[Dixielandjazz] Biographer Finds Some Dissonance in Ellington's Life

[Robert Ringwald]

Biographer Finds Some Dissonance in Ellington's Life
by Karl Stark
Philadelphia Inquirer, October 27, 2013
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was jazz royalty. He even
eschewed the term jazz at times, although an unbelievable number
of his 1,700 tunes remain jazz standards.
Ellington wrote orchestral suites, soundtracks for the movies,
and scores for Broadway. In an era when many jazz players were
seen as drug addicts, he was one of the first jazz players to be
successfully marketed as a creative artist, and he's often
considered one of the greatest American composers ever.
Or was he?
In his new biography, Terry Teachout, a former professional
bassist who is the drama critic for the Wall Street Journal,
politely chips away at the Ellington image. The debonair maestro
is still charismatic, but the weight of this biography, billed as
the first major one in 18 years, hits some unpleasant dissonance.
Those tunes Ellington is credited with writing turn out to have
been done largely by his sidemen. Ellington never really
succeeded on Broadway or in the movies. His suites often lacked
real orchestral development, Teachout writes, and even his
celebrated band -- full of unique players -- scuffled at times
with poor discipline and a lack of fire.
Teachout's biography is full of such critical counterpoint. At
different points. he calls Ellington "one of the supreme creative
figures of the 20th Century" and "a major composer but not an
influential one." Certainly, to have led bands as Ellington did
through a largely segregated America over nearly a half-century
of shifting tastes was a monumental feat.
Ellington's ace in the hole was the band's songbook. His many
standards provided a steady stream of royalties that kept his
groups together when others were fading.
Those bands -- full of powerhouse players like Ben Webster,
Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsalves, Cootie Williams, Harry Carney, and
Clark Terry -- were integral to the way Ellington composed. The
man was not a natural tunesmith, Teachout writes. But he was
adept at picking up promising fragments from band members and
remolding them into tunes that he then took for himself.
"Sophisticated Lady" from 1933 was typical. This standard was
composed of themes from two of his sidemen: saxophonist Otto
Hardwick and trombonist Lawrence Brown. Ellington spliced their
licks together and reharmonized them. He offered both men $15 and
kept the long-term rights. "I don't consider you a composer,"
Brown told Ellington early in their difficult relationship,
according to Teachout. "You are a compiler."
Other players took a more benign view of Ellington's ways. It's
likely that nothing would have come of those licks had Ellington
not recognized their verve and polished them. He showed
considerable expertise in reshaping them. And those sidemen
didn't go on to write amazing music, while Ellington kept it up
for decades.
The leader had a similar alpha-dog relationship with his talented
in-house composer, Billy Strayhorn. The pianist, who grew up in
Pittsburgh, was called the other half of Ellington's heartbeat.
He was steeped in classical music, especially in the French
impressionists, and was far more educated musically than
Ellington, Teachout writes. Strayhorn also was openly homosexual
and probably couldn't have functioned as a bandleader.
Strayhorn wrote major tunes like "Take the A Train," while
receiving little credit. Ellington both paid Strayhorn well and
did little to promote him, dissing him as a "staff composer."
Strayhorn smoldered for years; leaving the band and returning to
it were both problematic.
In some ways, Ellington's practices were channeling the way he
was treated by his longtime manager, Irving Mills, who extracted
a heavy percentage of the leader's earnings for years. Mills'
name is cemented into many of the band's song credits.
At the same time, Mills was extremely successful in marketing
Ellington as an artist and launching him from his early gig at
the Cotton Club in Harlem into an international superstar who
died much lionized in 1974.
Teachout, who played bass in Kansas City before pursuing a career
as a writer, is pretty workmanlike as a scribe. The biography
exhibits little literary music. He says his work would not have
been possible without the efforts of many modern and amateur
scholars.
He's pretty dogged, though, logging Ellington's triumphs, such as
the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, where Paul Gonsalves played 27
legendary choruses of the blues.
Teachout is also busy blowing up Ellington's autobiography,
"Music Is My Mistress," as so much florid fiction. You learn how
Ellington was a serial womanizer whose relationships form a kind
of dreary bass line in this book. He was a poseur who acted
urbane but read little. He was extremely superstitious. And the
list of his fears was encyclopedic, ranging from sea and air
travel to people who whistled.
It all does little to diminish the music, which has outlived its
compiler's foibles.
-30-



-Bob Ringwald K6YBV
www.ringwald.com
916/ 806-9551

"If you don't know where you're going, you might end up some place else."
-Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra