Duke (76 page)

“We had a little six-piece date”:
DE, interview with Jack Cullen, CKNW, Vancouver, Canada, Oct. 30, 1962;
Reader,
340.
“We recorded it”:
MM,
79.

“Mood Indigo” first appears in NBC’s logbooks:
Ken Steiner, “Cotton Club Broadcasts on NBC,”
DEMS Bulletin,
Dec. 2008–Mar. 2009.
“Duke once said in a piece”:
Jones,
Jazz Talking,
11.
“Duke figured out a first strain”:
Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke,
64.
The first two recordings:
DE recorded a near-identical small-group version of “Mood Indigo” (credited to “The Jungle Band”) for Brunswick on Oct. 17, 1930. Bigard’s name appeared for the first time on the label of the full-band recording made for Victor on Dec. 10, 1930.
Bigard received no royalties:
Bigard, oral-history interview.

“Dreamy Blues”:
Later pressings of the Oct. 17 recording bear the title “Mood Indigo.” The title “Dreamy Blues” does not appear on OKeh’s matrix card for the Oct. 14 version, which is reproduced in Steven Lasker, “The Harlem Footwarmers,”
DEMS Bulletin,
Aug.–Nov. 2001.
“I wanted to call it ‘Mood Indigo’”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
Bigard claimed the title for himself:
Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke,
65.

Al Rose claimed that the second strain was written by Lorenzo Tio, Jr.:
Rose, 109.
This claim is unsourced and should be treated with caution. “My old teacher Lorenzo Tio”:
Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke,
64.
“Maybe the record company put the wrong label on the record”:
Ibid., 65.

“Ellington recorded it under the title ‘Dreamy Blues’”:
Quoted in Shaw, 189.
“At the time he was signed with the company”:
DE, Cullen interview, in
Reader,
340.

“Duke was playing that tune”:
Don Peak and Tor Magnusson, “Mood Indigo: Some Thoughts Concerning the Lyricist(s),”
IAJRC Journal
(Winter 2001). LouCeil Austin married Gene Austin in 1949 and Peak interviewed her in 1996 (Gene Austin died in 1972). The fact that Parish was known to his friends as “Mike,” not “Mitch,” may cast doubt on her story.

“Our first big hit”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.

DE’s oldest surviving manuscripts date from 1930:
van de Leur, 187.
“The men take up their instruments”:
H.A. Overstreet, “Touching Tomorrow’s Frontiers Is Duke Ellington’s Music,”
Metronome,
Oct. 1933, in
Reader,
100–101.

“This is a man”:
Jazz Journal,
June 1990, in
RIT,
103.
“In the old days”:
DE, Harman interview, 1956.

“It . . . just got to be too damn much music”:
Ibid.

“Duke had a strange way of composing”:
George, 29.

“The parallel blocks of sound”:
Schuller, 343.

“We were playing in Chicago”:
DE, Cullen interview, in
Reader,
340.

“I had a theme”:
Brown, oral-history interview. Barney Bigard confirmed this story (Jones,
Jazz Talking,
11).
“The terrific check of $15”:
Brown, oral-history interview.
Their names had vanished:
The label of the first instrumental version of “Sophisticated Lady” (English Columbia CB 591), recorded in February 1933, credits DE, Hardwick, Brown, and Mills. The label of the second version (Brunswick 6600), recorded three months later, credits DE alone. Brown and Hardwick would never again receive official credit for the song. When Mitchell Parish wrote a lyric for the song, his and Mills’s names were added to the credits.

“I mean, like if anybody”:
Bigard, oral-history interview.
“The piece didn’t require too much work”:
Roger Ringo, “Reminiscing in Tempo with Freddie Jenkins,”
Storyville,
Apr.–May 1973.
“There are many instances”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
“If he liked [a song]”:
Steve Voce, “Clark Terry Talks to Steve Voce,”
Jazz Journal,
Dec. 1986–Jan. 1987.

“Oh, he’d steal like mad”:
Tizol, oral-history interview.
“All of us used to sell the songs”:
Williams, oral-history interview.
A “factory”:
Brown, oral-history interview.
“I don’t consider you a composer”:
Ibid.

“A compiler of deeds and ideas”:
A Duke Named Ellington.
“Perhaps even Barney would never have written down ‘Mood Indigo’”:
Voce, “Clark Terry Talks to Steve Voce.”

“So this guy says you and he wrote it”:
Bill Coss, “Ellington & Strayhorn, Inc.,”
Down Beat,
June 7, 1962, in
Reader,
503.

“That’s the only thing I didn’t like”:
Jones,
Jazz Talking,
11.

CHAPTER SIX
“A HIGHER PLATEAU”

SOURCES

Documents

Lawrence Brown, oral-history interview, IJS; DE, unpublished interview with Carter Harman, 1964, 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);
Memories of Duke,
film documentary (Time Life); Irving Mills, oral-history interview, OHAM;
Radio Newsreel,
radio program, June 12, 1940 (Mutual); “Souvenir of Duke Ellington,” sound recording (Oriole); Mark Tucker, liner notes for
Slide Trombone Featuring Lawrence Brown,
sound recording (Clef);
The World at Large: Paramount Pictorial No. 837,
film short (Paramount).

Books

Berrett,
Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman;
Bird,
Percy Grainger;
Bogle,
Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams;
Cohen,
Duke Ellington’s America;
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington;
Dietrich,
Duke’s ’Bones;
Ellington,
Duke Ellington in Person;
Enstice,
Jazz Spoken Here;
Feather,
The Encyclopedia of Jazz;
George,
Sweet Man;
Giddins,
A Pocketful of Dreams;
Howland,
Ellington Uptown;
Jewell,
Duke;
Jones,
Jazz Talking;
Parsonage,
The Evolution of Jazz in Britain;
Schuller,
Early Jazz;
Stewart,
Boy Meets Horn;
Stewart,
Jazz Masters of the Thirties;
Stratemann,
Duke Ellington Day by Day and Film by Film;
Ulanov,
Duke Ellington;
Vail,
Duke’s Diary, Part One.

NOTES

“The perfect balance”:
Schuller, 350.
“I tried desperately to try and sound like Fletcher Henderson”:
RIT
, 80.

“Sure, Jelly Roll Morton has talent”:
Feather, 233, 12.
“Probably he was jealous”:
Jones, 7.

DE’s “favorite musician”:
Jerry Wald, “Not on the Air: Radio Reminiscing with Duke Ellington,”
New York Evening Graphic,
June 18, 1932.
“Paul Whiteman was known”:
MM,
103.
“There is no doubt”:
DE, “Duke Becomes a Critic!!,”
Down Beat,
July 1939, in
Reader,
139.
“Our band came along”:
Howard Taubman, “The ‘Duke’ Invades Carnegie Hall,”
The New York Times Magazine,
Jan. 17, 1943, in
Reader,
159.

Whiteman’s “symphonic jazz”:
For a concise summary of Whiteman’s work and its influence, see my “King of the Jazz Age,”
Commentary,
Dec. 2003.
Whiteman never said that he sought to “make a lady out of jazz”:
Berrett, 217. The phrase nevertheless became permanently attached to Whiteman, and DE and BS alluded to it without irony in their libretto for
A Drum Is a Woman.

“Gershwin’s music, though grand”:
Richard Mack, “Duke Ellington—In Person,”
Orchestra World,
May 1936, in
Reader,
118.
“
Porgy and Bess
, those people”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
“George Gershwin, without a doubt”:
Radio Newsreel.

“At present he is at work”:
Florence Zunser, “‘Opera Must Die,’ Says Galli-Curci! Long Live the Blues!”
New York Evening Graphic Magazine,
Dec. 27, 1930, in
Reader,
45. (This appears to be the first reference in print to what ultimately became
Black, Brown and Beige.
)
“The music of my race”:
DE, “The Duke Steps Out,”
Rhythm,
Mar. 1931, in
Reader,
49–50 (emphasis by DE).

“Part of a larger work”:
“Music: Mood Indigo & Beyond,”
Time,
Aug. 20, 1956.
“Irving Mills came to me one day”:
MM,
82.

NBC’s logbooks show that DE had recently broadcast three pieces:
Ken Steiner, “Cotton Club Broadcasts on NBC,”
DEMS Bulletin,
Dec. 2008–Mar. 2009.

The obvious model was
Rhapsody in Blue:
For a detailed discussion of Whiteman’s “symphonic jazz” and its influence on DE, see Howland, 150–67.
A life-in-the-big-city music cue:
Though they bear no literal resemblance to
Creole Rhapsody,
Newman’s main-title cue for the 1931 film version of Elmer Rice’s
Street Scene
and Richard Rodgers’s “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” dance sequence from
On Your Toes
(1936) are very much in the same vein.
One of the Hollywood films that DE watched:
DE is known to have been impressed by certain early film scores (see, for instance, Frank Marshall Davis, “Duke Ellington, Who Goes to the Movies Between Shows, Wrote Song Hit ‘Solitude,’ Three Years Ago,”
The Pittsburgh Courier,
Jan. 26, 1935). The extent to which his own music may have been influenced by these scores merits closer study.

DE showed no understanding of how to organize an extended composition:
For a contrasting view, see Howland, 167–71.

“Duke Ellington: America’s New Vogue”:
Variety,
June 2, 1931.
“Wild and barbaric”:
“Duke Ellington’s ‘Creole Rhapsody,’”
The Oklahoma Eagle,
Aug. 15, 1931.
Something new in jazz:
The only known precedent for
Creole Rhapsody
is James P. Johnson’s
Yamekraw: A Negro Rhapsody,
a Gershwin-influenced twelve-minute-long piano solo that was published in 1927 and premiered by W.C. Handy at Carnegie Hall the following year in a version orchestrated by William Grant Still. It is not known whether Ellington attended that concert or was familiar with the published version of
Yamekraw,
though it seems likely that he would at least have been aware of it. A Vitaphone short based on
Yamekraw
was released in 1930, but after that the piece sank into obscurity and was not publicly performed again until 1962.
“
Creole Rhapsody
is the latest development”:
The
Melody Maker,
July 1931.