[Dixielandjazz] "Duke Ellington's America" reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

"Duke Ellington's America" reviewed

Culture's Ambassador
by Peter Keepnews
New York Times, June 6, 2010

The idea of a substantial book about a major musical figure that pays relatively
little attention to his music might seem counterintuitive -- or, to put it less politely,
pointless. That "Duke Ellington's America" succeeds as well as it does is a tribute
both to its author and to its subject.
Arguing that Duke Ellington's "significance went far beyond the musical realm," Harvey
G. Cohen, a cultural historian who teaches at King's College London, places Ellington's
life as a public figure and "culture hero" in a larger social and political context.
Others have written about his connection to the civil rights movement, or the many
State Department tours on which he and his remarkable band functioned as cultural
ambassadors during the cold war. Cohen makes such matters his primary concern.
There are not many artists whose lives can bear the weight of such a non-art-oriented
treatment. Ellington, who for much of his career was not just a musician but also
a symbol -- of jazz as high art, of America as a land of opportunity -- is one of
them, and the story of his place in the world turns out to be well worth telling.
Cohen's in-depth examination of Ellington and civil rights is especially fascinating.
Those who don't know much about Ellington might assume from his charming but aloof
public persona that he floated serenely above worldly matters like the struggle for
racial equality. Cohen demonstrates otherwise, expertly detailing Ellington's contributions
to the cause -- as a composer who addressed racial pride in ambitious works like
"Black, Brown and Beige" and "My People," and as a high-profile exemplar of dignity
in the face of prejudice. ("I started my own civil rights movement in the '30s,"
Ellington said in 1965. "I went down South without federal troops.") But even the
aficionado might be surprised to learn that those contributions were not always universally
applauded, or even acknowledged, by Ellington's own people.
In 1951, a number of African-American newspapers printed an article in which Ellington
was quoted as saying that blacks "ain't ready" for integration and that segregation
was "something that nothing can be done about." Ellington was quick to respond that
he had been misquoted (­Cohen agrees that at the very least his words were taken
out of context), but not quick enough; the article, Cohen writes, "tarnished his
long reputation as a race leader in the black community" for years.
That setback coincided with what Cohen accurately terms the nadir of Ellington's
career, before his orchestra emerged from its "toughest period as the only big band
to tour and record continually through the postwar era without an extended hiatus."
Cohen's analysis of how Ellington negotiated the vagaries of the music business,
and particularly how hard he worked to remain relevant in a fickle marketplace (there
were even fleeting efforts in the mid-1950s "to affix the marketing term 'rock and
roll' to the Ellington orchestra"), is among this book's many strengths.
Unfortunately, Cohen has almost nothing of interest to say when the subject turns,
as it inevitably must, to the music itself. Does a sentence like "'New York City
Blues,' a track concocted in the studio by Ellington, functioned as a beautiful jazz
miniature, full of personality, redolent of a late-night cab ride past Central Park
up to Harlem" do anything to enhance our understanding of Ellington's art, or even
to tell us what this piece actually sounds like? His comment that the 1966 album
"Far East Suite" is "as good as anything Ellington ever released" and his characterization
of three early-1970s albums as "worthy additions to the Ellington canon that should
be much better known" may motivate a reader to seek out those recordings. But do
they convey any useful information other than that Cohen likes them?
I understand Cohen's decision to take a hands-off approach to Ellington's personal
life, which is simply not on his agenda. ("Multiple sources concur that Ellington
engaged in sexual relations with numerous women on the road" is about as far as it
delves into that rich subject, before discreetly moving on.) Maybe I'm being counter­intuitive
myself, but I think "Duke Ellington's America," as good as it is, might have been
better had it taken an even more hands-off approach to Ellington's music.


--Bob Ringwald
Amateur (ham) Radio call sign K6YBV
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
916/806-9551

"Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together."
--Mel Brooks