Duke (74 page)

A minute-long sequence:
A silent version of this British Pathé clip can be viewed at www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=50945. (The soundtrack has not been located.) See “A Short and Silent Ellington Movie,”
DEMS Bulletin,
Apr.–July 2001.
“I recall one”:
Stearns,
The Story of Jazz,
183–84.

“Top-flight performances”:
Kisseloff, 309.
A caricature:
Lasker,
A Cotton Club Miscellany,
1.

$75 a week:
This was Louis Metcalf’s recollection (Shapiro, 234). See also “Jazz as I Have Seen It,” in which DE gives the same figure.
“It didn’t really matter”:
Sylvester, 50.
“The girl you saw doing the squirmy dance”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
“A creative form of irony”:
Boyd (unpaginated Kindle edition).

“He used to set us on the stand”:
Roger Ringo, “Reminiscing in Tempo with Freddie Jenkins,”
Storyville,
Apr.–May 1973.
“He would just start to play”:
Bigard, 48.

“A band of the most vicious thugs”:
Boyd (unpaginated Kindle edition).
“They recognized [the dancers] as, in their opinion”:
Howard Johnson, quoted in Cohen, 55.
One of them:
Hyacinth Curtis, quoted in A. Peter Bailey, “The Cotton Club Girls,”
Ebony,
Dec. 1985.
To play bridge:
Gifford, “Mercer Ellington.”
“He loved Duke and he loved me”:
Greer, oral-history interview.
“I keep hearing about how bad”:
Sylvester, 45.

$4,000 a week:
Wilk, 50.
“Duke Ellington’s Recording Orchestra”:
Lasker,
A Cotton Club Miscellany,
28–29.
Winchell came to the opening:
Wilk, 55.

“The first person to start the walking bass”:
Russell, 111.
“A totally different kind of rhythm section”:
Stanley Dance,
The World of Count Basie,
276.
“Wellman was playing solos”:
Berger, 134.
He cooked New Orleans–style dishes:
Stewart, 87.

“When Mr. Braud joined us”:
MM,
115.

“A sort of guardian”:
Cohen, 630.
“A very well-behaved, well-organized young man”:
MM,
111. “
Give more variety”:
Stanley Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
73.

“
Woody tone”:
MM,
115.

“Kind of tired”:
Bigard, 44–46.

“Posturing and posing”:
Cavanaugh, “Reminiscing in Tempo,” in
Reader,
468.
“He brought us a new kind of sparkle”:
MM,
121.

“Everybody said Johnny was gruff”:
Hajdu, 178.
“He may look as though he’s on his last walk to the gallows”:
Shorty Baker, quoted in Stanley Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
93.
“So impressed with Johnny’s great ability”:
Welk, 57.
“He plays from the heart”:
Stanley Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
91.

A nickname whose origins are obscure:
For a discussion of the varying explanations of how Hodges came to be called “Rabbit,” see Lasker, liner notes for
Duke Ellington: The Complete 1936–1940 Variety, Vocalion and OKeh Small Group Sessions,
13.
“I had quite a few of his riffs”:
Don DeMichael, “Double Play: Carney to Hodges to Ellington,”
Down Beat,
June 7, 1962, in
Reader,
474.
“Professor Booze”:
RIT,
86. Hardwick claimed that he left the band voluntarily in order to “see the world” (Stanley Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
59). Hodges said that he “had an accident, went through the windshield of a taxicab. Had his face all cut up and I had to go to work for him” (DeMichael, “Double Play,” in
Reader,
473).
“Johnny was scared when he first joined us”:
Bigard, 53–54.

“When you look back”:
Stanley Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
77.
“A man of the theater”:
Harrison, 191.

“A certain lazy gait”:
DE, “My Hunt for Song Titles,”
Rhythm,
Aug. 1933, in
Reader,
88. (The correct spelling of the title is used in this article.) According to Marshall and Jean Stearns, Bert Williams is said to have performed a shuffle-like dance called “the Mooche” at the turn of the century (Stearns,
Jazz Dance,
197–99).
“A sex dance”:
Stanley Dance, liner notes for
The Ellington Era 1927–1940,
vol. 1.

“There was always something going on”:
Bigard, 48, 47.
“Third class discords”:
Roger Ringo, “Reminiscing in Tempo with Freddie Jenkins,”
Storyville,
Apr.–May 1973.
“A Show That Rivals Broadway’s Best”:
Lasker,
A Cotton Club Miscellany,
28.
“Also, anyone interested in jazz”:
“Lipstick” (Lois Long), “Tables for Two,”
The New Yorker,
Dec. 22, 1928.
“A charming combination”:
“R.A.S.,” “Musical Events,”
The New Yorker,
Dec. 22, 1928.

The band was initially heard on Wednesdays at eleven
P.M
.:
The late-night time slot shifted from week to week. In the band’s first appearance in the radio section of the
The New York Times,
for instance, “Duke Ellington’s Orchestra” is listed as airing over WABC, CBS’s New York flagship station, at eleven thirty. Subsequent programs started at different times between eleven
P.M.
and midnight. Contemporary newspaper program guides confirm that the band was also making early-evening broadcasts in 1929 (see, for example, “To-Day’s Radio Programs,”
Geneva
[NY]
Daily Times,
Mar. 25, 1929). The latter broadcasts ended in 1930.
Each thirty-minute broadcast:
In 1930 the broadcasts moved to NBC, whose network logbooks have been preserved, making it possible to identify the songs that were performed on the air. See
Ken Steiner, “Cotton Club Broadcasts on NBC,”
DEMS Bulletin,
Dec. 2008–Mar. 2009.

DE had been broadcasting locally since 1923:
For information on these broadcasts, see Steiner, 5, 7.
Ted Husing:
Lewis, 88–90. Some sources credit Paley with having been a Cotton Club regular, but he mentions DE only in passing in
As It Happened,
his 1979 memoir, and Husing appears to have been instrumental in bringing the band to his attention.
“A beautiful cat”:
MM,
79–80.
“A real fan of [the] band”:
Bigard, 48.
The first time that a jazz band made a national broadcast from Harlem:
According to radio historian Elizabeth McLeod, “There were few dance band remotes of any kind on the networks in 1927–28—most such broadcasts were purely local, and were not heard outside New York. Very few New York hotels had network wires. The Cotton Club was by all indications the first Harlem spot to get a network wire, though it had hosted New York–only remotes for several years. The first African-American performers of any kind to have a network series were the Southernaires, a vocal quartet that was a regular NBC feature from the very start of the network in 1926” (personal communication).

“The first important national propagation”:
Eberly, 47, 49.
“The engagement at the Cotton Club”:
MM,
77. For a discussion of the significance of DE’s Cotton Club broadcasts, see Cohen, 57–58.
“The people didn’t get anything to eat”:
Greer, oral-history interview.

“Jungle music”:
Ibid.
“The Jungle Band”:
This was the first time that the word “jungle” appeared on the label of a recording by DE.
“Here we were, my mother and I”:
Feather, 52.
“Oh, we’ve been African all the way back”:
“Words of Wisdom from Edward Kennedy (Duke) Ellington,”
Jet,
May 15, 1969.

“Bubber was temperamental”:
Boyer, “The Hot Bach,” 240. (This quote is all but identical to a parallel passage in DE’s “Jazz as I Have Seen It.”)
“Their drinking never hurt their music”:
Bigard, 51–52. Cootie Williams confirmed Bigard’s account: “The reason why he fired Bubber Miley was every time some big shot come up to listen to the band, there wasn’t no Bubber Miley. And the whole band had been built around Bubber Miley. And maybe he decided, he says, ‘Well, this man has got to go. I have to let him go and get somebody’” (Williams, oral-history interview).

“Liquor drinking among the musicians”:
MM,
73–74.
“All our horn blowers were lushies”:
Boyer, “The Hot Bach,” 240.
“Look, fellows”:
Clark Terry, quoted in Stanley Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
187–88.

“With the Ellington band I drank Coca-Cola”:
Stanley Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
112.
“I used to laugh when Tricky would start to blowing”:
Williams, oral-history interview.
“He didn’t want to throw his weight around”:
Helen Oakley
Dance, oral-history interview.

“Then there is a first rate blackamoor band”:
“Leatrice Joy Sings Pleasingly at Palace,”
The New York Times,
Apr. 22, 1929. This was the first review of DE to appear in the
Times.
“Another thing that your most high-hat friends have recently discovered”:
“Lipstick” (Lois Long), “Tables for Two,”
The New Yorker,
May 4, 1929. Except for a Brunswick Records advertisement that had appeared on Jan. 5, this column is the first mention of DE by name in
The New Yorker.

“I came on and I could see her”:
DE, Harman interview, 1956. In
MM
DE says that it was his mother who “came up to New York from Washington, and brought my sister Ruth with her. . . . It was the first time she had ever seen me on stage, and I can see her now, waving her handkerchief the whole time we were out there” (98).

“Will Vodery got us the gig”:
MM,
98.
“Valuable lessons in orchestration”:
Ibid.
“His chromatic tendencies”:
DE, “Duke Ellington on Arrangers,”
Metronome,
Oct. 1943.

“He had assimilated”:
Ulanov, 196.

“The least notable”:
J. Brooks Atkinson, “The Play: Behind the Scenes with Ziegfeld,”
The New York Times,
July 3, 1929.
Many of them didn’t bother to mention Ellington:
DE also went unmentioned, for instance, in
Time
’s review (“Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan,” July 15, 1929).
“The finest exponent[s] of syncopated music”:
Florenz Ziegfeld, “Ziegfeld Rushes to Defense of ‘Show Girl’ as Likable Offering,”
New York Morning Telegram,
July 12, 1929.