRESIDENT TRAVELS”

SOURCES

Documents

Barney Bigard, oral-history interview, IJS; Lawrence Brown, oral-history interview, IJS; Helen Oakley Dance, oral-history interview, OHAM; DE,
The Great Concerts: Cornell University 1948,
sound recording (Nimbus); DE, unpublished interviews with Carter Harman, 1956, EC; Sonny Greer, oral-history interview, IJS; Herb Jeffries, oral-history interview, EC; Steven Lasker, liner notes for
The Complete 1932–1940 Brunswick, Columbia and Master Recordings of Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra,
sound recording (Mosaic); Irving Mills, oral-history interview, OHAM;
Radio Newsreel,
radio program, June 12, 1940 (Mutual); “Souvenir of Duke Ellington,” sound recording (Oriole).

Books

Berger,
Bassically Speaking;
Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke;
Stanley Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington;
Ellington,
Duke Ellington in Person;
Ellison,
Living with Music;
Feather,
The Jazz Years;
Ferguson,
The Otis Ferguson Reader;
Hammond,
John Hammond on Record;
Howland,
Ellington Uptown;
Jewell,
Duke;
Kelley,
Thelonious Monk;
Lambert,
Music Ho!;
Lawrence,
Duke Ellington and His World;
Prial,
The Producer;
Schuller,
The Swing Era;
Stewart,
Boy Meets Horn;
Sudhalter,
Bix;
Ulanov,
Duke Ellington;
Wilson,
The Thirties.

NOTES

Most newspapers would not print a photo of a black man:
Ulanov, 153–54.
“Something of an African Stravinsky:
“Higher Development of Jazz Expounded by Duke Ellington,”
Dallas News,
Oct. 1, 1933.

“And then Ellington and the great orchestra came to town”:
Ellison, 81.

“The talk of the city”:
Omar La Grange, “Texas Town Still Raves Over Duke Ellington,”
The
Pittsburgh Courier,
Dec. 2, 1933.
“Carrying more than $30,000”:
“America’s Highest Paid and Most Glamorous Band, Led by the Inimitable ‘Duke,’ Coming Here for Monster Coronation,”
The Pittsburgh Courier,
Jan. 7, 1933.

“Everywhere we went in the South”:
MM,
85–86.

“Cheaper than room rent”:
DE, Harman interview, 1956.
The band traveled heavy:
Stewart, 149.

“Mental isolation”:
Boyer, “The Hot Bach,” 228.
“Seeing him in a [railroad] siding”:
Jewell, 57.
“Especially in the South”:
Boyer, “The Hot Bach,” 218.

“He would take an ordinary situation”:
Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke,
62–63.
“All caught up in the rhythm”:
Jewell, 56.

“Many observers would say”:
MM,
86.
“We’ve never let ourselves be put”:
Nat Hentoff, “This Cat Needs No Pulitzer Prize,”
The New York Times Magazine,
Sept. 12, 1965, in
Reader,
367.
“The average one of them crackers”:
Greer, oral-history interview.
“I think it was in Alabama”:
Bigard, oral-history interview.
“It was a real rough town”:
Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke,
69.
“Being a woman, naturally”:
Jeffries, oral-history interview.

“If you’d been a white man”:
Boyer, “The Hot Bach,” 232.

The first English-language book:
Hugues Panassié’s
Le jazz hot,
in which DE also figures prominently, was published in France around the same time as
Music Ho!
It was not translated into English, however, until 1936.
“A real composer”:
Lambert, 187–88.

“Hot damn!”:
Gama Gilbert, “‘Hot Damn!’ Says Ellington When Ranked with Bach,”
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
May 17, 1935, in
Reader,
113.
“May be something to it”:
Boyer, “The Hot Bach,” 236.
“If you take a beautiful flower”:
Humphrey Lyttleton, “Critic v. Musician,”
Just Jazz 3,
36.

“Self-taught musically”:
“Hollywood Calls the Duke Ellington Rehearsals Hot,”
The Chicago Defender,
May 12, 1934.

“A touching, highly atmospheric, ambitious quasi-documentary”:
Schuller, 72, 73.

DE told Percy Brooks:
“Souvenir of Duke Ellington.” Late in life DE recalled the incident inaccurately, claiming that Flo had called the song “Rude Interlude” and adding that “I guess that had something to do with my American accent!” (
MM,
84). This version is correct.
“When I heard the record”:
Stewart, 146.
“A beautiful mood piece”:
Ibid.
“Harmonically, like even the best”:
“Mike,” “The Record with a Story,”
The Melody Maker,
Jan. 27, 1934.
“Contained new departures”:
Doron Antrim, “After Jazz—What? Is American Music Stymied or Are We Going Somewhere?,”
Metronome,
Dec. 1933.

“We had arrived in a Chicago recording studio”:
MM,
87. Helen Oakley, who was present in the studio, confirmed the accuracy of this account (Helen Oakley Dance, oral-history interview).

“Such taboos as that you can’t use parallel octaves”:
Stanley Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
37.

“Didn’t sound like Louis”:
Sudhalter, 185.

“To be absolutely truthful”:
Stewart, 146.
“Rex Stewart had been taught”:
MM,
125.

“I can see them now”:
Stewart, 171.

“I remember Ivie Anderson”:
Berger, 75.

“We didn’t speak to each other”:
Stewart, 193.
“I don’t think Cootie Williams ever forgave Duke”:
Michael P. Zirpolo, “In Duke’s Head,”
IAJRC Journal
(Summer 2000).
“Word is making the rounds”:
Quoted in Ulanov, 163.

Mills tried to cut Braud’s pay:
“Inside Stuff—Music,”
Variety,
Feb. 12, 1935. For another version of this widely reported story, see Charles Isaac Bowen, “On the Air,”
The Baltimore Afro-American,
Feb. 23, 1935. (Braud’s name is misspelled “Welden Graud” in this article.)
Hayes Alvis played alongside Taylor until 1938:
He was briefly followed by another bassist, Adolphus Alsbrook, who never recorded with DE. For more about Alsbrook, see “Another Little Known Ellingtonian,”
DEMS Bulletin,
Apr.–July 2003, and Kelley, 433–34.

“Two chicks, one on each side of me”:
DE, radio interview with Jack Cullen, CKNW, Vancouver, Canada, Oct. 30, 1962, in
Reader,
341. For a discussion of the provenance of “In a Sentimental Mood,” see Lasker, liner notes for
The Complete 1932–1940 Brunswick, Columbia and Master Recordings of Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra,
18, 33.
“Hardly any of the old time Ellington sincerity”:
Quoted in Prial, 76.

“A community effort”:
Lasker,
The Complete 1932–1940 Brunswick, Columbia and Master Recordings of Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra,
33.

“Saddest tale told on land and sea”:
Billie Holiday sings the couplet in the version of “Saddest Tale” heard on the soundtrack of
Symphony in Black.
The song appears to have been dropped from the band’s repertoire shortly thereafter, perhaps because it reminded DE of Daisy’s final illness.
DE sent three thousand flowers to Daisy’s funeral:
“Mother of Ellington Is Buried Here,”
Washington Tribune,
June 1, 1935.

“His world had been built”:
Ellington, 68–69.

“I simplified most all the tunes”:
Mills, oral-history interview.

“Every page of that particular manuscript”:
MM,
86 (ellipses in the original).

“He always wrote what he felt”:
Ellington, 164.
“
Reminiscing in Tempo
was written originally”:
DE,
The Great Concerts: Cornell University 1948.

“It isn’t, as one might suspect”:
The New Yorker,
undated clipping (IJS).
“A long, rambling monstrosity”:
Spike Hughes (as “Mike”), “Ellington on the Spot,”
The Melody Maker,
Dec. 14, 1935.
“Whatever your musical opinion”:
RIT,
177.
“One of Ellington’s greatest master strokes”:
Schuller, 83.
“Formal control”:
Ibid., 76.
“Such other heady harmonists”:
Ibid., 82.
“One of the best pieces he ever wrote”:
Max Harrison, “Some Reflections on Ellington’s Longer Works,” in
Reader,
389.
“
Reminiscing in Tempo
was, at least
in potentia
”:
Ibid., 391.