The Seventies: Imagine All My People...

Copyright Ed Ford

                                            NAACP Tribute To DUKE ELLINGTON
                                                        America's Foremost Musician
                                         Madison Square Garden, February 23, 1970

Having reviewed Ellington's relationship to one set of  icons of 20th Century popular music yesterday (when all my troubles seemed so far away), today we turn to the man who one could justifiably argue was the greatest icon of 20th Century popular music of them all; the man who, in fact, could be said to have invented 20th Century popular music, 'Pops' himself, Louis Armstrong.

At 7:30 pm on 23 February, 1970, an NAACP tribute to Duke Ellington was held at Madison Square Garden. it lasted into the small hours - 2:00am - of the following morning. The video above shows Louis Armstrong presenting Ellington with a sterling silver and ebony trophy which in a black leather presentation case lined with crimson velvet.

The event was the subject of a report in the March 1970 issue of The Crisis magazine. I have included by way of illustration, screen shots of the relevant pages, the original source for which may be found here.

The Seventies: Let It Be

Our journey in 'real time' fifty years on through Duke Ellington's seventies continues with this date for the diary, 22 February, 1970.

This day in 1970 saw the first of two days' pre-recording for The Ed Sullivan Show. According to David Palmquist's superb website Duke Where and When , Harry Carney's father died on 22 February. I'm assuming therefore that the soundtrack was recorded (perhaps on the 22nd?) and then the band mugged along to create the visuals the next day. Russell Procope is therefore pictured apparently playing the baritone sax but synched to the soundtrack Harry Carney had already laid down.

The medley played consists of She Loves You; All my Loving; Eleanor Rigby; She's Leaving Home; Norwegian Wood; Ticket to Ride.

Ellington was no stranger to The Beatles' oeuvre. The Orchestra had already recorded arrangements of  All My Loving and I Want to Hold Your Hand five years earlier for the Reprise album Ellington '66.

It is slightly strange to see Ellington's fingers across the keyboard rendering Lennon and McCartney's tunes. I'm not sure the legacy of either aggregation - the Beatles nor the Ellington band - were well served in yoking these disparate musical elements into service for the light entertainment behemoth that was The Ed Sullivan Show, down to the dubbed performance, the split screen camera trickery (at least I assume it was trickery. Although the chances must have been high that such a mash up would only end in tiers?). Ellington was more Blue Pepper than Sergeant Pepper, but he was never out of his depth, even as a deck hand on the Yellow Submarine so he carried the gig off with his customary élan.

We love, love you do, madly...

And, of course, it's worth pointing out that while we trace these fifty year anniversaries of dates with Duke, half a century has also passed since The Beatles broke up. As ever, in trying to be modish, the efforts of the mainstream/middle of the road are only ever ever so slightly outmoded. The Beatles were irretrievably ruptured even as this broadcast went out a month later on 1 March, solicitors exchanging letters by 10 April, 1970 before the final dissolution on 9 January 1975. But we are getting ahead of ourselves...

The Seventies: Wild About Bill

Organ player Wild Bill Davis's is a sound much associated with Duke Ellington's music at the turn of the seventies. Duke had met Wild Bill originally in 1945 and the two had recorded a version of Things Ain't What They Used To Be for Mercer Records in the early fifties. In the late sixties, he returned to Duke Ellington's orbit via his association with Johnny Hodges and a series of smouldering albums they recorded for Verve (with just one side trip to RCA Victor, pictured).

In order to keep Hodges, Ellington hired Davis. Wild Bill's first recording session with the Orchestra was for Readers' Digest Records on 2 September, 1969 and his final recording session with the Orchestra was the last recording session for New Orleans Suite, two days before Duke's seventy-first birthday on 27 April, 1970. This was also Hodges's' final recording with the band which only seems to confirm Ellington kept Davis on in order to keep Hodges.

Here is a golden nugget about Davis's tenure with the band, gleaned from a posting to Facebook by the tenor saxophonist Douglas Lawrence. I post it here not to infringe any copyright but for the benefit of future Ellington researches. Douglas Lawrence said:

 I worked a lot with Wild Bill in the 1980's. This is what he told me - Wild Bill and Johnny Hodges were starting to tour together with a succesful 4-piece organ band (Hodges, Wild Bill, guitar and drums). The band was becoming quite successful and Hodges started taking time off from the Ellington Orchestra. They were working somewhere (I can't remember where) and Ellington showed up at the gig and sat directly in front of the bandstand. After the performance Ellington joined Hodges and Wild Bill backstage in the dressing room. Ellington looked at Wild Bill and said (I'll never forget these words) "I don't know what I'm going to do with you, but I have to have Johnny back, so I'm hiring you too!" Wild Bill said that was it for the quartet! He joined Ellington's band and for most of the first several months just learned orchestration from Ellington, and worked as a copyist, no playing at all. (That in itself is another great story for perhaps another time.) I distinctly remember Wild Bill telling me his time with the Ellington Orchestra was the highlight of his illustrious career, and it involved very little playing. It was the tutelage from Ellington on big band arranging and composing that Wild Bill appreciated so much. Wild Bill loved to write for big band after that. It became his passion, although only a few of us actually knew it.

Post Script:

Here is an interesting anecdote, also posted on to Facebook by Lee Cronbach, retired rock, cabaret, Mexican salsa, and gospel keyboardist now living in the Philippines. There is further reference to Wild Bill Davis and it will have added pertinence as these recollections reach 1971. Again, no infringement of copyright or privacy intended. These observations, it seems to me, are important for the record...

DUKE'S HOSPITALITY TO A POOR WHITE COUNTRY ROCK BAND - showing what a warm giving person he could be.

Back in 1971 I was in Frosty Furman's country-rock band in Boston. We were all Berklee jazz students, all broke, living off brown rice and Hamburger Helper. We were playing biker bars, gay bars, and street people bars. I am gay and at Berklee I met a former Duke roadie who was gay, and he got us the gay gigs. So one night we were playing at our best - we had practised hard all week and the audience was very receptive. RIght at midnight, we were doing a 20 minute version of Gloria, with each soloist outshining the previous one. When Brent Moyer played the best solo of the night (Brent is still gigging as 'The Global Cowboy') in walked my friend with a friend of his who was - a Duke band member!

So after the gig he invited us all to be Duke's guests at Paul's Mall, where Duke was playing that week. Now you probably know Duke despised rock and disliked country music (he never covered a Hank Williams song in his life, I believe). And we were young, unknown, white, and broke - having nothing to offer the aging Duke (he died two or three years later). Nonetheless, Duke greeted each of us with a warm double hand-shake, and said 'Tonight you are our guests. You sit at the band table." We were all Duke fans, none more than me, and were thrilled to get this close-up view. And our taste-buds were thrilled when a group of high-society Boston ladies walked in carrying silver platters all filled with elegant cuisine - asparagus hollandaise, filet mignon, brie and other cheeses, etc. - and the trays were all passed down the band table and us hungry rockers got to take our stomachs to heaven! 

To top it off, Duke allowed me to sit right next to Wild Bill Davis so could watch how he was playing (I am a keyboardist) (this was the New Orleans Suite Band minus the departed Johnny Hodges). Then in the middle of the set Duke said "I will now play a solo number dedicated to my fathers, who were all much greater men than me." And he proceeded to play a solo more intricate and deeper than any solo I have heard of his on record - for five minutes!

Later I read his autobiography and discovered his disdain for 'rock and roll musicians'. So why was he so nice to us? We didn't play a style he approved, we were broke and unknown, no connections, nothing to offer him .... and he treated us as if we were Count Basie's grandchildren! None of us have ever forgotten the night we were Duke's guests. And it certainly inspired us to practice harder! 

The Seventies: Never Stop Remembering Bill

The first recordings Ellington made in the studio in 1970 were not released until after his death. As was his wont, Ellington added continually to the 'stockpile' of private recordings in what became at times almost an audio diary of his travels. Here, the location is Las Vegas. From the superb on-line resource ellingtonia. com

DUKE ELLINGTON GROUP                     Las Vegas, NV                                                                7 January 1970

Duke Ellington recording session

Willie Cook(t); Lawrence Brown(tb); Paul Gonsalves(ts); Duke Ellington(p); Wild Bill Davis(o); Victor Gaskin, Paul Kondziela(sb); Rufus Jones(d)

The Kissing Mist        unissued

Willie Cook(t); Lawrence Brown(tb); Paul Gonsalves(ts); Wild Bill Davis(o); Victor Gaskin, Paul Kondziela(sb); Rufus Jones(d)

Tippytoeing Through The Jungle Garden  Fa F-9640

Willie Cook(t); Lawrence Brown(tb); Paul Gonsalves(ts); Duke Ellington(p); Wild Bill Davis(o); Victor Gaskin, Paul Kondziela(sb); Rufus Jones(d)

Noon Mooning           Fa F-9640

Duke Ellington(p); Wild Bill Davis(o);Paul Kondziela(sb); Rufus Jones(d)

Black Swan     unissued

Paul Gonsalves(ts); Duke Ellington(p); Victor Gaskin, Paul Kondziela(sb); Rufus Jones(d)

Rockochet       Fa F-9640

Duke Ellington(p); Victor Gaskin, Paul Kondziela(sb); Rufus Jones(d)

Never Stop Remembering Bill         Fa F-9640

Duck Amok     Fa F-9640

    

Tina      Fa F-8419, OJC20 469-2

Duke Ellington(p); Victor Gaskin, Paul Kondziela(sb); Rufus Jones(d)

Fat Mess         Fa F-9640

Perhaps because of the presence of Wild Bill Davis on the organ, the first couple of tracks here do indeed sound like lounge music of the period, perfectly suited to the gaming rooms of the Las Vegas strip. always, however, there is that certain something in Ellington's music which makes it more than mere ambient sound, the hint of something much more compelling and metaphysical.

The most affecting of these pieces is Never Stop Remembering Bill, a tribute to Ellington's arranging and composing companion, Billy Strayhorn, remembered here half way to the dawn of a new decade.

The early 70s saw something of history repeating from the early 50s in terms of loss of personnel. Billy struck out more on his own in the early fifties, effectively leaving Ellington's orbit and participating in several collaborations with two others of Duke's circle, Johnny Hodges and Lawrence Brown who had also left the band. The absence of these three musicians was felt now in 1970: Billy had gone, Ellington was to lose Hodges to a heart attack only a few months into the new year. Of the three, only Lawrence brown left voluntarily. This Vegas session was Brown's last with the band. His presence here, however, confutes a lot of inaccurate speculation which has been written about the terms of his departure, most recently a piece in the UK's magazine Jazz Journal. I wrote about that article here accompanied by the most inappropriate image, tabloid-style, I could find. The state of Lawrence Brown's dentistry seems to be something of a preoccupation for the gossip columnists of Jazz Journal. Witness a much earlier piece Lawrence Brown and the Plastic Tooth which may be found here. Evidence from the writer's own pen that his speculation on the reasons for Lawrence's departure do not bear proper scrutiny...

For those signed up to Spotify, I have prepared a playlist in recording order of Ellington's 1970 Las Vegas session. Viva!

The Seventies

Reading a very interesting thread the other day on the Organissimo discussion boards entitled Playing Favourites: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s I encountered comments reposted below. Very insightful and  echoing entirely my own feelings about Ellington's music in the 1970s.

This discussion thread and the blog, Jazz in the Seventies  (go here for a recent posting on the album Afro-Eurasian Eclipse), has made me want to start a similar project focussed on Ellington. Duke was, of course, the same age, virtually, as the twentieth century. The 1970s were his seventies. And, shockingly, those years are now half a century ago. As a five year project, then, I intend to follow the fiftieth anniversary of the first half of the seventies. It won't be possible to hit exact anniversary dates on the days themselves and this will be only an occasional series, but we shall try to cover the major works Ellington created, the major dates in the diary over that period of time. Extensive work on the composition Pockets and the approach to the fiftieth anniversary of The New Orleans Suite will be highlights in the project's first six months.

By way of introduction and some background, then, here are those thought provoking contributions to the Organissimo thread, the original source for which may be found here.

Please remember, the comments section its always open for your thoughts and opinions. Did you see the Ellington Orchestra in the 1970s? Please share and I will post your comments.

JSngry:

A thought about late/last Ellington - I've always found it interesting that the band in its last few years took on a sonic resemblance to an Archie Shepp  type of ensemble - ragged, rugged, in your face and not really giving a damn. I realize that some of that was just a function of the personnel situation growing a little, uh..."unpredictable" as the years passed and Mercer having a challenge on his hands in getting steady players to play that kind of a schedule for that type of money.

But, still, Duke always wrote for the sounds of the players he had, and it seems like the raggedier the band got, the more he embraced it. Those last bands are all about the primacy of voice, and it's a voice that is as rugged as the most harsh blues singer/band. And in that, he reminds me of Shepp. In both cases, the primacy of "the blues feeling" is always there. Everything else happens from there.

There's a video of Shepp sitting in with Ellington, and it's pretty weak, Shepp was not yet developed enough in "traditional" harmonic improvisation to really dig in, but his tone and the tone of the last Ellington bands...I will posit that they are making some of the same conclusions after coming from some very different places. And Afro-Eurasian Eclipse seems to be daring us to hear otherwise.

To me, the most glorious aspect of Ellington's music is the raw sound of it, the shapes and colors and textures. It never stopped, no matter how "ragged" the band got. Never.

HutchFan:

   On 12/02/2020 at 4:02 PM,  JSngry said: 

To me, the most glorious aspect of Ellington's music is the raw sound of it, the shapes and colors and textures. It never stopped, no matter how "ragged" the band got. Never.

Re: that ^ sentence: Yes, yes, and yes. 100%. 

As far as your comparison, I've never thought about Duke's sound in relation to Shepp, in particular.  But I have wondered if Ellington hasn't gotten his due with regards to bringing an "African musical vision" into jazz -- way, way, way before the idea became fairly common in the 1970s. ... Which might be another way of saying the same thing that you're suggesting. 

In other words, if you have a different vision (and different values), you'll produce a different sort of music. And traditional European ways of thinking about Duke's music aren't adequate to the task -- and perhaps miss the point entirely. 

The fact that Duke was an autodidact also comes into play here. It's part of the mix as well, I think. 

JSngry:

   On 12/02/2020 at 7:08 PM,  HutchFan said: 

As far as your comparison, I've never thought about Duke's sound in relation to Shepp, in particular.  But I have wondered if Ellington hasn't gotten his due with regards to bringing an "African musical vision" into jazz -- way, way, way before the idea became fairly common in the 1970s. ... Which might be another way of saying the same thing that you're suggesting. 

In other words, if you have a different vision (and different values), you'll produce a different sort of music. And traditional European ways of thinking about Duke's music aren't adequate to the task -- and perhaps miss the point entirely.

Yeah, same way of saying about the same thing. and it really came to the fore in Ellington's music once the "mainstays" began to peel away/drop out/off/etc which also coincided with the rise of the Black Power movement, which was very much at the heart of Shepp's total esthetic (and of course, Shepp was totally into Ellington, I mean, anybody who wasn't....). So it's not so much that I hear a conscious influence either way, just that it seems that there was a road leading that way, and they were both on it.

Another thing to consider - as ragged as those last Ellington bands could sometimes (often) be, I gotta think that Duke could have instructed Mercer to get this raggedy shit outta here and hire some people who know how to play in a section. But he didn't. If anything, it seemed that he embraced that sound, wrote in ways that accentuated it. So...I just think that those last Ellington bands, there's a lot going on in that music that makes it a lot more "contemporary" to its chronology than the Jazz Conventional Wisdom has picked up on over the years, Duke not just as the Original Afro-Futurist or some such, but also one whose never veered off that path, ever, much less just established its place and then just sat there while everybody else paid tribute as they passed him.

Nobody passed Duke Ellington.

Dolce

There are very exciting developments around Luca Bragalini's researches into Duke Ellington's symphonic works. His book Dalla Scala a Harlem was published in Italy last year to great acclaim and was followed by a live rendition of some of the works featured in the study, most notably a re-working of Les Trois Rois Noir, Ellington's last major work. Now, there is news that work has been completed on a translation in English which The International Center for American Music is looking to place with a publisher. 

I have copied and pasted the relevant information from the ICAMUS website below. Here is the Source.

23/02/2020

“Duke Ellington: le visioni sinfoniche di un Duca del jazz” (“The Duke of Jazz and His Symphonic Visions”). Lecture by Luca Bragalini in Prato, Italy.

Musicologist and jazz expert Luca Bragalini, the author of Dalla Scala a Harlem. I sogni sinfonici di Duke Ellington(From La Scala to Harlem: Duke Ellington’s Symphonic Visions; Turin: EDT, 2018) offers a lecture that is a journey through Duke Ellington’s symphonic works.

Jazz composer, pianist, jazz orchestra leader, and symphonic orchestra conductor, Duke Ellington (1899-1974) also composed some symphonic works of great complexity. The lecture travels in time and space: It explores Harlem as well as the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, sheds light on a symphonic ballet, The River, that is also a metaphorical representation, and investigates a symphonic poem, Night Creature, up to the discovery of the Duke's last symphonic work, the ballet Three Black Kings depicting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a Black King in a triptych, along with Biblical figures. References to African American religious culture, art history and social history will expand the lecture’s outreach far beyond music.

For MetJazz 2020, the event is sponsored by Camerata strumentale “Città di Prato” in collaboration with ICAMus. Sala delle Colonne of the Scuola di Musica “G. Verdi” in Prato, Italy, Sunday February 23, 2020 at 11:00am. Open to the public, with free admission.

In the photo below: Duke Ellington during the recording session of his symphonic work La Scala at the Studio Zanibelli, Milan, Italy, February 21, 1963; © Archivio Giancolombo; reproduced by permission.

The February 23, 2020 event in Prato inaugurates a groundbreaking 2020-2021 ICAMus international project with Luca Bragalini on Ellington’s symphonic works; initiatives in the United States and in Europe.

The lecture is presented in conjunction with and as an introduction to the February 27, 2020 concert, co-produced by Camerata strumentale “Città di Prato” and MetJazz, that concludes the 2020 jazz festival in Prato with a performance of Ellington’s symphonic score The River.

In the photo below: Page on the February 23, 2020 event in Prato in the MetJazz 2020 program booklet.

Read and download the page (PDF).

MetJazz Off 2020 - Ellington Lecture.

As ICAMus is working on the international 2020-2021 Ellington events with Luca Bragalini, the Center has completed the English edition of Professor Bragalini’s volume, Dalla Scala a Harlem. I sogni sinfonici di Duke Ellington (literary translation of the Italian title: From La Scala to Harlem: Duke Ellington’s Symphonic Visions) that is currently undergoing a peer review process and about to be submitted to major American publishers. Translated by Brent Waterhouse, the English edition (working title: Duke Ellington’s Symphonic Visions: Solving the Mystery) has been revised under the supervision of Aloma Bardi, in close collaboration with the author.

Luca Bragalini’s photo: © Leonardo-Schiavone 2019 - www.leonardoschiavone.com

MEET THE SPEAKER.

LUCA BRAGALINI holds the first teaching position in History of Jazz ever obtained by a musicologist in an Italian music conservatory. He is Professor of History and Analysis of Jazz at the Music Conservatory of L'Aquila, and also teaches courses at the Conservatories of Brescia, Trento and Milan. He has discovered unpublished works by Duke Ellington, Chet Baker and Luciano Chailly; some of them he has had premièred and recorded. A published author and lecturer, Professor Bragalini represented Italy in a number of international conferences. He was Distinguished Scholar at Reed College (Portland, OR) where he offered a series of lectures on Ellington.

VISIT LUCA BRAGALINI’S WEBSITE.

Luca Bragalini’s Duke Ellington’s Symphonic Visions—published in Italy in 2018 with an accompanying CD of première recordings and featuring previously unpublished archival photos, all contents discovered by Bragalini—is the result of over ten years of research on Ellington’s symphonic music.

The Italian edition of this volume has been extremely well received, obtaining lavish praise in specialized periodicals, national newspapers and literary reviews. The “best musicological book of the year” according to Jazzit Awards 2018. “Musica Jazz”, the leading Italian periodical in the field since 1945, published an entire issue, including the cover, dedicated to Bragalini’s work; the issue was also inclusive of the CD The Symphonic Ellington. The magazine “Jazzit” dedicated an eight-page article to the book.

Find out more about Luca Bragalini’s book on Duke Ellington’s symphonic works, and order the volume from the publisher’s website.

Join the Facebook Event to receive updates on Luca Bragalini’s lecture, Prato, February 23, 2020.

The February 27, 2020 concert, co-produced by Camerata strumentale “Città di Prato” and MetJazz, that concludes the 2020 jazz festival in Prato with a performance of Ellington’s symphonic score The River, on the MetJazz Website.

#BragaliniSymphonicEllington