Duke (89 page)

“
America’s secret weapon”:
Felix Belair, “United States Has Secret Sonic Weapon—Jazz,”
The New York Times,
Nov. 6, 1955.
“I know damn well sure”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
“He was born poor”:
MM,
236.
“It’s a matter of dignity”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.

Ray Nance was sent home:
“Nance Leaves Duke’s Band Over Tiff with Cootie,”
Jet,
Oct. 24, 1963.
“The embarrassment and harm”:
Thomas W. Simons, Jr., memo to US State Department Office of Cultural Presentations, Sept. 17, 1963, quoted in von Eschen, 128. For Nance’s side of the story, see Steve Voce, “Ray Nance: Let’s Face the Music and . . . ,”
Jazz Journal,
Feb. 1998.

DE’s “habitual tardiness”:
Simons, “General Report on the Ellington Tour,” US State Department memo, quoted in von Eschen, 140, 142–43.

“It’s a hit, man”:
Charles Sam Courtney, 109.
“Jazz concerts might be considered in bad taste”:
Sally Hammond, “Duke Ellington’s Wish: To Play in Honor of JFK,”
New York Post,
Dec. 6, 1963.

“Musicians of the past”:
Dance, 267.
DE arranged for steaks to be shipped by air from New York to Russia:
Joe Alex Morris, Jr., “Duke Can’t Cut It on Russian Steaks,”
Los Angeles Times,
Sept. 20, 1971.

The band was paid $19,000 a week in Russia:
Harvey G. Cohen, “Visions of Freedom: Duke Ellington in the Soviet Union,”
Popular Music,
Sept. 2011.
“You let it roll around”:
Dance,
18.
DE privately admitted to finding mode-based non-Western music monotonous:
Jewell, 118.

“I knew he’d been off his horn”:
Jewell, 111.
Al Celley had been caught embezzling:
Cohen, 366–69.
“Going upstream”:
Ibid.

The band had been blacklisted:
McGettigan, oral-history interview.
“Here I was in a position”:
Ellington, 136.
DE’s own method:
Ibid., 168–69.
Gonsalves would pretend to be drunk:
Ibid.
“When I joined the band”:
Ibid., 139, 137.

A “successful failure”:
Ibid., 167.
“I have to stand out”:
Jewell, 91.
“Ellington was a great bird-in-the-hand guy”:
Cress Courtney, oral-history interview.

DE played fast and loose with the tax code:
For a detailed discussion of his difficulties with the IRS, see Cohen, 372–75, 569–570.

“He has apparently learned to give”:
Stewart, 88.

“It was no longer a matter”:
Ellington, 180.

“I like the Beatles”:
“Duke Ellington Defends Talent of the Beatles,”
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
July 26, 1964.
“A jazz concerto”:
The Ed Sullivan Show,
Mar. 1, 1970.
“The young people”:
Finnish National Broadcasting Company, undated TV clip, c. Oct. 1973, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9F_hRpwL4M.

“A special citation”:
Howard Klein, “Ellington Denied Pulitzer Citation,”
The New York Times,
May 5, 1965.
“Fate’s being kind to me”:
Ibid. This remark was later misquoted by Nat Hentoff as “Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be famous too young” (“This Cat Needs No Pulitzer Prize,”
The New York Times Magazine,
Sept. 12, 1965, in
Reader,
367). It is Hentoff’s incorrect version that is more commonly cited today.

“We felt a special citation would be appropriate”:
William F. Woo, “Another Pulitzer Prize Hassle,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
May 13, 1964.
“It’s
very
too bad”:
“Very Too Bad,”
Newsweek,
May 17, 1965.
The recommendation was not taken seriously:
Hohenberg, 147.

“Larger forms”:
Irving Kolodin, “No Duke for ‘Duke,’”
Saturday Review,
May 29, 1965.

“I’m hardly surprised”:
Nat Hentoff, “This Cat Needs No Pulitzer Prize,”
The New York Times Magazine,
Sept. 12, 1965, in
Reader,
363.
“If you don’t give Duke”:
Tormé, 230–36.

The same thing happened when DE shared a bill with Mort Sahl:
For details of this dispute, see Bradbury, 102.

“Duke Ellington was nowhere to be found”:
Bikel, 314.

“I’d be afraid”:
Boyer, “The Hot Bach,” 217.
He embraced Christianity more purposefully:
Ibid., 244.

DE questioned his “eligibility”:
Quoted in Cohen, 461.
“You can jive with secular music”:
M. Cordell Thompson, “Thousands Bid Farewell to Duke,”
Jet,
June 13, 1974.
“Totally in [Ellington’s] character”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
“No, we’re not going to have a jam session”:
“Duke to Do Sacred Music Concert, Sept. 16,”
Jet,
Sept. 9, 1965.

“Every man prays in his own language”:
Quoted in
MM,
262.
“A lot of it sounded like
Black, Brown and Beige
”:
Gordon, 165. This impression was heightened by the “overture” played by the band at the Grace Catherdral premiere, a prelude based on themes from
Black, Brown and Beige
that was cut from later performances.

DE revised the concert:
The Grace Cathedral premiere was filmed for TV and subsequently telecast as “Duke Ellington: A Concert of Sacred Music.” It is currently available on home video as
Ralph Gleason Celebrates Duke Ellington: Love You Madly / A Concert of Sacred Music at Grace Cathedral
(Eagle Rock). The commercial recording of the concert issued by RCA in 1966, by contrast, incorporates all of DE’s revisions.

“It has been said once”:
MM,
262.

“Vintage Ellington”:
Alan Rich, “Duke Ellington’s Music as Prayer,”
New York Herald Tribune,
Dec. 27, 1965.
“Mr. Ellington moved carefully”:
John S. Wilson, “Duke Ellington Gives Popular Sacred Music Concert,”
The New York Times,
Dec. 27, 1965.

Ed Sullivan brought Bunny Briggs and the band onto his program:
The Ed Sullivan Show,
June 9, 1968.
“A type of music”:
“Jazz Goes to Church,”
Ebony,
Apr. 1966.
“Duke Ellington represents”:
John Carmody, “Baptist Ministers Refuse to Endorse the ‘Worldly’ Music of Duke Ellington,”
The Washington Post,
Dec. 1, 1966.
She thought it inappropriate:
Sherrill, oral-history interview.

“She loved life”:
“Duke Ellington’s Duchess,”
Jet,
Feb. 2, 1967.
“Evie absolutely expected”:
Ellington, 78.
DE told the countess that he was legally married to Evie:
Ibid., 205–6.

“He had his good days”:
Marian Logan, quoted in Hajdu, 196.
“It’s more a matter of morality”:
Dance, 30.

“A fruit that only looks like it’s alive”:
Hajdu, 242.

“What to write or how to write”:
John S. Wilson, “Billy Strayhorn: Alter Ego for the Duke,”
The New York Times,
June 6, 1965.

“He wrote his epitaph”:
Dance, 62.
“After I hung up the phone”:
MM,
159.

“Duke was sitting by himself”:
George, 178.
“William Thomas Strayhorn”:
MM,
159, 161.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“THAT BIG YAWNING VOID”

SOURCES

Documents

Alvin Ailey, oral-history interview, OHAM; Harold Ashby, oral-history interview, OHAM; Lawrence Brown, oral-history interview, IJS; Stanley Dance, liner notes for
New Orleans Suite,
sound recording (Atlantic); Stanley Dance, oral-history interview, OHAM;
Duke Ellington 1969: All-Star White House Tribute,
sound recording (Blue Note);
Duke Ellington’s 70th Birthday Concert,
sound recording (Solid State);
Duke Ellington—We Love You Madly,
TV program, Feb. 11, 1973 (CBS); DE, unpublished interview with Carter Harman, 1964, EC; Mercer Ellington, oral-history interview, EC; Norman Granz, oral-history interview (EC); Jimmy Jones, oral-history interview, IJS; Quincy Jones, oral-history interview, Archive of American Television, Nov. 13, 2002; Brooks Kerr, oral-history interview, OHAM; Betty McGettigan, oral-history interview, OHAM; “On the Road with Duke Ellington,”
The Bell Telephone Hour,
TV program, Oct. 13, 1967 (NBC); Joya Sherrill, oral-history interview, OHAM;
A Tribute to Duke Ellington,
TV program, May 25, 1974 (CBS).

Books

Balliett,
Collected Works;
Cohen,
Duke Ellington’s America;
Courtney,
Ignorant Armies;
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington;
Dietrich,
Duke’s ’Bones;
Ellington,
Duke Ellington in Person; Faine, Ellington at the White House 1969;
Friedwald,
Sinatra!;
George,
Sweet Man;
Gleason,
Celebrating the Duke;
Granata,
Sessions with Sinatra;
Hajdu,
Lush Life;
Harrison,
The Essential Jazz Records;
Hentoff,
Jazz Is;
Hershorn,
Norman Granz;
Jewell,
Duke;
Mellers,
Music in a New Found Land;
Peress,
Dvorák to Duke Ellington;
Ross,
The Rest Is Noise;
Schuller,
Early Jazz;
Schuller,
Gunther Schuller;
Schuller,
The Swing Era;
Wein,
Myself Among Others.

NOTES

“I don’t have time”:
George Frazier,
“The Sophistication of Duke Ellington,”
Esquire,
Dec. 1969.
“I’m writing more than ever now”:
Mary Campbell, “Ellington’s Newest Album Tribute to Billy Strayhorn,” AP wire dispatch, c. June 1968; undated clipping, IJS.

“It has the depth and timbre”:
Balliett, 281.

“When I got a copy”:
Ibid., 289.

“We hope that all of our compositions”:
“On the Road with Duke Ellington.”