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November, 1974

Sound Magazine

How does a person spend countless decades creating music and not only manage to survive but become even more important to the music field as those years roll by? Well, there are several requirements. First, you must have boundless talent. Second, you must have a sensitivity and awareness of what your total commitment is in this particular field. And last and certainly not least, in this case your name would have to be Edward Kennedy Ellington.

My first personal involvement with Duke Ellington came in New York City in 1949. About an hour after I had finished my first appearance at Carnegie Hall (with the Jazz At The Philharmonic), Duke walked past me during one of his intermissions in a place called Bop City. He just sort of said, "Hi there" and gave no other indication that he even knew of my existence. It was just as if he were greeting someone in the audience. So it came as a total shock to me when, in the middle of his next show, he got up from the piano, walked over to the microphone, and started into a dissertation on what he thought of - as he called it - my "pianistic virtuosity". And he immediately proceeded to call me up to the band stand to play with the band.

This, of course, created a state of furour within me. I had just gone through the experience of making my first appearance in New York City. And now I was to be confronted by the Ellington band -- en masse and headed, very obviously, by the Duke himself -- and expected to turn on to whatever it was he expected from me. Moreover, exactly what he did want was an unknown quantity or quality at that moment.

As I got to know him better later, I became aware that this, in essence, was a big part of the Duke Ellington behavior pattern. He thrived on spontaneity. He recognized not one single thing in life, musically speaking, as an insurmountable challenge. He was a great one for always saying, "Oh, don't worry about it. You can do it. You'll get the gist of it as we play it."

And this is exactly what took place that night. He called for a tune with which I wasn't familiar and, before I could even make my point clear that I wasn't that straight on the tune, he just sort of gave me an assuring wave and said, "that's no problem for you." Then he waved the band in and, before I knew it, we were in the middle of the Harlem Suite or something. And this spontaneity was part of the Duke Ellington that I think added a great deal to his virtuosity.

As much as we loved and revered Duke Ellington for the many highly tailored, arranged, and composed selections that he has left us, we have to admire him for this great characteristic. I've seen him at record dates with Ella Fitzgerald where she's questioned what was going to happen on the third or fourth chorus into a tune and he, with a complete air of assurance, would say, "Oh, don't worry. We'll find something to play for you, Madame Fitzgerald."

Strangely enough, there was a very unique phenomenon that took place when you played with Ellington. Regardless of the apprehension you may have had starting in, somewhere along the line, almost in a subliminal manner, you would be swept up and engulfed in this musical tidal wave. And, before you knew it, you, too, were a contributing factor to that tidal wave. This is a phenomenon to which various people like Louis Belson, who have been caught up in this experience of not knowing what was going to take place, will attest.

Edward Kennedy Ellington was able to do this because he was a man of great tenderness, kindness, and affection. I've heard him go to the microphone hundreds of times and give the speech about how much he loved the audience and how much the band loved the audience. And I found myself believing it because I know that, in the times that I spent with Duke personally, I never heard him utter one derogatory word about anyone. That's a very strange thing in this world today - for anyone, not just people in the music field.

He might say that someone was possibly not attuned to a situation or couldn't understand it. But he would not say that they were no good at it. I've never heard him say he disliked anyone's playing, a very unusual fact because musicians are a breed that are normally very verbal and sometimes even caustic about the playing of other musicians.

Duke expressed himself in other ways. Things that the average person would consider minor, for some reason usually drew comment from Duke Ellington. Often the comment would be musical, which would mean that he had become involved in these things to which we would pay no attention - to the point where he would deem it necessary to write a composition about the incident.

For instance, in the various trips that I've made to Japan, I couldn't help noticing that, on one of the fast trains, they play a simple little music box tune just before the train announcer comes on to announce the name of the next station. Most tourists and travelers in Japan notice this little tune, but it's sort of a subconscious thing that you get used to hearing and don't think too much about. Duke, however, made quite a lot of it. He found enough musical content in this one little sort of train jingle that he was able to write a complete selection about it.

That was the way he was. Things affected him deeply and greatly. People, too, affected him. He had a thoroughly unique way of complimenting someone that was completely apart from the way most people would make compliments. I remember one evening with a lady who came in to congratulate him on his performance. He looked at her and, whereas most men might say, "You look marvelous in that dress," Duke versed it another way. He said, "You make that dress look marvelous." And this is the innate musical and verbal quality that Duke had.

Duke, then, was a magnificent person. But he was much more than that. He possessed a flourishing talent both as a composer and a musician. One instance in particular underlines the breadth of that talent for me.

We were somewhere in the United States, having just finished a double concert. After his concerts, Duke would often go over to the piano and play various things for himself. There was never any particular pattern to what he'd play; maybe they were things that he had written, things that he had heard, or things that he didn't even know that he knew. And he'd sit at the piano until it was time for the bus to leave for the train station or airport.

After this particular concert, I was at the piano. He came and leaned over the piano and said, "Play something for me." I recalled a tune that he had written - a tune that quite intrigued me and began to play it for him. He was quite taken aback. He looked at me in all honesty and said, "What is that you're playing? " And I said, "Duke, it's one of your tunes." So he said, "Well, isn't that something. Play the middle for me. I can't even remember the middle of that tune."

It was almost as if I had to play the middle three or four times in order to teach him. But the point is this: it wasn't because his memory was bad; it's simply that there was so much music flowing from this unending reserve of creativity that he possibly didn't have time to remember all that he'd written over all those years.

Had Duke not been the great band leader that he was, I think that he would have devoted his time as a solo pianist. There have been innumerable times when we have sat together and talked about nothing but piano, the instrument itself. How much there was to it. He found a deep well of interest there, taking his piano playing seriously although he joked about it most of the time. Because he truly loved the instrument, he admired anyone who could play the piano. He felt that the piano gave an expression to music that almost any other instrument was incapable of giving.

I think if I had to pick out two of the most outstanding qualities of his playing, the first would be the harmonic sense that he had in playing behind someone, playing with the band and filling in maybe only two beats. The voicing or the choice of chords that he decided to use in just that short space would add so much to the composition that it was just unbelievable. It was marvelous to hear.

The second aspect of his playing in which I reveled was the type of runs that he would play. These runs were so spontaneous and unorthodox that if as a pianist I was to take them apart and start practicing them, they would be very difficult to play. His runs were so harmonic and the intervals so unusual that they actually are very difficult to play. (Although some of us play some of his runs, they are the easy ones.) But Duke played them with complete abandon; because he felt them at the particular time that he played them, he just believed that they could be played and he'd run them. If you mentioned them to him afterwards, he wouldn't even remember what he'd played.

One other pertinent aspect about the Ellington era of music stands out prominently. From the first time that I can remember the Ellington band on records, Duke always had an abiding involvement with the sound of a bass bottom in an orchestra. Whenever the band was recorded -- even in the early years of recording when bass was noticeably absent from many of the other jazz recordings -- it was always there. He believed in a good root and this was one of the things that I think made his band what we have come to regard it as being: one of the important musical aggregations of all time.

Duke found great joy in living. Just as he was spontaneous about his personal life. Consider his eating habits, for instance. You never knew when he was suddenly going to say that he was hungry. And, if you ate with him, you might possibly have been surprised at his choice. Not his choice of food but his choice of procedures. Above all, he was likely to start off his meal with a big bowl of strawberries or some kind of dessert. And that's just one trace of the utterly spontaneous abandon in his life. He was like that with people, too. He'd suddenly pick out someone in the audience and walk over and start a conversation with them. It might last for quite a long time, dependent on the amount of time that he had to spend.

He carried this type of behavior over into most things. He enjoyed the knowledge that there were now things to be done at each waking moment. He was riot of a man who never wanted to hear about what he had done; he was more involved with what he was doing or what he was going to do in the near future. He was not interested in hearing accolades pertaining to his past compositions; he'd probably answer you by saying, "You know, that's fine, but I have an idea about putting together this type of composition with this type of instrumental grouping."

He was a man who dwelt on family ties. Time and again he spoke of his family and how much he loved them. And he believed in the closeness of families, a belief that I feel is exemplified by the years that all of the various players spent in the band and the great reverence that they have always had - regardless of outward appearances about being part of the Ellington era.

He had great personal contact with human beings as total individuals. He regarded each member of his band as a separate entity and he treated them that way. He catered to the -- in some cases -- inhuman inadequacies of us all. In each man differently, he understood problems where other band leaders would not possibly have understood.

Most important, Duke felt that music was something which you could not let go. He talked continually of commitments each of us had as performers, to do what we were put on this earth to do. And we were to pursue it at all possible costs. Duke lived his philosophy. I know that, certainly in the last years of the orchestra's existence under Ellington, I have looked at many of their schedules and just shook my head. Being even younger than Duke (and not necessarily being a young man myself), I wondered how he fulfilled these schedules.

I can remember walking through the Frankfurt airport on my way to somewhere else in Germany and running into the band. They were on their way back from Africa, headed for New York to open the day that they arrived. And I don't think that I had ever seen Duke so tired. He drove himself. He drove himself very hard. He drove the band very hard, too. The band would have a day off and he'd call a rehearsal and rehearse for four or five hours. Or he'd call for a record date and go into a studio on their day off and record some of the things that he had on his mind.

One of the most important aspects of his career is one that I think many of us have passed over due to our human reactions. We have been fortunate to have had his music brought up to date over and over again. It is evident in "A Train" and I've heard it in various other forms by Ellington. He would change not only the tempo but he would also change the time signature. And, by doing this, he immediately was able to bring the music up in the time period or slot in our lives that he wanted it to fulfill, regardless of when the piece had been written. This is a talent that few of us possess and is possibly one of the reasons why the music has lasted so long.

I was very hard hit by Ellington's death, although I knew because of his illness at the time that it was almost inescapable. But I do not mourn for Duke Ellington; I can't mourn for Duke because his talent was so prolific and there's such a wealth of music to be gone through that he has left. I see no reason to mourn for Duke Ellington the musician. I do mourn for Duke Ellington, the man.

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