Duke Ellington
(part one)
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was born in Washington DC in 1899. All the books say he was born into a “middle class” black family. Ellington’s father, James Edward Ellington, born in South Carolina, settled in Washington looking for work. He held a number of unstable jobs as a driver, caterer, and household servant, eventually becoming a servant to a man who appears to have been a “society” doctor - one Dr Middleton F. Cuthbert - at length rising to become his butler. How that counts as a middle class background – son of a servant – isn’t at all clear.
Booker T Washinton’s influence
Both of Ellington’s parents appear to have been adherents of Booker T. Washington, believing in cultural and educational “self-improvement” for African Americans as the gradual road to equality. The idea was to show that blacks could be cultured, responsible and competent, confounding the racist stereotypes, and thus prove themselves worthy of equal treatment in law. Perhaps it’s this vision of the polite, piano-playing, well-dressed senior Ellingtons that counts as “middle class” to American writers. Ellington junior seems to have imbued from this background a belief in a particular version of dignity and pride as the way of confirming that he was anyone’s equal. The way he carried himself is how he got the nickname “Duke”.
Sign-painting day job
While working as a sign-painter, from around 1917, Ellington began working in the evening and weekends as a dance band pianist, using his sign-painting contacts to get jobs for the band. As the best booking agent the band had, he fell naturally into the role of band-leader, without deliberately having sought it out. It was a role he was good at, but seems often to have been uncomfortable with.
The move to New York, and back to Washington. And finally back to Harlem again.
In 1919, he met his long-term friend and musical partner, the drummer Sonny Greer. It was when Greer decided to move to New York to take up a job offer in a dance band there that Ellington decided to take his band to Harlem. It didn’t work out and Ellington returned to Washington.
However, after some false starts and hard times, by June 1923 Ellington’s band had finally secured some prestigious dates in Harlem clubs, and by September of that year they had a permanent residency in the Holywood Club on 49th and Broadway. During this time, they honed their art, and Ellington began adding to the size of the band, learning how to write and arrange with particular players in mind, playing to their strengths and using their individual timbres.
East St Louis Toodle Oo
In 1926 Ellington recorded the first version of East St. Louis Toodle Oo, co-composed with trumpeter Bubber Miley. Ellington was to change around the composition, its arrangement, and even the spelling over the years, but it’s the 1926 recording of it we’re going to hear now: the first of his great records.
Cotton Club
In 1927 King Oliver turned down the offer of a long term engagement at the
Cotton Club, a whites-only club where wealthy white New Yorkers could pretend they were slumming it in Harlem, listen to black jazz musicians, and watch black dancers. The female dancers had to be light skinned, or in the racist language of the time, “
high yellow”.
Ellington jumped in. It was to be the break that made his name. National radio broadcasts from the Cotton Club were hugely popular, and Ellington’s distinctive sound was to become synonymous with the club.
Ellington at the Cotton Club, providing music for the dance review
Creole Love Call
It was that exposure that gave Ellington’s Creole Love Call a nation-wide audience, become his first big selling record. It has the unusual device of the wordless singing of Adelaide Hall in the arrangement as if part of the orchestra. It was considered a weird and surprising effect at the time, and caused a sensation.
That same year he released
Black and Tan Fantasy:
And a sound was born. He followed these up with further hits, such as
The Mooch, recorded in 1928:
