The Highest Note in the Century Since His Birth, Duke Ellington Has Been the Most Important Composer of Any Music, Anywhere Blumenthal, Bob

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Document 1 of 1 The highest note In the century since his birth, Duke Ellington has been the most important composer of any music, anywhere Blumenthal, Bob. Boston Globe [Boston, Mass] 25 Apr 1999: 1.

Abstract The late Duke Ellington, whose 100th birthday will be celebrated on Thursday, disliked the word "jazz." As he famously remarked, the only subsets of music he recognized were good and bad. Rather than stress categorical distinctions, Ellington preferred to celebrate artists and works that were, in another of his oft-quoted phrases, "beyond category." The magnitude of Ellington's legacy should be clear to all who can hear, and even to those who can only count. Just look at the numbers. From 1914, when he wrote "Soda Fountain Rag" as an aspiring pianist in his native Washington, D.C., until shortly before his death, on May 24, 1974, Ellington was responsible for nearly 2,000 documented compositions. From 1923, when he first gained employment in New York for his Washingtonians at Barron Wilkins's Harlem nightclub, he kept an orchestra together through boom andbust. The notion of writing for specific individuals as part of an ensemble reached its highest form of expression with Ellington. Rather than simply creating music for a three-piece trombone section, he crafted lines that fit the plungered growl of Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton, the fluency of Lawrence Brown, and the warmth of Jual Tizol's valved instrument; and he applied this practice to every chair in the band. This led Ellington to collect musicians whose "tonal personality" (another favor-ite image) inspired him, ratherthan those who might simply blendinto an undifferentiated orchestral mass.

Full Text The late Duke Ellington, whose 100th birthday will be celebrated on Thursday, disliked the word "jazz." As he famously remarked, the only subsets of music he recognized were good and bad. Rather than stress categorical distinctions, Ellington preferred to celebrate artists and works that were, in another of his oft-quoted phrases, "beyond category." So let's set aside the four-letter J word and the misguided contemporary substitute "American classical music," and simply declare that, in the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington. Even this judgment shortchanges his achievements, which also include brilliantly orchestrating the music of others and, for a half-century and without interruption, leading one of the most eloquent ensembles in music history. The magnitude of Ellington's legacy should be clear to all who can hear, and even to those who can only count. Just look at the numbers. From 1914, when he wrote "Soda Fountain Rag" as an aspiring pianist in his native Washington, D.C., until shortly before his death, on May 24, 1974, Ellington was responsible for nearly 2,000 documented compositions. From 1923, when he first gained employment in New York for his Washingtonians at Barron Wilkins's Harlem nightclub, he kept an orchestra together through boom andbust. We tend to think of Ellington alongside others, both black and white, who led the groups of a dozen or more players that came to be known as big bands. Yet his achievement is different from that of Fletcher Henderson, Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Woody Herman, and not simply because he wrotethe bulk of his group's music. El-lington also was determined thathis band would play on when theothers disbanded, and this inabil-ity to accept economic realitiesand become a sit-at-home composeris central to understanding hisgenius. The notion of writing for specific individuals as part of an ensemble reached its highest form of expression with Ellington. Rather than simply creating music for a three-piece trombone section, he crafted lines that fit the plungered growl of Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton, the fluency of Lawrence Brown, and the warmth of Jual Tizol's valved instrument; and he applied this practice to every chair in the band. This led Ellington to collect musicians whose "tonal personality" (another favor-ite image) inspired him, ratherthan those who might simply blendinto an undifferentiated orchestral mass. During his first decade in New York, as he established his reputation first at the Kentucky Club and then the Cotton Club, Ellington went about the business of collecting these personalities. Trumpeters Arthur Whetsol, Bubber Miley, and Cootie Williams; reed players Barney Bigard, Harry Carney, and Johnny Hodges; the aforementioned trombonists; and bassist Wellman Braud were added one by one, each new voice providing new options. In time most would move on, and then Ellington would find someone new with something new to offer like Jimmy Hamilton, Clark Terry, and Paul Gonsalves. It was the combination of these voices that revealed new orchestral worlds. The blends were lush, mysterious, and idiosyncratic enough to confound the most schooled musicians. Andre Previn once summarized what Ellington did by noting, "Another bandleader can stand in front of a thousand fiddles and a thousand brass, give the down beat, and every studio arranger can nod his head and say, `Oh, yes, that's done like this.' But Duke merely lifts his finger, three horns make a sound, and nobody knows what it is." Yet those arrangers who, over time, have grown acclimated to Ellington's music often find it easier to transcribe than most, because the individual lines of each trumpet, trombone, and reed player stand out with such distinction. Ellington was not above expanding upon ideas that his musicians minted, which led to charges that they, and not he, deserve credit for many of the band's most famous numbers. Yet without Ellington's input, these classics would have remained little more than intriguing melodic snippets. "Cootie used to warm up with the melody that became `Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me,' " Clark Terry said in explanation of the process. "Duke heard him do that consistently and made a tune out of it. Cootie would have never composed that thing; he knew nothing about adding the harmonies to it. Same thing with Bigard, who used to warm up with the melody that became `Mood Indigo.' Duke took that and made `Mood Indigo' out of it. Duke was a compiler of ideas. He knew how to take insignificant little things and make something out of them." Ellington was also a compiler of images, which is the second key to his achievement. Raised in the relative comfort and stability of Washington's black professional class, and imbued with notions of dignity and cultural pride that would illuminate all of his music, he was a keen observer of his immediate community and the wider world that he encountered once his band began to tour. "Everything had a picture or was descriptive of something. Always," he once told Stanley Dance in reference to his compositions; and while in time this attitude led him to portray everything from the Northern Lights as observed from a Canadian highway to the Taj Mahal, his greatest subject was his community, in all of its particulars. While he might write pieces about famous or historic figures, the bulk of Ellington'smusic portrayed the everyday menand women who composed his audi-ence. From the outset of his career, even when creating what the Cotton Club billed as "jungle music," Ellington was celebrating the dignity of African-Americans, to the point that he titled a 1928 composition "Black Beauty" when most people of color considered "black" a pejorative. His concept was built upon a foundation of the blues, nurtured during a brief 1926 affiliation with the great New Orleans soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, and taken through endless permutations during the next five decades. "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "Creole Love Call," two of his earliest classics, brought nobility and complexity to the blues, just as "Sepia Panorama" and "Ko-Ko" would over a decade later. Several of Ellington's titles reveal that, even when working in the "short form" of the three-minute 78 rpm record, he was taking an overview that placed individual vignettes in a larger cultural context. There have been debates regarding whether he was as successful when writing longer works such as "Creole Rhapsody" (1931), "Reminiscing in Tempo" (1935), and "Black, Brown and Beige" (1943); and the frequent ability to break these suites into a series of individual "tunes" has led some to question Ellington's bona fides as a "serious" composer. Yet his gift for juggling sonority and structure, for cramming a volume of detail within a page of music, is unrivaled by more traditionally schooled or openly ambitious writers. Works like "Harlem Air Shaft" carry a weight of overlapping voices and images worthy of his friend Orson Welles, whose "Citizen Kane" is nothing if not Ellingtonian in its vibrancy and multilayered flair. Leading a mere "dance band" also stood in the way of Ellington's gaining the imprimatur of cultural guardians such as the Pulitzer committee, which granted him a posthumous prize last month after specifically rejecting his candidacy for a citation in 1966 (already 30 years after such an award was due). A dance-oriented rhythm did remain at the heart of Ellington's output, and in such classics as "Rockin' in Rhythm" (1930) and "It Don't Mean a Thing" (1932) anticipated the swing craze by several years, but the Ellington Orchestra always did more than play for dancers. It supported stage shows upon its arrival in New York, broadcast live on radio from the Cotton Club beginning in 1927, made its first film appearance in 1930, began including concerts in its regular itinerary in 1932, visited Europe on the first of several international tours a year later, provided music for the theatrical production "Jump for Joy" in 1941, and ultimately was responsible for movie soundtracks, symphonic collaborations, and programs of sacred music. Along the way, Ellington became a successful tunesmith, with a folio of hits to challenge the greats of Tin Pan Alley. These songs, often adapted from earlier instrumental pieces with lyrics added, provided the royalties that in less lucrative stretches kept the band on the road. Here was another sign of the flexibility that made Ellington unique. He did not achieve all of this alone, of course. There were great musicians in the band and, between 1939 and 1967, the incalculable assistance of Billy Strayhorn, a composer-pianist 16 years Ellington's junior whose impressionistic bent expanded the orchestra's palette even as his affinity for Ellington's approach often made their work indistinguishable. What was Ellington's alone, despite his reputation as a bon vivant and lady's man, was a level of discipline bordering on the superhuman. Every night, after the performance ended and the well-wishers left, he would compose in his room until 6 a.m.; and at 11 the next morning the band would assemble to perform his latest creations. Sustaining such a regimen, when anyone else would have considered it both physically and economically impossible, may have been Ellington's most inexplicable achievement. It has left us with a legacy of music that is still being discovered and evaluated. The quarter-century since Ellington's death has seen a steady elevation of his cultural profile, and a keener appreciation of his final two decades in particular. While his 1940-42 group, with Strayhorn newly aboard and bassist Jimmy Blanton and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster making important contributions, remains legendary, we are also beginning to pay deserved attention to "Such Sweet Thunder" (1957), "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959), "The New Orleans Suite" (1970), and the First and Second Sacred Concerts. We are also left to marvel at how Ellington continued to sound contemporary, featuring muted brass and the clarinet far beyond their point of general popularity while generally avoiding such newer sounds as flute and electric guitar. Taking the full measure of his music should carry listeners and scholars well beyond the next 100 years. SIDEBAR 1 A crowded schedule of tributes Like other recent centennials, Duke Ellington's was launched early and will continue to be celebrated throughout the year. The next few days are prime Ellington time, especially on jazz radio, where virtually every host should have a healthy portion of Ellington compositions and performances programmed. Several upcoming live and broadcast events mark the occasion. Billy Taylor, Nat Hentoff, and others will honor Ellington this morning on CBS News Sunday (Channel 4, 9 a.m.). Tonight at 6 p.m., "A Vespers of Spirituals" at St. Bartholemew's Episcopal Church in Cambridge (239 Harvard St.; 617-864-7326) will be led by tenor saxophonist Ricky Ford, who played under Duke's son Mercer Ellington's direction shortly after Duke's death. Ford will lead a big band in a traditional evening prayer service that marks Ellington's pioneering work using jazz in sacred settings. When the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra arrives on Wednesday at Symphony Hall (262-1200 or 262-1492), it will be in the backstretch of a two-month national tour during which it has performed its "America in Rhythm & Tune" Ellington salute. No working ensemble has been more saturated in Ellingtonia recently that LCJO Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis and his charges. The Ellington specical, "Live in Swing City" which will be telecast nationally on PBS May 12 receives its premiere screening tomorrow night at 7:30 in MacMillan Hall at Brown University in Providence. (Columbia just released a companion CD on which the LCJO and guests Cyrus Chestnut, Milt Grayson, Illinois Jacquet, and Dianne Reeves perform music from the telecast.) Jazz at Lincoln Center has also published a striking Ellington souvenir booklet, "Jump for Joy," and the LCJO will be at Tanglewood performing Ellington originals and arrangements of Grieg's "Peer Gynt" with the BSO on July 24. Berklee's Rainbow Band, under the direction of Phil Wilson, will also include Ellington works in its "From Duke to Nuts" concert on Wednesday at the Performance Center. (617-747-2261.) The actual birthday on Thursday offers the options of celebrations live and on the tube. Berklee's tribute takes place in its Performance Center, with Greg Hopkins conducting the college's Concert Jazz Orchestra, vocalist Donna McElroy, the Really Eclectic String Quartet, Paul Beaudry's Sextet and recorded commentary by Ellington himself. Vocalist Bobby Short opens a three-night stand at Scullers (931-2000) with his nine-piece band, and is sure to include many Ellington works in his sets. "Basic Black's Duke Ellington Centennial," an hour-long original production, airs at 8 p.m. on WGBH-Ch. 2 and finds the Kendrick Oliver New Life Jazz Orchestra playing signature pieces between a truly inane narrative read by actor Rashid Silvera in the guise of the Maestro. Better to catch four films on Turner Film Classics in which Ellington and band appear, beginning with "Anatomy of a Murder" at 8 p.m. and followed by "Paris Blues," "Cabin in the Sky" and the 1931 "Check and Double Check." The in-school Channel One Network will also air "In Honor of Duke," featuring pianist Marcus Roberts' trio. Post-birthday, expect lots of Duke from local Ellington expert Herb Pomeroy when he joins Mark Kross at Icarus (426-1790) on Friday, Ellington among the early jazz transcriptions performed by the Speakeasy String Quartet at Kresge Auditorium (253-7386) next Sunday, a reprise of last year's successful Elllington Sacred Music concert by Pomeroy, Kenny Hadley's Big Band et al. at Emannuel Church on June 20 and a theatrical screening of "Anatomy of a Murder" at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on June 21. SIDEBAR 2 A mammoth collection captures all of Ellington In a marketplace already saturated with Ellington CDs, RCA has clearly outdone the competition with its 24-disc "The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings 1927-1973." This mammoth collection features music from every decade of Ellington's recording career, including seven discs of 1927-34 early classics, the complete studio output of the 1940-42 orchestra on six discs, and (thanks to a lease arrangement with Fantasy) all three of the Sacred Concerts in one place. A sampling of RCA essentials would include "Early Ellington" (1927-34), "The Great Ellington Small Units" (1940-41), "The Blanton-Webster Band" (1940-42, three discs), "The Far East Suite Special Mix" (1966), and the Strayhorn memorial ". . . And His Mother Called Him Bill" (1967). Columbia will have four new Ellington reissues from 1957 to 1961 in stores on Tuesday, each with numerous alternate and unissued performances. "Such Sweet Thunder," "Anatomy of a Murder," "Black, Brown and Beige," (with Mahalia Jackson) and "First Time! The Count Meets the Duke" (with the full Basie and Ellington bands) are the titles, and the first two are the best of a superlative lot. A new, complete version of the 1956 "Ellington at Newport" will appear in May. Other basic Columbia titles include "The Okeh Ellington" (1927-30, two discs), "Ellington Uptown" (1951-52), and "Three Suites" (1960). Surveying other labels, there is another "Early Ellington" set on Decca (three discs, 1926-31). The Smithsonian's excellent "Duke Ellington 1938" and "Duke Ellington 1939" collections cover the unjustly neglected late '30s. "Fargo, ND, November 7, 1940" (Vintage Jazz Classics) is a sensational two-disc souvenir of a dance date, with surprisingly good sound. "Carnegie Hall Concerts January 1943" (Fantasy, two discs) is the first and best of the annual series, with the premiere of "Black, Brown and Beige." Among Ellington's rare sessions as a featured pianist, his trio collection "Piano Reflections" (Capitol, 1953) is truly exceptional. "Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook" (Verve, 1957, three discs) features the orchestra on half the titles. "The Complete Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington Sessions" (Roulette) has Ellington at the piano chair in Armstrong's 1961 All Stars. "Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins" and "Duke Ellington & John Coltrane" are both on Impulse! and both from 1962. "The Great Paris Concert" (Atlantic, two discs) is the 1963 band, which is also heard on Ellington's statement on the African- American century post- Emancipation, "My People" (Red Baron). Fantasy has two of the best late-period extended works, "Latin American Suite" (1968) and "The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse" (1971), as well as the best Sacred Concert, the Second (1968).

Indexing (details)

Subjects: Composers, Personal profiles, Jazz

People: Ellington, Duke (Edward Kennedy Ellington) (1899-1974)

Title: The highest note In the century since his birth, Duke Ellington has been the most important composer of any music, anywhere: [City Edition]

Authors: Blumenthal, Bob

Publication title: Boston Globe

Pages: K1

Number of pages: 0

Publication year: 1999

Publication Date: Apr 25, 1999

Year: 1999

Section: ARTS & FILM

Publisher: Globe Newspaper Company, Inc.

Place of Publication: Boston, Mass.

Country of publication: United States

ISSN: 07431791

Source type: Newspapers

Language of Publication: English

Document Type: Commentary

Accession Number: 05523948

ProQuest Document ID: 405276023

Document URL: http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/ docview/405276023?accountid=10226

Last Updated: 2010-07-31

Database: 2 databases - ProQuest Central - National Newspapers Premier

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