JUMP for JOY for Duke, to Get Much Other Work Done
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238 DUKE ELLINGTON ment which he has gathered toward the shaping of a piano concerto to gather dust in his rented room in an apartment at 545 Edgecombe Avenue. His routine is well established now: he cabarets all night and often through the early morning, drinks CHAPTER SEVENTEEN talks, sometimes eats; after a brief sleep he will get up to work or to play piano battles with Aaron or to come down to an Ellington rehearsal or record session. He doesn't have time be- tween the cabareting, the sleeping and his actual assignments JUMP FOR JOY for Duke, to get much other work done. He can be quite late in turning in those assignments, and he usually is, following a //• *VE GOT THE GIRL," DUKE SAID. "SHE'LL SUN-TAN THE FIRST pattern set by Duke himself. Duke will forgive him anything, I ten rows." for, after all, when he feels the strength of God within him and I This was in the early summer of 1941. Duke and the the sense of doom evanescing without, he writes such mag- movie writers who formed the American Revue Theatre were nificent music or goes over to Duke's apartment, at five in the talking over possible stars and featured players for a new type morning, to talk about it. And he is still the remarkable little of revue. It was to atone for the guilt feelings of the movie man who, after an evening's "sashaying" around the town of writers. It was to atone for the serious mistakes and grievous Buffalo, eating here, drinking there, got "jus' loaded enough" errors, of omission and commission, in the treatment of Negroes so he wasn't quite sure what had happened to his drinking com- in the American theater. It was to feature the Ellington band panion, gathered hat and coat and found where the band was and such talent as Duke thought fitted with it. But the advice playing. He walked, slowly, with all the dignity he could of these movie writers had to be listened to. They were putting muster, up to the stage, carefully placed his coat on the back up much of the money. They were writing the skits and the of the chair, his hat on the back of his head and went to sleep, lyrics. They were bright men. right on the stage. Through better than an hour and a half "Who is she?" one of the advisory council asked. Strayhorn slept on the stage in full view of the audience. But "Lena Home," Duke answered. neither Duke nor any of the musicians would disturb him. "Good girl," somebody confirmed. Once, recently, Duke and Peaswee', as Ellington calls him, "She'll cost too much," somebody denied. Lena wasn't a big shared a roomette together, Strayhorn taking the upper berth, name then, but she was enough of a singer on records and at Duke the lower. Several hours after they had retired Strayhorn's spots in New York and Hollywood so she could command a fair pillow fell down. salary. Duke inclined his head outside his berth and looked up at "No go," somebody else added. Lena was out. Nonetheless, a Strayhorn. "What was that?" he asked Billy. good share of sun-tanning was effected. There were some very "That was my pillow," Billy said. pretty girls in the cast finally arrived at, notably Dorothy Dand- "Oh," Duke said, "I thought it was a cloud." ridge, who is getting a good career as a movie actress under way. There were good comedians and good dancers and good singers and the Ellington sections and soloists. During the show's run, it impressed the "hip," confirmed Duke's conception of the validity of honest Negro theater and got a number of excellent 239 r 24O DUKE ELLINGTON JUMP FOR JOY 241 careers under way. And it was the vehicle for the finest show meant: "I have an episode which concerns the death of a baby score Duke ever wrote. ... I put into the dirge all the misery, sorrow and undertones When George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess was produced by of the conditions that went with the baby's death. It was true the Theatre Guild in 1935, Duke was asked to comment on the k to and of the life of the people it depicted. The same thing can- first American opera by the New Theatre, a leftist monthly not be said for Porgy and Bess." Duke was not at all loath to comment. The New Theatre interviewer, Edward Morrow, summed up "Grand music and a swell play, I guess, but the two don't go well for Ellington as well as himself. "No Negro could possibly together," he said. "I mean that the music did not hitch with be fooled by Porgy and Bess. The production is cooked the mood and spirit of the story. Maybe I'm wrong, or perhaps up, flavored and seasoned to be palmed off as 'authentic' of the there is something wrong with me, but I have noted this in Charleston Gullah Negroes—who are, one supposes, 'odd beasts.' other things lately too ... I am not singling out Porgy and But the times are here to debunk such tripe as Gershwin's Bess." lamp-black Negroisms, and the melodramatic trash of the script Duke listed a bill of particulars. It is about Negroes but "it of Porgy. There will be fewer generalized gin-guzzling, does not use the Negro musical idiom. It was not the music of homicidal maniacs, and more understanding of rotten socio- Catfish Row or any other kind of Negroes." The music was economic conditions. There will be fewer wicked, hip- grand, Duke said, because it was in the spirit of the "grand" swinging 'yellow-gal hustler' stereotypes. The music will composers and the composers of grand opera, too much in their express terror and defiance in colorful Negro musical idioms spirit, as a matter of fact. "Gershwin didn't discriminate. which have remained melodious despite a life of injustices. It [the music] was taken from some of the best and a few of the They will compose and write these things because they feel the worst. He borrowed from everyone from Liszt to Dickie consequences of an existence which is a weird combination of Wells' kazoo band." Ellington demonstrated the way Gershwin brutality and beauty." borrowed, showing the derivation of some passages from Rhap- Morrow was overoptimistic perhaps. A few years later along sody in Blue in Where Has My Easy Rider Gone?, a Negro came Mamba's Daughters and Cabin in the Sky (stage and blues. His own music, Duke explained, was truly "in the Negro movie versions), which once again bowed handkerchief-heads. idiom." And he played what he called a "gutbucket waltz," still Bill Robinson continued to play the arch Uncle Tom character. a waltz, still Negro. "I have not stolen or borrowed." Billy Rose produced a mildly syncopated version of Bizet's He objected strongly to much of the music in Porgy and Bess Carmen, with the modern counterparts of the Spanish liquor- which did not characterize the scenes it set. "The actors," he guzzling, homicidal maniacs found, naturally, of course, among said, "had to make their own characterizations . There was Negroes. He used also the usual exaggerated "dese, dem, dose, a crap game such as no one has ever seen or heard. It might I'se gwine" diction, and had that last line spoken by the colored have been opera, but it wasn't a crap game. The music went equivalent of Don Jose (Joe)—that immortal sentence, "String one way and the action another. Still, the audience me high to a tree," an incredible line to hear a Negro speak, gasped: 'Don't the people get right into their parts?' and 'Aren't with his people's tragic history of lynching. they emotional!' " Duke has the permanent answer to these stereotypes and car- In any honest Negro musical play, Duke said, there would icatures of Negroes. It is as well a deft parry of the thrusts of have to be social criticism. Talking of a projected movie short amateur anthropologists who refer to all Africans of darker on which he was working, Duke gave an example of what he color as savages. It's a musical comedy called, tentatively, Air- DUKE ELLINGTON JUMP FOR JOY 243 Conditioned Jungle. The opening scene sets mood and clime with great good humor. Paul Webster, who wrote the lyrics for and theme. In a particularly chic living-room, decorated in the most of the songs, did very well by Duke's social philosophy in best of urbane good taste, but not given to flamboyant extrav- these words: agances, sit the King and Queen of one of the ancient African Fare thee well, land of cotton, tribes. She's dressed in a gown by Schiaparelli; he in a sleekly Cotton lisle is out of style, honey chile, fitted dinner jacket. They are drinking their after-dinner Jump for joy. brandy and coffee in relaxed comfort: the house is air-condi- Don't you grieve, little Eve, tioned. A muffled bell rings. The King picks up the telephone. All the hounds, I do believe, "Yes," he says, "yes, yes. Mmm-hmm. Oh, bother. Well, if Have been killed, ain't you thrilled, there's nothing we can do about it." He slams the receiver down Jump for joy. on its cradle and turns unhappily to his consort. Have you seen pastures, groovy? "What is it, darling?" she asks.