Attack the unassailable: Duke Ellington

(1 Isn't Ellington's overbearing legacy becoming a problem? Instead of "1920's Jazz" we have "Louis Armstrong"; instead of "bebop" we have "Charlie Parker; and now, instead of "big-band jazz" we have "Duke Ellington." None of this advances rounded understanding.

(2 So did he rip off band-member riffs and claim them as his own compositions or not? It's at least a complex question.

(3 Was he eminently fair to Billy Strayhorn or not?

(4 Don't people cut the "Sacred Concerts" too much slack these days?

(5 Whatever Duke's ecumenical attitude, cozying up to Richard Nixon was too much.

The only thing that strikes me as being slightly negative about Ellington is that the constant bonhomie, the "everything's swinging" attitude, sometimes went too far. He probably did as much for black pride and race relations in the US as anyone, but he was famously averse to any overt confrontation or causing offence - I don't mean he should have joined the black panthers, but there were times especially post-war when he could have made a bit more noise about things. Which was, of course, his choice to make, and perhaps he was more effective being the acceptable face of black culture. And finally, he was revered by hotheads like Miles and Mingus for good reasons. Did anyone ever seriously have a bad thing to say about him?

Johnny Hodges, for one, quit the band over songwriting credit.

I haven't yet read David Hajdu's Lush Life, and will defer to anyone who has regarding Ellington's relationship with Strayhorn. If nothing else, "Take The A Train" must have been a cash cow for Strays. What were publishing royalties like back then?

Yes, Duke has been cannonized, most especially in the Ken Burns series, but he was awarded his genius status early. Ellington himself was charmingly, if not convincingly, self-deprecating.

And yeah, that image of a bloated, drug-fuzzed Duke stumbling uninvited into the White House to demand a DEA badge from Tricky Dick is just too painful.

Ha! Classic.

I'd recommend starting with this.

We've done the "my first Ellington" topic before, haven't we? The Far Eastern Suite would be my choice, or the Proper 4CD set for all the tunes that made him famous.

(and yes, people cut The Sacred Concerts entirely too much slack. I say this having performed them several times - ouch)

'defend the indefensible' was always poor thread phrasing regarding ppl who are praised and liked by critics and consumers (like dylan, say). I don't think 'attack the unassailable' is quite there either.

''This just proves the point I made at another thread: Duke is probably the only artist about whose music no one has a bad thing to say.''

I don't know abt that Tuomas. I think plenty of ppl would if they heard his music but much of his output was made pre-war so many ppl haven't bothered to chase it up (I've been mostly working backwards with jazz, got lots of 'free' stuff now but I've getting some reish's from blue note and so on). ppl who generally dislike jazz don't chase any of it up and spend any time with it, i reckon (prove me wrong please).

More of Adorno's essays on music have just been published (including new ones on jazz so i'd be interested if he actually gave any examples of the jazz that he hated, from the review it doesn't look like he singled out anyone like duke).

Well, okay, of course people who don't like jazz in general won't like the Duke, but then they're probably dissing jazz as whole, not Duke in particular. Among those who actually are interested in jazz, I've never heard or read anyone say "I don't like Duke's music", and that's something you can't say about Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, or even Louis Armstrong. This isn't to say Duke's music is bland, it just seems to appeal to every sort of jazz fan.

I think there's a point about the critical reputation of both Miles and Ellington that they are the brand names on large bodies of astonishing work, but it is work of a collaborative nature and the extent of their own responsibility for the quality of that work is very problematic. You can make a good case for them actually being minor partners in the work being produced under their name, at least at some stages in their careers.

Even critics rarely get to grips with this, partly because of the intrinsic complexity of the subject matter, partly because of deliberate obfuscation by the main players and partly because of our desire for heroes. Even where, say Strayhorn or individual musicians contribution is fairly undisputed, some kind of sleight-of-hand rationale can be found to justify why Duke/Miles deserves a giant chunk of the credit. This rarely works as powerfully in reverse -Strayhorn/Blanton/Webster/Evan/Evans/Shorter/Macero etc are rarely given credit for anything beyond their indisputable personal contributions.

As far as Miles goes, I can't really agree there either. People split up Miles' work into different eras, according to who was in the band. Somebody like Shorter has writing credits on more songs than Miles does during the time they worked together. Critics talk about how his elliptical composition set the tone for that quintet. Critics worship Macero as one of the first electronic/studio composers, a revolutionary producer etc. There are box sets devoted to the collaborations of Gil Evans and Miles Davis. Anyone who played in Miles' band basically got a license to start his own band under his own name afterwards.

You're partly right, obviously we should be praising the Duke Ellington big band(s) as well as Duke himself. But there's another issue: in Duke's music I think the best thing are not the compositions but the arrangements, and he was responsible for them, no? The same could actually be said about Miles as well, and I think Gil Evans and Teo Macero have nowadays gotten the credit they deserve; it wasn't probably at the time those records were released, though.

I'd imagine there would be some people who would attack his actual playing and his small group appearances. Um, but not me. Money Jungle and the Coltrane/Ellington record are brilliant...his playing can be surprisingly modern, and even though he doesn't have a lot of chops he plays smarter instead of harder.

I think this is a matter of debate. Some people like the sound on Never No Lament, some people don't. With this reissue (as well as on the massive Centennial edition), RCA took a different approach to the remastering than they had done on the previous reissues. The previous approach (which is common in CD reissues of early recordings) was to simply lop off all the frequencies above a certain range. This causes most the hiss and crackle of the old recordings to disappear, but it takes the high end of the sound with it, causing the sound to lose clarity, brightness, realism, etc. I have many reissues that were remastered that way. The reissue on Never No Lament is different, and IMO, better. Instead of simply lopping off all the high frequencies, what they did was to only remove the high frequencies when there are no instruments in the original recording playing in that range. So in other words, during low-frequency passages, the hiss disappears - but it reappears somewhat on high-frequency passages, such as when the trumpets play in higher registers. So basically, they have made the tradeoff that you get a bit more surface noise in certain sections, but the recording has a lot more life and sparkle to it. Don't just take my word for it - the AMG review calls the sound on this reissue "stellar".

A case could be put that Miles was the junior partner in the vast majority the work for which he is most celebrated. I think that would be an extreme position but it is arguable. I'm not denying that good close-focus work hasn't been done trying to disentangle who was responsible for what, both in the case of Miles and Duke, but my point is that even well-informed critics who understand these things tend to revert to how things are branded in delivering career summaries.

This is a tentative theory, and I'd probably need to read harder and think harder about this stuff to satisfy myself beyond doubt, but I think there is an odd believing-two-contradictory-things-at-once thing going on here. Critics can conclude that "The Birth of the Cool" has more to do with Lewis than Davis, or that "Kind of Blue" has more to do with Bill Evans than Davis (and so on and so on throught to Marcus Miller) but in their summing up Miles's career will revert to an implicit assumption that Miles is responsible for all the work released under his name.

Perhaps one could go so far as to make a case that Miles was a junior partner in all the work for which he was most celebrated... but then one would have to believe that he was a very very lucky guy, to have been involved in so many pivotal moments in jazz without playing a major role in any of them.

This is a fact of language and life, not ILM! No harm intended.

I have more records by Miles Davis than any other artist and more of my favourite records are "by" Miles Davis than any other artist. I'm fascinated by the question of "how much does his career have to do with Miles being a great artist (which IMO he obviously was), how much is being in the right place at the right time, how much does it have to do with establishing a marketable persona that meant major talents playing difficult-to-market music could earn a living wage in his band, how much of it had to do with a CV (from playing with Parker as a teenager onward) that meant that being in his band would inevitably enhance a new talent's credibility and career, how much does it have to do with his personality, as talent spotter, as chance taker, as man who doesn't take shit from anybody, as bully, as charlatan, as liar, as appropriator of other people's work, as street operator, as egomaniac etc, etc. Any conclusions I may have drawn are provisional, fragile and subject to drastic alteration from moment to moment, so I'm not much interested in setting out a position I want to defend, I'm just saying, with no claim to originality, "you can look at things this way". I see parallels with Duke, whose music and life I admittedly know much less about.

I've always really liked Monk's rendition of "I Didn't Know About You" (aka "Sentimental Lady") on Straight, No Chaser. Today I was listening to Thelonious Alone in San Francisco, and I thought to myself, okay, he's playing "I Didn't Know About You." But I checked the tracklist, and what it said was "Everything Happens to Me," which wasn't written by Ellington but by Tom Adair and Mike Dennis, and recorded by Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra a few years before the release of the Ellington tune.

The two tunes definitely have a resemblance, but I wonder if Thelonious doesn't conflate them further somehow?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLmdzJyP1eg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dik2fibyR8k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocMppd1CFUM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zRuMflW-30

I just finished Con Chapman’s Johnny Hodges biography. While it is very informative he makes some dubious statements taken straight from Whitney Balliett about Archie Shepp and The Wold Saxophone Quartet “parodying” Hodges (absolutely not!).

Anyway since I have tried to hear every note played by the Ellington Orchestra I’ve been on a jag of listening to Hodges’ solo albums and disappointed so much is still out of print and not available even in streaming format, particularly the 1960s work while they aren’t deathless, they do provide a lot of interesting work with Earl Hines and arrangements by Oliver Nelson and others.

You know, I didn't realize that Earl Hines was still making records at that point, but according to Wikipedia he had a career renaissance in the mid-'60s

Love Johnny Hodges, were there any funny stories? I feel like I don't really know anything about him except what I can glean from the music, which isn't nothing but is also quite abstract

Just cued up Once Upon a Time (Impulse!, 1966) . . .

Nothing that stands out —. he was pretty quiet—except the already-known stories of him on the bandstand in the middle of the concert making eye contact with the Duke and making the “counting money” hand gesture.

Ellington thought so highly of him he spoke at Hodge’s funeral (apparently Duke hated funerals and avoided them).

oh wait Hodges would replace the lightbulbs in his hotel room. He would get one to himself towards the end of his life and replace the regular bulbs with colored lights and then put perfume on them.

Saw this funk-era Hines in the bins of a shop the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWGgrk0onCs

You know, I didn't realize that Earl Hines was still making records at that point, but according to Wikipedia he had a career renaissance in the mid-'60s

Hines was around into the 1970s. One of the most amazing stories I learned while writing my Cecil Taylor book was that the concert Taylor played at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1974, which became his album Silent Tongues, was part of a day-long program of solo piano performances in tribute to Duke Ellington, who'd died about a month beforehand. And the other performers were Earl "Fatha" Hines, Jay McShann, and Sir Roland Hanna, with Taylor playing last.

one of my favorite box sets was the ella song book box, sadly sold in my purge a few years ago

The big CD one from 1993 or so (produced by Phil Schaap)? The mastering on that set is too bright, which is a common problem with Schaap's masterings. The Hoffman forums led me to the older CD's credited to Dennis Drake and they sound much better, and I got them all for like $2 apiece over there last seven years. I even got the Ellington set for less than $10! CD prices have been going up but they're still cheap.

I got them all for like $2 apiece

The single CD releases that is. The two-disc albums were broken up into two single CD volumes, but the three-CD sets (Ellington and Gershwin) were kept as one package.

I remember a fellow music nerd enthusing about Money Jungle to me and one of the things he liked about it was "every time Mingus tried to get out there a little, you can hear Duke just shut him down"

The new Jason Moran Plays Duke Ellington album is fantastic. $20 and worth every penny.

that looks good — $20 for a digital album though!

xxxp bird: the Schaap one. I Liked the packaging, it was long before “original jacket” on CD was a box set cliche.

Yeah, that was a beautifully packaged box set - clothbound book too IIRC. That just made the mastering issues all the more frustrating. If I didn't care about sound, I'd spring for it. FYI the later Verve Master Edition reissues amplify these things - handsomer presentation, even bonus tracks, but harsher and brighter sound.

xp I don't know if there'll be a CD or vinyl edition, but I try to buy all his stuff at his shows now. (He generally has his latest for sale behind the bar at the Vanguard when he plays there every Thanksgiving week with the Bandwagon.) At least I save money on shipping, and I was planning to go to the shows anyway.

My controversial Ellington opinion: Money Jungle kinda sucks

Also Ellington’s piano work on the album Money Jungle is on the level of the greatest piano playing ever. It is playing that could never be reached by someone with the mindset of a post-Tatum pianism, and no one who comes out of a bebop or post bebop mindset could ever get to the language there. Hank Jones, Wynton Kelly, or Tommy Flanagan—as great as they all are—could never generate the energy/sound fields that the piano work on Money Jungle does.
-Matthew Shipp, "Black Mystery School Pianists"

man the title track alone in money jungle is god-like. like 2 different records played at same time, pit-pattering rhythm that is so beautiful, and those bass lines... omg

I cannot be objective about Money Jungle. It was the album that made jazz make sense to me. Fleurette Africaine and the Caravan take specifically. But the whole of it sent me down Ellington and Mingus rabbit holes, completely reorienting my listening. I smoked my last cigarette to the thing, thirty years ago!

maybe it was here but i remember reading some criticism of ellington that he was a bit of a fuddy duddy compared to these young tyros and that his piano playing didn’t “fit” with what the other guys were doing on money jungle but of course it’s that tension that completely makes the album for me. the scraping, moaning id of mingus’ bass prowling around in the underbelly of the songs and threatening to unmoor them completely, tugging and grappling with them

the thing is, i think ellington himself is doing a lot of deconstruction too, just from his own perspective. “energy/sound fields” is a great way of evoking the sounds he’s getting. to me it’s like these great shards of pre-bop chords and harmonies, the scaffolding and scenery of the entire american songbook, laid up in a backroom somewhere, and ellington’s bringing out the pieces one by one, arranging them differently to how they were before, making them crash into each other, rubbing them together, laying them on top of each other as if they were massive stained glass remnants of some great chapel and he’s creating new hues from the old.

One of the problems turned out to be that there was a CD release with the wrong track order.

This discussion is great, especially tracer’s descriptions. I gotta listen to money jungle again sometime this weekend

So that old CD sequenced the tracks "in the order that they were recorded" and so leads off with some kind of warm-up blues instead of the monster that is "Money Jungle" itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_Jungle#CD_(1987_%E2%80%93_Blue_Note)

"Very Special," which works much better where it is now.

Really enjoy this revive and especially the post from Tracer

My controversial Ellington opinion: Money Jungle kinda sucks

Also Ellington’s piano work on the album Money Jungle is on the level of the greatest piano playing ever. It is playing that could never be reached by someone with the mindset of a post-Tatum pianism, and no one who comes out of a bebop or post bebop mindset could ever get to the language there. Hank Jones, Wynton Kelly, or Tommy Flanagan—as great as they all are—could never generate the energy/sound fields that the piano work on Money Jungle does.
-Matthew Shipp, "Black Mystery School Pianists"

Now, how are you going to give a thing like that some stars? Record companies should be kicked in the ass. Somebody should take a picket sign and picket the record company.
-Miles Davis, Down Beat Vol. 58

The full Davis quote (the writer played him "Caravan"):

"What am I supposed to say to that? That's ridiculous. You see the way they can fuck up music? It's a mismatch. They don't complement each other. Max and Mingus can play together, by themselves. Mingus is a hell of a bass player, and Max is a hell of a drummer. But Duke can't play with them, and they can't play with Duke.

Now, how are you going to give a thing like that some stars? Record companies should be kicked in the ass. Somebody should take a picket sign and picket the record company."

i do like Money Jungle though

Miles is wrong!

Miles also harshly slags Eric Dolphy and Cecil Taylor in that blindfold test, fwiw.

7. Eric Dolphy - Miss Ann (from Far Cry, New Jazz)
Booker Little, trumpet; Dolphy, composer, alto saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano

That's got to be Eric Dolphy - nobody else could sound that bad! The next time I see him I'm going to step on his foot. You print that. I think he's ridiculous. He's a sad motherfucker.

L.F.: Down Beat won't print those words. [But I do!]

M.D.: Just put he's a sad shhhhhhhhh, that's all! The composition is sad. The piano player fucks it up, getting in the way so that you can't hear how things are supposed to be accented.

It's a sad record, and it's the record company's fault again. I didn't like the trumpet player's tone, and he don't do nothing. The running is all right if you're going to play that way, like Freddie Hubbard or Lee Morgan; but you've got to inject something, and you've got to have the rhythm section along; you just can't keep on playing all eighth notes.

The piano player's sad. You have to think when you play; you have to help each other - you just can't play for yourself. You've got to play with whomever you're playing. If I'm playing with Basie, I'm going to try to help what he's doing - that particular feeling.

(to add to the sting, Dolphy died between the test and publication)

Cecil Taylor - Lena (from Live at the Caf� Montmartre, Fantasy)
Jimmy Lyons, alto saxophone; Taylor, piano

Take it off! That's some sad shit, man. In the first place, I hear some Charlie Parker cliches. . . . They don't even fit. Is that what the critics are digging? Them critics better stop having coffee. If there ain't nothing to listen to, they might as well admit it. Just to take something like that and say it's great, because there ain't nothing to listen to, that's like going out and getting a prostitute.

L.F.: This man said he was influenced by Duke Ellington.

M.D.: I don't give a shit! It must be Cecil Taylor. Right? I don't care who he's inspired by. That shit ain't nothing. In the first place he don't have the - you know, the way you touch a piano. He doesn't have the touch that would make the sound of whatever he thinks of come off.

I can tell he's influenced by Duke, but to put the loud pedal on the piano and make a run is very old-fashioned to me. And when the alto player sits up there and plays without no tone. . . . That's the reason I don't buy any records.

http://www.forghieri.net/jazz/blind/Davis_3.html

i come to miles for his music, not his opinions about other artist’s music.

miles was a shitposter

skynbrg otm

he was right about steve miller tho

The piano player's sad. You have to think when you play; you have to help each other - you just can't play for yourself. You've got to play with whomever you're playing. If I'm playing with Basie, I'm going to try to help what he's doing - that particular feeling.

the thing is, this is good and interesting thinking: it's why Davis can't groove with the music he's being presented with (that, and he's a cranky guy). but it's not the only position one can hold about ensemble playing. you don't have to play with whomever you're playing with! you can play against, in as counter to, whoever you're playing with; you can be off in your own world and still have it come out great & interesting; "there's a million ways to be, you know that there are". Davis is a believer in an ideal. Cecil Taylor and Eric Dolphy aren't chasing an ideal but possibilities.

Damn i have the cd with the wrong track order. I've never warmed to it maybe thats why.

I understand the love for Money Jungle; I just don't share it. I'm serious, though, people - listen to Piano In The Foreground. It's on every streaming service, easy to find. You'll be glad you did. There's a version of "Summertime" on there that's as out as anything on MJ.

piano in the foreground is great, yes

I love the Woode/Woodyard rhythm section, so I will check this out ASAP. Of course "Meets Coleman Hawkins" has a small(er) combo feel as well but I think that one's relatively well known

i cant see Sam woodyard’s nae without hearing Duke’s voice crying out “sam woodyard!” in the Festival Session record

I mean, I’m of the opinion that Duke Ellington had the golden touch, I don’t think there’s anything I’ve heard that I don’t at least *like*. Money Jungle is top tier though.

Hmm let me introduce you to his recording of "I Want to Hold Your Hand"

only half kidding, it's at least interesting and arguably even kind of a commentary, but I'd say Ellington '66 overall is a real stinker. There's kind of a fallow period in the mid-'60s, following the Impulse! recordings but before the return to form w/ Far East Suite, when he was churning out a lot of schlock for Reprise

Haha I like that Beatles cover — his blowin in the wind too! Obviously there’s minor stuff, but I just like it.

Reminds me of the time I shelled out big bucks to acquire a rare Slim Gaillard 45 where he does "Blowin' in the Wind," because I just love weird musical conjunctions like that. I thought it would at least be interesting but it was a total dud, lol

Yeah I had the Mosaic Reprise box set for completeness’s sake but it was a bit of a slog.

One more Ellingtonian oddity before I have to run out for the evening: Here's BB King singing "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" with the Ellington Orchestra (allegedly). Love this rendition, there's something about BB's voice and delivery that's well suited to the material imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx4ZygS0qBg

That’s excellent and unexpected

Not a huge Ellington guy but for some reason I got into the Queen’s Suite and fell hardcore for “A Single Petal from a Rose”

One more Ellingtonian oddity before I have to run out for the evening: Here's BB King singing "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" with the Ellington Orchestra (allegedly). Love this rendition, there's something about BB's voice and delivery that's well suited to the material imo

📹

B-side title is hilarious:

https://www.discogs.com/master/634919-B-B-King-Dont-Get-Around-Much-Anymore

looking into Discogs it seems that it’s a studio orchestra led by Maxwell Davis. Although Curtis Counce is on bass and Jimmy Rowles on piano.

This is from 15 years ago, but I stumbled upon it and it fits with what we've been talking about

Late, Great Ellington
Geoffrey O’Brien
A conversation about Duke Ellington’s mid-career crisis and stunning comeback, revisiting his often-overlooked albums of the 1960s and 1970s.

March 11, 2011
NYRB

https://archive.ph/XqJkc

Gah, sorry. That's the link to the podcast based on the article (which no longer seems available). The article itself is titled "The Grandest Duke," also by O'Brien, available here:

https://archive.ph/czy1I

The Far East Suite is in my top 10 Ellington

The article is really excellent. It contains the amazing fact that Duke Ellington's first piano teacher was named Marietta Clinkscales

I've also become enamored with this piece from his River Suite, which is mentioned in the article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-k7n-ZFLsU

The River is another favorite of mine, yeah. there’s a band version on one of those posthumous releases of hIs recorded stockpile, I believe

Just heard "Money Jungle" in the cheese shop!

mmm funky