[Dixielandjazz] Duke Ellington - A Life By Terry Teachout

[Steve Voce]

Here's my review of Terry's new book from the November Jazz journal.
Steve Voce

*DUKE *

A Life of Duke Ellington, by Terry Teachout. Gotham Books. 467 pages, hb 
$30. Available from Amazon.co.uk, £16.27. ISBN 978-1-592-40749-1

For years discussion has raged in the world of music over whether Duke 
Ellington was a composer or not. His longer works seldom showed much 
development and were usually thought to be unconvincing. Terry Teachout 
has a potent quote from Alec Wilder, who /was /a composer.

'To me the works of Ellington in terms of composition extend only as far 
as the song form extends, that is the 32 measure convention of Broadway 
and the radio, with slight extensions and variations...'

There have been more books written about Duke Ellington than about 
almost any other jazz figure. As the author points out, Ellington was 
famous long before the Swing Era and long after the big bands had faded 
away. Duke could claim to have been, if not the major figure, one of the 
two major figures in the music (interestingly, Teachout has already 
written a similarly thorough biography of the other).

Although, as Juan Tizol points out in this one, the Duke was a poor 
reader, he was a minor genius and a most interesting man, so there is 
room for this latest in the series of accounts of his life. Mr 
Teachout's is probably the most absorbing of them all. His research has 
been thorough and he has assiduously followed up every anecdote and 
incident with the result that his book is very satisfying to read and 
full of tested fact about the maestro. Yet, despite the welter of 
detail, the writing style is so good that this is a memorable 
experience, as well as being probably the definitive biography. You 
don't need another one, because everything is here and delivered with 
style and accuracy (the author can be forgiven for, like everyone else, 
attributing the ban on US musicians in Britain to the Musicians' Union 
rather than, as was the case, the Ministry of Works).

Duke was a late starter. His first recordings in 1926, which I reviewed 
recently in this magazine, were stilted at a time when Armstrong, 
Bechet, King Oliver and James P Johnson had already made jazz recordings 
that showed them at or near their best. However, Duke soon caught up and 
overtook his rivals -- at the time he was the only bandleader who wrote 
most of the material that his musicians played. There's an extensive and 
revealing account of Duke's relationship with Irving Mills and his time 
at the Cotton Club. In February 1929 CBS started broadcasting the band 
coast to coast from the Cotton Club and thus it became widely known 
outside New York. (The number of radio listeners jumped from 16 million 
in 1925 to 60 million in 1930).

The author doesn't pull any punches on Duke's behalf, and easily 
penetrates the facade that Ellington presented to the world. Although he 
would have been pleased with the thoroughness of the profile, I don't 
think Duke would have appreciated its frankness (would Count Basie have 
worn a corset?).

Duke liked to assume power over his situations. 'I'm easy to please. I 
just want to have everybody in the palm of my hand,' he said.

'What you need to do is wake up after two o'clock, make phone calls, but 
don't move an inch,' he told his son Mercer. 'Just lie flat on your back 
and phone, and tell everybody everything that has to be done, and lay 
all your plans without going out anywhere... when you come downstairs 
you'll have prepared for your day, and you'll be the Greatest.'

The major sidemen are comprehensively dealt with individually. Mr 
Teachout has calculated that 900 musicians passed through the band.

Billy Strayhorn is portrayed at length. The book reiterates the fact 
that Duke shifted segments of compositions in a way that bewildered his 
associates. In 1953 he did this to one of Strayhorn's pieces and 
Strayhorn was so upset that he left the band for two and a half years.

I had known for many years that Ellington had alienated Lawrence Brown 
for life by interfering in his marriage. The full horror of the matter 
as detailed here is jaw dropping. Mr Teachout also looks into John 
Hammond's role, not just in his relationship with Ellington, but with 
other jazz musicians including Rex Stewart.

Overall Teachout's analysis of the music is good and his focus on the 
1940 /Ko-Ko /as 'the greatest of Ellington's three-minute masterpieces' 
is apposite. But was Duke's beautiful and simple /Across The Track Blues 
/really 'one in which the unmediated emotions of the authentic bluesman 
are transformed into the musical counterpart of a colour-field 
abstraction, then put in a handsome frame and hung in the Ellington 
museum for the purpose of quiet contemplation'? Nevertheless, such 
pomposo is rare, and on the same page the author makes the telling point 
that Ellington 'was a major composer but not an influential one.'

Teachout explains lucidly the ASCAP and BMI battle of 1941. Although 
Ellington was and wanted people to think of him of as apolitical, the 
book reveals much about his connections to the intellectuals and 
Communists in the Hollywood movement with the show 'Jump For Joy' in the 
early '40s. His first Carnegie Hall concert in 1942 and the subsequent 
ones given there drew an enormous amount of publicity. We think of 
Ellington as working the band on a shoestring, but at this time he had a 
lot of money and the men were well paid. Additionally all the attention 
hooked him a 25-week residence at New York's Hurricane Club and two 
years of broadcasts from the city. This saved a fortune in travelling 
expenses.

George Avakian, everyone's favourite record producer, was more than just 
a friend when, in 1950, he brought Ellington and the LP form together. 
'I had carte blanche, we were making gigantic profits on the popular 
albums, and anything I wanted to do, I didn't have to ask any 
questions.' It was a new Ellington Era, emphasised by the recruitment of 
Paul Gonsalves to the band in 1950 and the departure of Johnny Hodges, 
Lawrence Brown and Billy Strayhorn the next year. Newport was not far ahead.

There is a list of 50 key recordings that is uncontroversial, an 
imposing bibliography and 80 pages of meticulous source notes.

Books on Ellington by Barry Ulanov (1946), Peter Gammond (1958) and 
Derek Jewell (1977) seemed comprehensive in their day but soon became 
outdated. Several later books depended sometimes on industrious 
journalistic compilation. Stanley Dance's 'World of Duke Ellington' was 
written from the point of an insider but was by no means a history. John 
Edward Hasse's 'Beyond Category' (1993) is probably the nearest parallel 
to Teachout but obviously, working two decades later, Teachout has the 
advantage of later research.

It seems to me that there can be little more about Duke Ellington to 
uncover and that Teachout's book, as in the case of his earlier one on 
Armstrong, is the masterwork.

Steve Voce