Halfway to Dawn

I posted here a couple of days ago a 'rough cut' of Robert Levi's documentary from 1992, Reminiscing in Tempo. A major contributor to the documentary was Marian Bruce Logan, the wife of  Dr Arthur C Logan who, among his many professional duties, was personal physician to Duke Ellington. Marian Bruce Logan speaks movingly in the documentary about   the circumstances surrounding Ellington's final few moths. Marian Bruce Logan herself died in 1993. Her close ties to the issue of civil rights are evident in the extract above from the documentary where she speaks of the meeting between Ellington and Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Mrs Logan was also a former Commissioner of Human Rights in New York.

Prior to her marriage, Marian Bruce was a cabaret singer. There is only one album to her name, Halfway to Dawn, recorded for the Riverside label in 1958. She is accompanied by Jimmy Jones on the piano, Everett Barksdale on guitar, Al Hall on bass and Joe Wilder on trumpet.

Here is the full album...

The Seventies: On the Side of the Angels...

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of 29 May, 1970, when Duke Ellington and his Orchestra appeared at Mount Abbey Angel Library,  Mount Angel, Oregon in a performance commemorating the dedication of the library. From David Palmquist's Duke - Where and When site...

9 p.m. concert by Ellington and his orchestra, premiering a new work by Ann Henry, arranged by Ron Collier at the dedication of the Abbey's new library.

Collier conducted the Ellington orchestra, Ms Henry and a small choir in his arrangement of a three movement composition by Ann Henry, "Pockets: It's Amazing When Love Goes On Parade." 

…An UPI wire story datelined Mt. Angel, published in the Eugene Register-Guard 1970-05-27 p.3-B, announced Ellington's band would perform on the Friday, architects from around the world would tour the building on the Saturday, and the Portland Junior Symphony would perform Saturday afternoon.

The Oregonian reported Ms Henry had toured with Ellington (additional research is needed), and went to Toronto and New York for the rehearsals. Ms Henry had had a career in music and dance until stricken by multiple sclerosis after which she became the Abbey's composer-in-residence. Stratemann says the band rehearsed her composition in Toronto, and this was the only time it was performed by the Ellington orchestra.

The April 21, 1970 contract between Mount Angel Abbey Library and Duke Ellington, Inc. provided for a 2 hour concert with 13 musicians including the leader for $5,000, half payable on the execution of the contract and half in cash or by certified cheque the day of, but before, the concert. A rider required Mount Abbey Library to pay:

·     first class airfare for Duke from Cincinnati to St. Benedict, and then to Chicago

·     first class airfare for Ron Collier from Toronto to St. Benedict and return

·     economy airfare for 17 musicians and staff of the orchestra from Cincinnati to St. Benedict, and then to Chicago

·     Ron Collier's arranging fee, either directly to him or to Duke Ellington, Inc.

·       

While the Abbey has no record of their activity the rest of the weekend, the title in the finding aid for the Smithsonian's Ellington collection for Series 2, Box 16, Folder 33 "Mount Angel Abbey (Oregon) Library Dedication May 31, 1970" suggests Ellington remained in Oregon until the Sunday. This is not confirmed. While the Smithsonian folder label is dated May 31, in reply to the question Is there any indication in this folder that Ellington and/or his orchestra stayed all 3 days?, Smithsonian Reference Services volunteer C. Windheuser reviewed the contents in 2016 and wrote 

“You are correct - program for event confirms Duke's concert was Friday May 29.”

I am very pleased to include notes on the video written by Jack Chambers, a leading light of the Toronto Duke Ellington Society and author of the book Sweet Thunder: Duke Ellington's Music in Nine Themes, as a commentary on the video presentation which follows.

Jack writes:

Duke Ellington at Mount Angel Abbey, St. Benedict, Oregon, 29 May 1970

Dedication of the new $1.2m library designed by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto

VIDEO <2 – Duke greets, band plays on Vimeo>

Duke greets the audience (“the kids in the band… do love you madly”).

Request for Harlem, DE makes long intro while band finds the music

Harlemto 16:47

acknowledges Rufus Jones d, Harold Ashby cl, Harry Carney bs, Julian Priester and Booty Wood tb, Freddie Stone tp, Cat Anderson tp, Cootie Williams tp, 1^stalto illegible

Meditations piano solo 18:47 to 21:27

22:06 DE intro Ron Collier: “And now I’d like to have you meet the great Canadian composer and internationally celebrated orchestrator and an incomparable conductor, Mr. Ron Collier. He orchestrated and will conduct the new work which is to be presented by Ann Henry, the new work Pockets. This is Ron Collier.”

25:19 piano intro

26:37 Ann Henry + seminarians “Look up, love is comin’”

29:00 ballad tempo Ann Henry + seminarians

30:13 “It’s amazin’! when love goes on parade”

32:00 “only love lets me try… and keeps comin’ back to me. Beautiful!”

33:35 “love keeps comin’ back to me”

36:35 country and western sounding lyric

40:45 “don’t look for me, my parade is over”

43:44 APPLAUSE

44:10 orchestra cond Collier quiet mood—woodwinds, alto sax lead?

47:54 Ann Henry + seminarians ballad

49:00 orch with Russell Procope cl

50:45 new movement?

52:17 Ann Henry + seminarians “Love is on parade”

54:20 orch with vocalese

56:55 raunchy beat, vocal Ann “People are playin’ at love”

            Ann + seminarians “Walk in on the one who falls in love”

62:27 TAPE ENDS INCOMPLETE

Time: “Pockets – It’s Amazing When Love Goes on Parade” 37:08 (on video)

Ellington at Mount Angel Abbey Library dedication from Third Angle on Vimeo.

Ellington compilation (short) from Third Angle on Vimeo.

2 - Duke greets, band plays from Third Angle on Vimeo.

Duke Ellington playing at the 1970 dedication of the library.

The Seventies: Orchestral Works

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of Duke Ellington in the studios of Decca with the Cincinnati Symphony orchestra, conducted by Erich Kunzel and the recording of the album Orchestral Works.

The entire album is available for listening on You, courtesy of The Universal Music Group.

There were five years between the first public performance of The Golden Broom and the Green Apple  and this recording. One of Ellington's 'occasional' pieces, the composition was written for the New York Philharmonic's French-American Festival which took place from 14 to 31 July, 1965. Scored for symphony orchestra, bass, (John Lamb), drums (Louie Bellson) and piano by Ellington bassist and copyist Joe Benjamin, the work had its première on Friday, 30 July, 1965. Ellington also played New World A' Coming  with the New York Phiharmonic under the direction of Lucas Foss and was the narrator with the Orchestra in  Copland's Preamble For A Solemn Occasion. The performance was repeated on Saturday evening, presumably the finale to the festival.

The link with Erich Kunzel and Cincinnati was forged almost twelve months later , Saturday, 16 April, 1966, when Ellington presented an afternoon seminar and piano recital at the Cincinnati Conservatory. On this occasion, Duke was presented with the key to the city.

That evening, Ellington gave a concert with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at The Music Hall in the city. Erich Kunzel was the director of the city's Symphony and so the connection was established. The evening concert comprised New World A' Coming, Harlem and The Golden Broom and the Green Apple, the pieces recorded for the album 27 May, 1970.

The Golden Broom and the Green Apple is a fascinating piece, not least because of Ellington's enigmatic narrative. There seem, to me, to be precursors to this, recurring narrative themes, in both Pretty and the Wolf and A Drum Is A Woman.

Ellington narrates on the Decca recording in the form of a 'poetic commentary'. He also wrote a commentary for the original programme of the New York Philharmonic's performance which is reproduced here by way of a libretto to the recording...


New World A’Coming

The première of New World A’Coming was in 1944. It is a statement of the hope of the American Negro for the enjoyment of the fruits of his labors which he has put into the building of the United States.

    This work, coincident with the book of the same title by Roi Ottley, shows an awareness of many Negroes of the changing social scene during that early period in 1943. The first few notes were written during a Broadway theatre appearance with Lena Horne.

The Golden Broom and the Green Apple

Stanza I: The Golden Broom

    The Golden Broom is a reflection of the haze we enjoy in the spin of today’s whirl, as our luxuriously appointed vehicle (designed origiannly for the beautiful rich city witch) dashes through space with its vacuum jet stream magnetizing the golden gleam of material security.

Stanza II: The Green Apple

    As we relax graciously we love thinking that in spite of all we’ve done to acquire our portion of advantages, we still have our green apple (naturally grown and owned by the poverty-strick’ country chick), the symbol o our potentials – our virtues – our God–made and untouched purity.

Stanza III: The Handsome Traffic Policeman

    In the third movement we may find the symbol of ourselves in the very handsome traffic cop, flashing his reds, greens and ambers as he stomps his authority around the intersection, where the paths of the beautiful rich city witch with her golden broom and the poverty-strick’ country chick with her green apple will sooner or later converge – and the decision has to be made.

    With only one ticket left in our book which of these two ladies gets the ticket? The reason the handsome traffic cop’s book is down to one ticket is that all the more desirable ladies prefer to commit their violations at his intersection.

The Seventies: Where was Duke on 26 May, 1970?

For 26 May, 1970, David Palmquist's monumental work Duke - Where and When says Activities not documented.  

Is it possible that the photograph above was taken on that day? 

28 May, 1970 is the fiftieth anniversary of the recording session for Duke Ellington: Orchestral Works, an album of Ellington at the piano, accompanied by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Kunzel. Looking for an image of Kunzel with Ellington, I happened across the photograph posted above which may be found in a gallery of the website of  Milken Archive of Jewish Music. The page is dedicated to the music of Dave Brubeck who is, of course, the third figure pictured in the image above. The caption for the photograph reads: Dave Brubeck with Erich Kunzel and Duke Ellington The Gates of Justice recording session, Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Gates of Justice is an album of religious music. Given Ellington's own commitment to his faith and having recorded at that stage two albums of sacred music himself, his interest in this aspect of Brubeck's work would be apparent. The only discographical date I can find (in Lord's discography) for the recording of this album is 19 October, 1969. Like Ellington's album Orchestral Works, it was recorded for the Decca label and Erich Kunzel was present, conducting The Cincinnati Brass Ensemble.

As far as I know (not having listened to a copy of the album) The Gates of Justice is a studio album rather than a live performance (hence the photograph above). 19 October, 1969 is a Sunday. I would have thought it extremely unlikely that the recording studio would be open on a Sunday and therefore the date in Lord's discography must refer to a live performance. Furthermore, from 30 September, 1969 to 20 October, Ellington and his Orchestra were in residency at the Casbar Lounge of the Sahara Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, some three hours' flight away from Cincinnati. 

If The Gates of Justice was not recorded on 19 October, 1969, then, it is possible that Ellington was in the studio with Dave Brubeck and Erich Kunzel on another day. But what was the recording date for The Gates of Justice? If any Brubeck expert reads this, please let me know if you have that information.

For a week or so following his engagement at the Sahara, again, there is no documentation discovered so far for Ellington's activities. He was in San Francisco on 23rd of the month and left for a European tour on 27th, returning to the USA on 1 December and spent the rest of the year mainly between San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Even brief sojourns in Detroit and Milwaukee would have entailed lengthy flights to Cincinnati.

Brubeck had already recorded with Erich Kunzel on 19 and 20 March, 1968 but, again, this would preclude Ellington's presence in the studio since he was in Las Vegas then as well.

Interestingly, Brubeck's third encounter with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra occurred, however, on 26 May, 1970. According to the cover of a later French edition of the resulting album, pictured below, called Elementals, the LP was recorded at Music Hall, Cincinnati. Listening to the album today, however, I'm sure this is a studio recording rather than a live performance. The photograph above looks like a recording studio. Could it be on this day, when he could have been in Cincinnati, that Duke met Brubeck and Kunzel? One of the tunes featured on the album recorded that day?  The Duke. Curiouser and curiouser...

Ellington himself was certainly in Cincinnati on 27 May at the Taft Theatre (associated, I believe with the Cincinnati Symphony and half an hour's walk from Music Hall)  and also 28 May, returning to New York it would seem later that day to begin recording Orchestral Works, his stay in Cincinnati presumably to make arrangements ahead of the session at Decca. We may never know if he attended Brubeck and Mulligan's performance and it still does not explain the provenance of the photograph with Erich Kunzel but it it is interesting to speculate...

UPDATE

Well, my theory about the photograph at the top of this post has been trounced comprehensively by the discovery of a photograph on eBay taken at the same sessions which claims that Dave Brubeck was present in the studio for the session Duke Ellington recorded with the Cincinnati Symphony on 28 May, 1970. 

The caption on the Milken Archive website is further out. It may be the position of Brubeck in the photograph relative to Kunzel and Ellington that has given us all the misleading impression that it was Brubeck's rather than Ellington's gig. Good to add this image to the post, however, and to clarify for the record.

Reminiscing in Tempo: Rough Cut

I believe this is a rough cut of the complete documentary, Robert S. Levi's Reminiscing in Tempo.I remember seeing the documentary on BBC Television some time in the early nineties. I went out the next day to buy the first Ellington CDs I could find which were, randomly, Midnight in Paris and The Cosmic Scene: Duke Ellington's Space Men which had just been issued on CBS France. "Did you see the documentary last night?" the man behind the counter asked me. My intoxication must have been obvious.

Part 2 of the documentary, in fairly parlous condition, has been on YouTube a while. It's almost thirty years since I've seen the full programme. A rare treat...

Art and Ellington

The Seventies: Portraits à la New Orleans

Fifty years ago today, 13 May, 1970, found Duke Ellington and his Orchestra at National Recording Studio, new York to record the four portraits of New Orleans celebrities which would comprise the balance of his latest album.

The day before, Ellington tells us in his autobiography Music Is My Mistress, he was wondering how he could persuade Johnny Hodges to take up the soprano sax again in tribute to his one time mentor Sidney Bechet. But Hodges was gone.

Solo responsibilities in Portrait of Sidney Bechet, then, went to Paul Gonsalves on the tenor saxophone, honouring both Bechet and his friend and colleague Johnny Hodges.

The recordings are presented here in the order in which they were laid down at the session. A reminder, that the full album may be enjoyed here.

The Sopranos

As a footnote to yesterday's post on Johnny Hodges, here's something special, ahead of posting the remaining Portrait tracks from The New Orleans Suite.

This is a hitherto unknown performance of a tune hitherto unknown as being played at all by the Ellington band: China Boy.

Ellington had hoped to be able to hear Johnny Hodges take up his soprano saxophone again fifty years ago tomorrow, 13 May, 1970 in order to record Portrait of Sidney Bechet.

It wasn't to be. Hodges was gone. In its stead, here is a blistering performance by Johnny on the instrument in this air check from The Savory Collection: China Boy. Enjoy.

The Seventies: Jeep's Blues

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Johnny Hodges on 11 May, 1970. On 5 March that year, Hodges had arrived in Arkansas with the Orchestra for an audience of 4 000 but had to miss the performance because prior to the concert, he was suffering from dizzy spells and fainting, an augury, perhaps, of things to come. He spent the night at Springdale Hospital, returning home the next day. 

From his book, Rabbit's Blues, Con Chapman writes:

"At his dentist's office in Manhattan, he got up from his chair to go to the bathroom partway through a procedure, took a few steps - and collapsed. He did not recover, and was pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital at 4;30 p.m. that day. 'I sent him to the dentist,' his widow said, 'and the Lord brought him back.' "

Ellington was in the studio that day, National Recording Studio, New York, setting down a version of The River as a series of piano solos, sketches, perhaps, for the full orchestra sessions later that month. He gave a little more detail about the day, however, in his autobiography,  Music Is My Mistress:

"On May 11 1970, I was thinking about how I could persuade him to get his soprano out once more to play on A Portrait of Sydney Bechet in The New Orleans Suite. The telephone rang and I was told that he had just died at his dentist's office. This is the eulogy I wrote that night and it still captures my feelings about him.

"Never the world's most highly animated showman or greatest stage personality, but a tone so beautiful it sometimes brought tears to the eyes - this was Johnny Hodges. This is Johnny Hodges. 

Because of this great loss, our band will never sound the same.

Johnny Hodges and his unique tonal personality have gone to join the ever so few inimitables - those whose sounds stand unimitated, to say the least - Art Tatum, Sydney Bechet, Django Reinhardt, Billy Strayhorn.....

Johnny Hodges sometimes sounded beautiful, sometimes romantic, and sometimes people spoke of his tone as being sensuous. I've heard women say his tone was so compelling.  He played numbers like Jeep's Blues, Things Ain't What They Used To Be, I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart, All Of Me, On The Sunny Side Of The Street, Billy Strayhorn's Passion Flower, and Day Dream and many more.

With the exception of a year or so, almost his entire career was with us. Many came and left, sometimes to return. So far as our wonderful listening audience was concerned, there was a great feeling of expectancy when they looked up and saw Johnny Hodges sitting in the middle of the saxophone section, in the front row.

I am glad and thankful that I had the privilege of presenting Johnny Hodges for forty years, night after night. I imagine I have been much envied, but thanks to God....

May God bless this beautiful giant in his own identity. God Bless Johnny Hodges."

Aura is the face...

Newport Jazz Festival In New York  took place at Carnegie Hall  on 8 July, 1972. 

This particular engagement does not seem to loom particularly largely in Ellington lore and yet, among other interesting aspects of the performance, somewhere in there is Barney Bigard who worked with Ellington previously over a decade drier on the sessions with Duke and Louis Armstrong.

In another notable aspect, the singer Aura Rully makes a rare appearance (her début, I believe) as part of the ensemble. Audio, at least, has been published of this part of the concert...

Other selections, too, appeared some years ago on a CD-r production by Squatty Roo called Rugged Jungle from which release: Ac Ac...

Live at The Village Avant-Garde...

I discovered two very interesting articles recently on composer/ pianist Anthony Coleman and his thoughts on Ellington's music. 

First of all, from observer.com, here is an extract from their piece twenty-one years ago, Take the 'A'Train Downtown for Ellington Centennial:

Dropping by the Mogador that evening, (saxophonist) Mr. Roy Nathanson declared: “Wynton Marsalis wants to see Ellington as the bulwark of the tradition. We want to see him as the bulwark of the nontradition.” Mr. Coleman happily compounds the heresy. “The Ellington band doesn’t swing like a regular jazz band,” he said. “It lopes, it drags, it feels like it’s in a time warp.” The pianist is nursing a private theory that what Duke really means by swing isn’t finger-snapping 4/4 time but a syncopated hemiola (the superimposition of one beat against another) that has its roots in ragtime. The clue-the musical Rosebud-is the “doo wah, doo wah” that follows the line, “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” “I’ve said too much,” Mr. Coleman muttered, looking momentarily dismayed, a future best-selling monograph gone up in smoke.

The finer points aside, it’s certainly true that Ellington, playing to the expectations of the white toffs and gangsters at the Cotton Club, patented a “jungle music” that had its own weird originality. Those early years set the tone. Ellington, the nominal king of jazz, played a music that was only part jazz, as everyone else understood the term, and part something of his own devising-a cocktail of African-American roots music, vaudeville and the European concert hall. Duke was the most unlikely of combinations: a bourgeois arriviste copping fancy Impressionist chords and a self-confident smoothie who knew that the old tricks-blues, gospel, rag, stride-were as good as anything the Old World could come up with.

Mr. Coleman has a downtown nose for kitsch, so at the Knit gig he plans to zero in on Ellington’s rock-influenced work from the 60’s, like Acht O’Clock Rock from the 1971 suite The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse . “Ellington was a very acquisitive person,” he said. “In the 20’s, he heard what was happening in New Orleans and Harlem. In the 60’s, he was watching a lot of TV and he heard rock on programs like Hawaii Five-O and The Ed Sullivan Show . Some of it’s pretty bad, but it’s touching.” 

While Mr. Coleman can make a theoretical case for Ellington’s importance to the current downtown scene (“he changed the border between improvisation and composition”), his connection to Duke is, at heart, personal. A precocious Brooklyn kid, he attached himself to the man and his band in the early 70’s “like a burr.” Forty years from now, he should have attained “Last Civil War Widow” status in all matters Ellingtonian.

... Mr. Coleman recalled that once, at a band rehearsal in Milwaukee, he had the rare privilege of hearing Duke curse. “He called [wayward tenorist] Paul Gonsalves an asshole,” he recalled. “Gonsalves was just so drunk and lost. The room froze. The next day, at a lecture Duke was giving, Paul showed up looking bleary, like he’d taken 10 showers. He interrupted the lecture and said, ‘Duke, I want to play Happy Reunion with you.’ It was very intense, very beautiful.” In 1974, Mr. Coleman saw Ellington for the last time. Terminally ill with lung cancer, Duke gave him the customary smile and four pecks on the cheek. “Ah, you’ve been staying away from me, baby,” he said.

The full article may be found here.

And there is an interview with Coleman by Michael Goldberg in the on-line magazine Bomb. Here is an extract...

MG
Tell me how you got into Duke.

AC 

When I was 12 years old—all this stuff happened when I was 12—around the corner, this architect, Al Henriques, had this enormous collection of Duke Ellington 78s, and I was friends with his kids. Al saw that I was very interested in the 1920s and ’30s, so he allowed me to take the 78s home to copy and they started taking over my life. I started to dream them! My first couple years of high school, while kids would be tripping and listening to the Grateful Dead, I’d be tripping in the Lincoln Center Library with headphones on. And there’s that moment in the Black and Tan Fantasy where “Tricky Sam” Nanton is playing trombone and meanwhile Barney Bigard, underneath the melody, is slowly crescendoing and at the same time glissing up a whole step—that was my psychedelic music. It was so psychedelic how he went from the background to the foreground and meanwhile the tone is slipping.

 Duke had this whole gestural language that stamps his music so strongly; it became my language. I wasn’t interested in writing notes; I was interested in having the whole surface be this growling, glissing thing. It wasn’t until much later that I heard composers coming more from the contemporary classical tradition that also had a constantly inflecting surface. That was the thing in Ellington that really got to me: it’s constantly throbbing; things don’t just sit there. Notes are not just notes; each one of them has this whole life and gesture. The dynamics of the sound blew me away! So that summer my parents asked what I wanted to do for my birthday. I told them I didn’t want anything, except to see Duke Ellington. We went to see the Ellington Band at the Rainbow Grill at the top of Rockefeller Center—

MG

 I saw him there too.

AC 

Did you? At this time?

MG

 Oh sure!

AC 

Johnny Hodges had only one more year to live so if I hadn’t gone then I would never have seen Hodges, I would’ve never seen Lawrence Brown. They were in the band for just one more year. I got Hodges’ autograph, which was very exciting. Then, for the next three or four years, I followed the Ellington Band constantly and tried to take apart the sounds—

MG

 You were playing jazz then too?

AC 

I started studying with Jaki Byard then and going to hear jazz five nights a week. I don’t know how I ever graduated high school. In the summer of 1972, Duke Ellington gave a seminar in Madison, Wisconsin. Every member of the band gave master classes and Ellington gave several. Around that time, I started writing a lot for the Jazz Big Band in school. I had this girlfriend who would come to rehearsals and she’d say, “You got all this Monk, Duke and Mingus stuff going on. But I hear some other things that I think would be good for you.” She was studying composition at Manhattan School of Music. She played me Bartok Quartets, which changed my life, and early Cage prepared piano music which changed my life too, and Ives symphonies. Then the world got confusing. The path got messy. It stayed messy. I was 16, so the path has been really messy for 35 years

Read the whole interview here.

And for a flavour of the music of Anthony Coleman,  from his album The Coming Great Millennium  with Roy Nathanson, here is Billy Strayhorn's UMMG.

Chicago, Chicago

From Chicago Sun Times:

This week in history: Duke Ellington surprises Chicagoans with a free concert

Ellington, born April 29, 1899, made train delays pleasant for Loop riders on July 11, 1973, when he played a free concert in First National Bank plaza.

By Alison Martin  Apr 30, 2020, 4:28pm CDT

As reported in the Chicago Daily News, sister publication to the Chicago Sun-Times:

Imagine waiting on the Washington/Wells “L” platform and hearing the jazzy sounds of “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing” drifting over the rush-hour traffic below.

That was the reality for Chicagoans in 1973 when Duke Ellington, who celebrated his birthday this week, played a free concert on July 11, 1973 for over a thousand people in the First National Bank plaza in the Loop.

Ellington, “in rare whimsical form” according to reporter Ray Townley, played an hour-and-a-half set of his favorites that “literally dripped with nostalgia.” The band wasted no time getting the crowd up and moving.

“A number of people even jumped up on the stage to demonstrate their funky two-stepping before the approving eye of the Duke,” Townley wrote.

At one point, Ellington remarked to the crowd, “Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, that the First National Bank is affording me a chance to indulge in my mistress?”

Ellington paused for a moment to let the crowd “conjure up the wildest scandals,” then he grinned.

“Music...” he said. “Music is my mistress.”

Some time ago, I discovered a cache of photographs from this engagement, the memory of which was occasioned from this newspaper article. I share them here. I cannot now remember where I found them, but posting and will be glad to acknowledge copyright. No infringement intended...