The Evolution of Jazz; 23; Duke Ellington Continued, Part Two

Here is another early example of Ellington's own piano playing. This can be dated in 1926 and it has somewhat less raucous background than the Nickelodeon piece. It's called swampy river and is an Ellington original. It may be interesting to read this description of the Ellington

way of using his band as an instrument. It was written for The New Yorker magazine 1943. Bear in mind that it is not entirely characteristic of how the band and Ellington decided on a number even then it is even less characteristic now. But this sort of communal improvisation communal decision rather on what to improvise on. Did used to happen occasionally in something like this manner and they still for that matter. But the interesting thing is that it could happen that 16 or 17 men could be given a framework by Ellington composer communally on that basis and open it in a fashion. The description starts ordinarily do completes the melody and the basic arrangement of the composition before he tries it out on the band at rehearsal. Then as he polishes or sets the arrangement he is likely to let the men in the band make suggestions in a creative Free-For-All that has no counterpart anywhere in the world of

jazz or classical music. Perhaps a musician will get up and say No Duke it just can't be that way and demonstrate on his instrument his conception of the phrase or bar under consideration. I think the writer is wrong there are several kind of parts in Jazz both in small and large units. Often this idea may outrage a colleague who replies on his instrument with his conception of the two players argue back and forth not with words but with a blast from trumpet or trombone. Now I resolve the debate by sitting down at the piano perhaps taking something from each suggestion perhaps modifying and reconciling the ideas of the two men but always putting the Ellington stamp on the music before passing on to the next part of the work in progress. The band really works out an entire arrangement collectively but when it does the phenomenon is something that makes other musicians Marvel. It may take place anywhere in a dance hall in Gary Indiana in an empty theater and will be in a Broadway nightclub. It will usually be after a performance sometimes at about three o'clock in the morning. Ellington sitting at his piano and facing his band will play a new melody

perhaps or possibly just an idea consisting of only eight bars. After playing the eight bars he may say now this is sad. It's about one guy sitting alone in his room in Harlem he's waiting for his check but she doesn't show. He's got everything fixed for his tired band begins to sympathize with the waiting man in Harlem two glasses of whiskey on his little dresser before his bed Duke says and again plays the eight bar ads which will be full of mournful chords and he goes on. He has one of those blue lights turned on in the gloom of his room Dube says softly and he has a little pot of incense so it'll smell nice for the jig. Again he plays the mournful chords developing his melody but he doesn't show and the guy just sits there maybe an hour hunched over on his bed all alone. The melody is finished and it's time to work out an arrangement for it. Laurence Brown rises with his trombone and gives out a compact warm phrase might shake his head Lawrence I want something like the treatment you gave and some other number that he mentions Brown and then his suggestion

and tearin is amended by tricky Sam and an also a drum bonus who puts a smear on a man on the phrase suggested by brown one Teazle the third trombone says I'd like to see a little retard on it. Duke may incorporate some variation of one of the suggestions in a moment or so the air is hideous as trombone and a clarinet saxophone and trumpet clash their players simultaneously trying variations on the theme. Johnny Hodges suggests a bar in his alto saxophone. Harry CARNEY The baritone sax this may say it's to hurt you also for the whole sex age. The whole sax section. And compress it a little making it simpler. As the band plays in unison the players stimulate one another and new qualities appear in experienced ear could hear Rex do it. Try but take an idea from Brown on trombone and embellish it a bit. Give it his own twist. Ellington raises his hand in the band stops playing on that last part he says trumpets but a little more top on it. He turns to junior Raglan the bass

player and says tired way down Junior tied way down. Again they play and now the bray of the trumpets becomes bolder and more sure the trombones more liquid and clearer the saxophones mellower and at the bottom there is the steady beat forward to a bar of the drums bass and guitar with Ellington's precise figure ations on piano. All of it growing developing fitting closer together until Ellington suddenly hauled them by shouting too much trombone. One two years old may then say I think this is too gut bucket for this kind of piece I'd like it more legit and plays a smooth clear phrase on his valve trombone. Well maybe you're right. Ellington says but I still think that when Sam gets into that plunge a party should give it some smear. Again the band begins at the beginning and as the band played two calls out directions. Like old dusty He may say it was a long dead jazz musician and even as he says it the emphasis in shaping will change. Or he may lean forward and say to one man like you did in the mood Sure you may shout over the carnival doubles on clarinet the clarinet is under tricky too much

as the music begins to move along you shout Give your heart his hands flicker over the keyboard sometimes coming in close together while he hunches his broad shoulders one shoulder twisted higher than the other and absorbed half smile upon his face. At a signal from various players with the theme now solidly in mind we'll get up and take solos he points at the soloist he wants and raises his right index finger and as long as the player doesn't get too far away from the theme. Duke lets him have his way perhaps two hours have gone by. This guy is getting gray but the boys have the feel of the piece and can't let it alone. They play on and on their coats off their hats on the backs of their heads some of their shoes off their stocking feet slapping up and down on the floor their eyes close their feet wide apart and braced when they stand for a solo. We ring back as if they could last father in better that way. Now grabs a piece of paper and a pencil and begins to write down the orchestration while the band is still playing it. Whenever the band stops for a breather Ellington experiments with the new chords perhaps adopts them perhaps rejects perhaps works on a piano solo that fits into little slots of silence

while the brass and reeds talk back and forth. By the time teams always finished getting the orchestration down on paper it's already out of date. The men begin to play again and then some and they shout Hey how about the train. There's a rush for a train that will carry the band to another engagement. As I said I suspect part of that description to be more a New Yorker style than precise actuality but that sort of communal creation didn't happen and it is also true that an Ellington number in the course of many performances at dances and at concerts when I was in my early and middle teens I followed the band around to as many concerts and dances as they played in the New England area. A number in the course of these dances or concerts with the other engagements would be reshaped and reshaped by the band by the individual soloists and by Ellington himself until everyone was more or less satisfied with it by which time it had evolved quite a bit from Ellington's for his diversion. And no one really was ever completely satisfied because I never heard the same composition sound exactly the same.

That's the way it was during the height of Ellington's creativity in the late 30s and through the 40s he was still leading a band today. A few of the veterans are still with him and many new young modernist musicians. The band is less cohesively an Ellington unit than it used to be but Ellington is still writing new compositions still rewriting his older works and is still a figure of universal respect in the jazz world. In 1952 when a critic attacked his later work in a musician's magazine the reaction from musicians and listeners was instantaneous and roused. Ellington himself declined comment. He has rarely been that interested in either critical products or commendations and I'm sure he likes the latter well enough. Among the hundreds of originals that Ellington has written here are a very few of the songs that have become popular to other than jazz audiences and it helped greatly I believe to raise the level of writing and popular music

that is pop music as distinguished from jazz. Though I often wonder whether anything ever can help enough in view of the recurrent cycles the popular music business falls into when publishers actually reject songs if they are too musical on the ground that the public will not buy quality. This conception of the public is false and the blame for the often low quality of popular tunes is due I am convinced the publisher is I'm just jockeys and recording directors and not to the unjustly belabored public. However as an indication of Ellington's get from some of his songs of solitude Mood Indigo I let a song go out of my hot Sophisticated Lady Don't Get Around Much Anymore. And in collaboration with one Teazle caravan of more interest to musicians have been the other originals that never became popular tunes but as played by his band. Have become widely admired by both jazz musicians and aficionado. Though Gershwin has long been awarded the accolades and later Richard Rodgers I believe that it is Ellington who has displayed

the most consistent originality and a high quality of conception in creating popular songs not classical and short compositions. And certainly neither Raja's no aggression can come anywhere near the level of quality. Well the only ones original is for is for his band those that were not intended to be popular songs. Ellington has been unparalleled in jazz in his ability to depict the bewildering variety of our emotional states in terms of music both with regard to his perceptiveness and seemingly almost universal empathy with differing emotional states and his prolific but consistently high level of output. He is much like the novelist George seaman on Ellington is explore the surface the meretricious. He has been deeply personal and painfully honest and he has celebrated sheer physical Green his music his permanency in jazz I think is due not only to his harmonic and melodic contributions but

also to that ability to communicate in the jazz language the intricate contradictory emotions we all share with varying degrees of awareness. I should like to close this section Ellington with examples from his work that may bear out that appraisal. I can't possibly because of time give you anywhere near an idea of all the various moods and feelings he has communicated but so far as I can from 127 for example there is this song and as a preface I'd like to read a brief account by a member of the brass section at that time and he was with the band for many years until his death. Tricky Sam Nat and he describes the kind of experimentation that went on constantly within the Ellington band within the various sections. Tricky Sammet and reminisced that it was an idea man. For instance we'd have a printed orchestration. Barbara would always have some added stuff of his own and soon we have a trio or quartet in the pot and if one of us didn't know the chorus the others would tell us what to play. So we had to don would take the whole brass section Al

and sit in with other bands and jam. We just tell their brass sections to to lay out and we'd take over and play the parts we had worked out and tear out and go to another place. The brass section that talks about can be heard in this composition and Ellington original of nine hundred twenty seven called Washington wobble. I am I am. I am

I am. I am. I am I am. When in 1934 this was recorded reportedly in reaction to the

Jim Crow treatment. Ellington and his band had received in the song. It's called rude. Then in the early positions one

description of the Harlem. I am.

I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I

am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. The one I'm moving the man song and the striking vocal style of the late Ivy Anderson the best local host Ellington ever had in the band. I got a baton then and good.

Why.

Were. You finally a reason it was variation of one's time Donek part of the many faceted Ellington personality fable written and narrated by Ellington a model fable called monologue. Once upon a time I came to the little little country a little ragged. But a pretty little girl. And since she was pretty saw fit to give her all he talked to her for quite a while.

Naturally she wanted to get somewhere. He was already spending on the karma. Around it and I added the conditions in a hurry to get somewhere. You could hear her say yes daddy daddy daddy. Thank you madam for matter. That's really funny and came out of this all rather came out of her skin because I think you got caught in the matter of fact he still is obviously lying because then she.

Started to go sailing around and writes to various conditions and ways for him to get somewhere and we can hear him say it's a baby. And. You have been listening to the evolution of jazz. I recorded series prepared and produced by Nat Hentoff under the auspices of Northeastern University and presented by the Lowell Institute cooperative broadcasting Council. The evolution of jazz was recorded in the Boston studios of WGBH Af-Am. But this is the national educational radio network.