[Dixielandjazz] Duke Ellington - A Life By Terry Teachout

[Marek Boym]

DEar Steve,
I really like your review, even though I am not sure whether I agree with
the "apposite" in connection with describing "Ko-Ko" as the Duke's
"greatest three minute masterpiece."  But de gustibus non disputandum est.
I definitely have other preferences.
I have never liked the really long compsitions, but both "Reminscing in
Tempo" and "Creole Rhapsody" seem to belie Joe Wilder's evaluation.
Cheers


On 26 October 2013 19:03, Steve Voce <stevevoce at virginmedia.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
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