Duke (88 page)

BS went unmentioned in the reviews:
His name, for instance, is nowhere to be found in John S. Wilson’s
New York Times
review of the Town Hall premiere. DE would not always be so scrupulous in years to come about crediting BS.
DE sometimes received full or partial credit for individual pieces that, like the title track of
Blues in Orbit,
were written by BS alone. In addition, BS was often not always properly credited for his work as an arranger of other people’s songs (as was the case with the version of “Where or When” included on
Ellington Indigos
). Walter van de Leur’s
Something to Live For
documents numerous post-1957 compositions and arrangements for which he did not receive proper credit, a situation that in some cases persists to this day. (It also remains rare for BS to be identified in liner notes as the sole composer of the specific movements that he contributed to the suites on which he and DE “collaborated.”)
“Morgen thought that Billy represented competition”:
Hajdu, 167.

“He didn’t rehearse me nothin’”:
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
286.

“He was the kind of guy”:
Kerr, oral-history interview.

“I wouldn’t finish anything”:
RIT,
406.
“A panic scene”:
Leonard Feather, “Ella Today (and Yesterday Too),”
Down Beat,
Nov. 18, 1965.
“Ella really was very upset”:
Hajdu, 168.

“Otto chose Duke”:
Ibid., 188.

BS dubbed James Stewart’s on-screen playing:
Hajdu, 189.

DE’s “consultant”:
MM,
193.

“Music in pictures should say something”:
Gleason, 185–86.

“There was nothing special”:
Jewell, 105.
“Struck speechless”:
Ellington, 118.
A single copy of the album was pressed for the queen alone:
In fact, four or five additional “author’s copies” of
The Queen’s Suite,
one of which is now at the Library of Congress, are believed to have been pressed at the same time.
“I think my liking for Duke”:
Granz, oral-history interview.

“You go to the hotel”:
“Music: Mood Indigo & Beyond.”
“He’s a very good man to have along”:
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington,
80.

“The three of us were approaching San Francisco”:
Gordon Parks, “Jazz,”
Esquire,
Dec. 1975.

“I just don’t have time”:
Hentoff, “This Cat Needs No Pulitzer Prize,” in
Reader,
365.

“You gotta be older”:
“Music: Mood Indigo & Beyond.”
“I gradually felt drawn to him”:
“Robert Traver” [John Voelker], “Dukie,”
Detroit News Sunday Magazine,
Aug. 6, 1967.

The earliest surviving visual document:
This important document is available on DVD as
Duke Ellington Live in ’58
(Jazz Icons).

“Rockin’ in Rhythm”:
This piece is officially co-credited to Harry Carney, who claimed to have written the minor-key strain, but there is no definitive evidence that he composed any part of it. Barney Bigard later told Max Jones that he and Johnny Hodges wrote “Rockin’ in Rhythm.” Asked by Jones about Carney’s involvement, Bigard replied, “Carney never wrote nothin’ in his life” (Jones, 9).
“The idea was for the audience”:
Davis, 9.

“Watch him some night”:
Hentoff,
“This Cat Needs No Pulitzer Prize,” in
Reader,
368.

“Characterize it for me”:
Martin Richards, “Aaron Bell,”
Blue Light: The Newsletter of the Duke Ellington Society (UK),
Jan.–Mar. 2004.

“During my last couple of years”:
Nat Hentoff, “The Incompleat Duke Ellington,”
Show,
Aug. 1964.

“If he retired for a few years”:
“Music: Mood Indigo & Beyond.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“FATE’S BEING KIND TO ME”

SOURCES

Documents

Cress Courtney, oral-history interview, OHAM;
A Duke Named Ellington,
TV documentary (WNET); “Duke Ellington: A Concert of Sacred Music,”
NET Playhouse,
TV program, June 16, 1967 (NET);
The Ed Sullivan Show,
TV program, June 18, 1959 (CBS);
The Ed Sullivan Show,
TV program, June 9, 1968 (CBS);
The Ed Sullivan Show,
TV program, Mar. 1, 1970 (CBS); DE, unpublished interview with Carter Harman, 1964, EC; Betty McGettigan, oral-history interview, OHAM; Joya Sherrill, oral-history interview, EC.

Books

Balliett,
Collected Works;
Barros,
Shall We Play That One Together?;
Bikel,
Theo;
Bradbury,
Duke Ellington;
Cohen,
Duke Ellington’s America;
Charles Sam Courtney,
Ignorant Armies;
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington;
Dunning,
Alvin Ailey;
Ellington,
Duke Ellington in Person;
George,
Sweet Man;
Gordon,
My Unforgettable Jazz Friends;
Hajdu,
Lush Life;
Hohenberg,
The Pulitzer Diaries;
Jewell,
Duke;
Stewart,
Jazz Masters of the Thirties;
Stratemann,
Duke Ellington Day by Day and Film by Film;
Tormé,
It Wasn’t
All
Velvet;
Vail,
Duke’s Diary, Part Two;
von Eschen,
Satchmo Blows Up the World.

NOTES

“A separation from his wife”:
“Music: Mood Indigo & Beyond,”
Time,
Aug. 20, 1956.
“His wife, from whom he has been separated”:
“The Duke of Jazz,”
Time,
Feb. 1, 1943.
“Unforgivably brusque”:
Charles H. Waters, Jr., “Anatomy of a Cover: The Story of Duke Ellington’s Appearance on the Cover of
Time
Magazine,”
Annual Review of Jazz Studies
(1993).
“The virtually unknown Duchess”:
Marc Crawford, “A Visit with Mrs. Duke Ellington,”
Ebony,
Mar. 1959.

“The responsibility”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
“Lord knows, we love his music”:
“Ellington and the Spingarn,”
Los Angeles Tribune,
Sept. 11, 1959.

DE “had so much sex appeal”:
Barros, 141.
“I became his slave”:
George, 141.

“The Countess from Algeria”:
Charles Sam Courtney, 100.
She was around forty:
Jewell, 105.
“Tall, strikingly handsome”:
George, 142.
“An aging woman wearing too much make-up”:
Charles Sam Courtney, 100–101.

“She would remain for a set”:
Ellington, 125.

“She was very much there”:
George, 193.
“She makes sure I eat all right”:
Ibid.,
142.

“She did a lot for Edward”:
Jewell, 105.
“A very cultured woman”:
Ibid., 106.
Evie flew to Tokyo:
George, 140.

“The closest thing to a vacation”:
Stratemann, 441.
“I’ve never had a vacation”:
Nat Hentoff, “The Incompleat Duke Ellington,”
Show,
Aug. 1964.
DE had played at the 1934 Academy Awards banquet:
“Academy Acting Awards Go to Hepburn and Laughton,”
The Hollywood Reporter,
Mar. 17, 1934.
“A weak, aimless story”:
Bosley Crowther, “Screen: A Story of American Jazzmen in France,”
The New York Times,
Nov. 8, 1961.

Paul Gonsalves, Ray Nance, Willie Cook, and Fats Ford:
“Nab 4 Duke Ellington Bandsmen on Dope Counts,”
Jet,
Feb. 23, 1961.
“No, there wasn’t”:
“Words of the Week,”
Jet,
Mar. 2, 1961.
Nance spent two months in jail:
Stratemann, 442.
The band was banned:
Ellington, 132.

“Anatomy for Murder”:
The Ed Sullivan Show,
June 18, 1959.

The accountants pulled out their balance sheets:
Miles Kreuger, personal communication. (Kreuger was present at the meeting in question.)
“You see the way they can fuck up music?”:
Leonard Feather, “Blindfold Test: Miles Davis,”
Down Beat,
June 1964.

Sinatra had tried to hire Billy Strayhorn:
Hajdu, 218.
“The loudest, swingingest, brassyest”:
“Free-Loaders Mill as Frank Sign Ellington,”
Billboard,
Dec. 8, 1962.
“New as well as established jazz artists”:
DE followed through on this plan for a time, producing albums by Alice Babs, Dollar Brand (now Abdullah Ibrahim), and Bud Powell.
“A
primo
noncomformist
assoluto
”:
MM,
249.

“After you heard the record”:
Dance, 138.
“A kind of a gut-bucket bolero”:
DE, interview with Hugh Downs,
The Today Show,
May 26, 1964 (NBC); Vail, 244.

“My name is still on some of the parts”:
Balliett, 207.

“Staged on Broadway”:
Donald Freeman, “‘Asphalt Jungle’ Theme by Duke Ellington,”
The State Journal
(Springfield, IL), Feb. 25, 1961.

“The only people who did good”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.

The sit-in won DE praise from black newspapers:
See, for example, “Across the Board,”
New York
Amsterdam News,
Feb. 27, 1960.
“I’ve only got about one minute”:
“Ellington Plays Down Social Protest in His Musical for Chi’s Negro Expo,”
Variety,
July 7, 1963.

“I was the lyricist”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.

DE “couldn’t make up his mind”:
Dunning, 175.
Reprise chose not to tape an original-cast album:
My People
was recorded and released by Contact, an imprint of ABC-Paramount.

“If you have the right kind”:
Nat Hentoff, “The Durable Duke,”
The Reporter,
May 7, 1964.
“Duke Ellington’s fear of flying”:
“Flight Fear May Cancel Ellington’s Europe Trip,”
Billboard,
May 1, 1954.
“I slept”:
“Airborne Duke,”
Jet,
Dec. 8, 1960.