Authors: Terry Teachout
Duke
Duke Ellington, London, 1958
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Copyright © 2013 by Terry Teachout
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Teachout, Terry.
Duke : a life of Duke Ellington / Terry Teachout.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-698-13858-2 (eBook)
1. Ellington, Duke, 1899-1974. 2. Jazz musicians—United States—Biography. I. Title.
ML410.E44T38 2013
781.65092–dc23
[B]
2013011138
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
To Mrs. T, who was never in doubt
There is one very good thing to be said of posterity,
and this is that it turns a blind eye on the defects of greatness.
W. Somerset Maugham
We wear the mask that grins and lies.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
“I WANT TO TELL AMERICA”
1
“I JUST COULDN’T BE SHACKLED”
Fortunate Son, 1899–1917
Becoming a Professional, 1917–1926
With Irving Mills, 1926–1927
At the Cotton Club, 1927–1929
5
“I BETTER SCRATCH OUT SOMETHING”
Becoming a Genius, 1929–1930
Becoming a Star, 1931–1933
7
“THE WAY THE PRESIDENT TRAVELS”
On the Road, 1933–1936
Diminuendo in Blue, 1936–1939
9
“THE EYES IN THE BACK OF MY HEAD”
With Billy Strayhorn, 1938–1939
The Blanton-Webster Band, 1939–1940
Jump for Joy, 1941–1942
Carnegie Hall, 1942–1946
13
“MORE A BUSINESS THAN AN ART”
Into the Wilderness, 1946–1955
Crescendo in Blue, 1955–1960
Apotheosis, 1960–1967
Alone in a Crowd, 1967–1974
Fifty Key Recordings by Duke Ellington
PROLOGUE
“I WANT TO TELL AMERICA”
H
E WAS THE
most chronic of procrastinators, a man who never did today what he could put off until next month, or next year. He left letters unanswered, contracts unsigned, watches unworn, and longtime companions unwed, and the only thing harder than getting him out of bed in the afternoon was getting him to finish writing a new piece of music in time for the premiere. “I don’t need time,” he liked to say. “What I need is a deadline!” Nothing but an immovable deadline could spur Duke Ellington to decisive action, though once he set to work in earnest, it was with a speed and self-assurance that amazed all who beheld it. At the end of his life, he left behind some seventeen hundred–odd compositions, a number that is hard to square with the memories of his collaborators, who rarely failed at one time or another to be frustrated by his dilatory ways. That was fine with him. He knew what he needed in order to create, and as far as he was concerned, nothing and no one else mattered. “As long as something is unfinished,” he told Louis Armstrong, “there’s always that little feeling of insecurity. And a feeling of insecurity is absolutely necessary unless you’re so rich that it doesn’t matter.” Few of his pronouncements can be taken at face value—he was never in the habit of telling anyone, even those who supposed themselves to be his friends, what he really thought—but this one has the ring of truth. “He wants life and music to be in a state of becoming,” said the trumpeter Clark Terry, one of the many stars of the band that Ellington led from 1924 until his death a half century later. “He doesn’t even like to write definitive endings to a piece.”