Étude

Interpretations in Jazz

A Conference with

Duke Ellington

                                                                                    Renowned American Composer, 

                                                                                                Pianist and Band Leader

SECURED EXPRESSLY FOR THE ÉTUDE BY GUNNAR ASKLUND

The fabulously popular Duke Ellington holds the unique position of ranking as the “classic” representative of jazz. In addition to the originality of his performances, at the keyboard and with his baton, he has to his credit nearly 1 000 compositions, all in the jazz idiom and recognized in the profession as standards. The musical pith of his melodies does not “date”, regardless of passing fads in arrangement and style.

Born Edward Kennedy Ellington, in Washington D. C., he was dubbed “the Duke” because of his immaculate grooming and suave manners. When he was about eight, he was given a few piano lessons; but, he confesses, the process was not too successful either from the teaching or the learning end. After he had appeared at a few church concerts, playing treble to his teacher’s bass, the lessons stopped. But the lad’s interest in music did not stop. At fourteen, he had a slight illness which confined him to the house for a week, and in that time he taught himself to find his way around a keyboard. Since then, he has had but little instruction. Two years later, young Ellington was deep in professional music.

His first composition, “Soda Fountain Rag,” produced at the age of sixteen, earned him an art scholarship at Pratt Institute, which he refused in order to continue what he calls his own work. Unable to read music, he evolved from within himself the melodic flow and harmonic combinations that marked the beginning of his richly individual style. That was at the beginning of World War I. With the increase in receptions and entertainments in official Washington, bands were in great demand, and young Ellington found all the engagements he could handle. His first task was to learn to read music. At eighteen he married, felt himself a man with a man’s responsibilities, and formed his own band. Presently, he had a group of bands and his own advertisement in the telephone directory. Still, business was a touch and go matter until 1927 when he was booked for the Cotton Club, the scene of his first real triumph.

In 1933, Ellington toured England and the continent with sensational acclaim. His performances were considered modern concerts rather than mere dance-band sessions, and they were found to be interpretative of contemporary and American trends. The next ten years established Ellington’s position as an interpreter of America. In 1943, he gave the first of his annual Carnegie Hall concerts devoted entirely to his own works. The program included his “Black, Brown and Beige”, a forty-five minute orchestral fantasy (Ellington calls it “A Tone Parallel”), recording the history of the Negro in America–as he is thought to be and as he actually is. In celebration of his twentieth year in American music, Mr. Ellington was presented with a plaque bearing the signatures of Stokowski, Rodzinski, Deems Taylor, and other celebrated musicians. He has also won the award of the Newspaper Guild; the Esquire Magazine Gold medal (twice in succession), and the ASCAP Annual Award. Recently, Mr Ellington established an instrumental scholarship at the Juilliard School of Music, the first living artist to do so. In the following conference, Mr. Ellington outlines for readers of THE ETUDE, his views on the provocative question of jazz.                                                                                                                       – Editor’s Note.

“JAZZ today is no longer the jazz of twenty years ago. When I began my work, jazz was a stunt – something ‘different’.  Not everybody cared for jazz, and those who did felt it wasn’t ‘the real thing’ unless they were given a shock sensation of loudness or unpredictability along with the music. For that reason, I feel that I was extremely lucky to enter the picture when I did! I had to teach myself to read music; I relied on instinct rather than knowledge to guide me; and had to develop many techniques in spotlight positions When I was playing at the Cotton Club, for instance, I had the luck to be engaged for three days at a theater in mid-town. All went well, and on the third day, they told me I was scheduled to open at the Palace Theatre tomorrow! Now in those days, the Palace was the country’s ranking vaudeville theater, the goal of every seasoned player. I was completely bewildered by the idea of opening there with no special preparation – but I had to be ready.

The Elements of Luck

“Nor was that all! I was also told that it would be my duty to announce my own numbers. Up to that time, I had never spoken a word from a stage. Still, I had to do it. In trepidation, I groped my way towards the footlights, trusting to providence to put the right words into my mouth at the right moment. After, I was praised for a new style of announcing! I have no idea what kind of “style” it was! Again, the first time I ever lifted a baton was when I conducted the personal appearance opening of Maurice Chevalier. Again, I had no idea what to do – but I did it! I was lucky indeed, to begin when I did. But perhaps I should define my notion of luck; to me, it means being at the right place at the right time, and doing the right thing before the right people. If all four ‘rights’ are in good order, you may count yourself lucky. And this, precisely, brings me to the question of luck, or rightness, as it concerns the youngster of today who dreams of a career in jazz.

“He still needs to be lucky to get to the top – but the value of those ‘rights’ has changed so that the chances of a start like mine no longer exist.

The Expression of an Age

“Jazz today is by no means the formless, chancy, irresponsible medium it was around 1920. It is impossible to stress this sufficiently. A certain psychological element enters into jazz which can work great harm to the chances of an enthusiastic young player; there is a vague feeling that ‘classical’ music means hard work while jazz represents the livelier aspects of pure fun. Well, that may be so – to the listener! It certainly is not the case as far as the performer is concerned. The jazz musician today needs the most thorough musical background he can possibly get. He needs to be more than moderately expert on his instrument, whatever that may be; he needs to have the kind of theoretic mastery that can solve all sorts of harmonic and arrangement problems without a moment’s hesitation; most of all, he needs to be acutely aware of musical history and the position of jazz in that history. 

“What actually is jazz? A matter of trick rhythms, blues-notes, and unorthodox harmonies? I think not. Those matters may enter into it, but only in the nature of a result and not of a cause. To my mind, jazz is simply the expression of an age, in music. Think of the terms classical music, romantic music. An entire picture comes to mind – a picture of the way people thought and felt; an expression of human reactions to the conditions under which they lived. You wouldn’t dream of associating a certain rhythm, or a fixed tone quality with either of them. Jazz is exactly the same – not in its forms, of course, but in the large over-all pattern of its expression. Just as the classic form represents strict adherence to a structural standard; just as romantic music represents a rebellion against fixed forms in favor of more personal utterance, so jazz continues the pattern of barrier-breaking and emerges as the freest musical expression we have yet seen. To me, then, jazz means simply freedom in musical speech! And it is precisely because of this freedom that so many varied forms of jazz exist. The important thing to remember, however, is that not one of these forms represents jazz by itself. Jazz means simply the freedom to have many forms!

“Let us go a step further. In its opening the way for many kinds of free musical expression, jazz is peculiarly American.

Thus, the American character of jazz derives simply from its freedom rather than from any specifically American musical line of descent. In the case of other lands, we say their music is ‘typically’ French, or Italian, or English, if it follows a traditional pattern (whether of melodic line, harmonization, arrangement, rhythm, or anything at all). We say that music is typically jazz or typically American, if it follows no pattern at all! Even the Negroid element in jazz turns out to be less African than American. Actually, there is no more of an essentially African strain in the typical American Negro than there is an essentially French or Italian strain in the American of those ancestries. The pure African beat of rhythm and line of melody have become absorbed in its American environment. It is this that I have tried to emphasize in my own writings. In Black, Brown, and Beige, I have tried to show the development of the Negro in America; I have shown him as he is supposed to be – and as he is. The opening themes of the third movement reflect the supposed-to-be-Negro – the unbridled, noisy confusion of the Harlem cabaret which must have plenty of ‘atmosphere’ if it is to live up to the tourist’s expectation. But – there are, by numerical count, more churches than cabarets in Harlem; there are more well-educated and ambitious Negroes than wastrels. And my fantasy gradually changes its character to introduce the Negro as he is – part of America with the hopes and dreams and love of freedom that have made America for all of us. But what has this to do with the development of jazz?

 “Simply this: that it requires a great deal more than off-beat rhythms and loud hoots to make jazz. It requires, basically, two separate kinds of awareness. First, the thorough musical awareness that twenty-five years of steady development have brought to jazz. And, in second place, an awareness of the contemporary scene with all its shadings of feeling. When the young jazz musician comes out of the Conservatory, he still needs to learn much that cannot be taught by books and masters. He needs to learn what people are thinking and feeling; he needs to adjust to contemporariness of the times and the people whom he wishes to express, and for whom he wishes to interpret life. And human needs of feeling can change overnight! Hence, no doubt, the many kinds of jazz freedoms we find. It’s like moving a person from a room with a red light, into another room lit by amber light, it’s the same person, but he looks different. And the many jazz forms we find, each with its distinguishing harmonic or stylistic device, represents varying moods, or colors, of the same human scene.

“In this sense, then, it becomes increasingly difficult to say just where ‘good music’ leaves off and jazz begins. Jazz is good music – when it sets itself, as earnestly as any other form, to explore and to express the feelings and conditions of its time. There is good and worthless jazz just as there is good and bad music in the purely classical or romantic styles. But for good jazz, the hit-or-miss days of making a noise and being ‘different’ are gone. Expressive jazz requires as much scholarship, as much musicianship, as any other kind of music. In addition, it requires a peculiar awareness of form and of the human thoughts and feelings those forms express. The young musician will do well to reflect on the needs of jazz before he gets himself a drum and starts out on a career. If his ‘rights’ are in good order, he’ll have luck!”

THE ÉTUDE music magazine March, 1947