[Dixielandjazz] Duke and the Stride pianists?

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Duke Ellington's models were "the stride pianists who swung like Hell"?
Which stride pianists and when, and when did stride pianists BEGIN to "swing like Hell"?

Ellington started really to swing when in the wake of a general enthusiasm for King Oliver's band, roughly the band later led by Louis Russell, he signed the New Orleans bassist Wellman Braud. There was also a saxophonist who disgraced himself by way of a lawsuit -- when he left Oliver for Ellington he brought along a piece of music which it was not his to bring. There was also Barney Bigard, and there was Cootie Williams, protege of a legendary Southern trumpeter called Chris Kelly, and before there was Cootie there had been Bubber "It don't mean a thing..." Miley, who went with Garvin Bushell to listen to what was being done in Chicago --  and of course Duke Ellington was one of the first pianists to record with Sidney Bechet (alas documentation is thorough only as far as confirming they did work together, there is no audio record).

Ellington certainly swung in "Hot and Bothered" and that species composition has been taken up by later stride pianists, Clarence Profit to Johnny Guarnieri, Dick Wellstood etc...  But when did stride pianists start to SWING rather than present virtuoso rhythmic tours de force?   


If I was not temporarily working on half a computer I could name a recomposition by Willie the Lion Smith on a strong basis of Chopin, which really belongs to the high speed hotandbothered Ellington genre, though either a solo or trio number (the latter in a 1949 broadcast in Switzerland) -- anyway this I think represents not something the young Ellington could have learned from around 1920,  but a development of timing and phrasing which needed the schooling of musicians from a lot of American locales.  


After the western and southern influences arrived, notes played in the north east tended to be less unbending. 

Of course according to one of the moods of Kenny Davern, Ellington just stole everything.  

I really miss the flash and twinkle of Kenny's eyes as he delivered a narrative. Happily some impression survives of the witty glint in Arbors CD liner photos.  Intonation,

which means almost everything 


Robert R. Calder