Bleak Beauty

A contributor to an on-line jazz discussion forum once wrote of the last few months of Duke Ellington’s Orchestra:

“The band is raw, often transitional, it's often a mess. …it's real. You hear stories about Duke just trying to keep going by any means possible, trying to get a handoff to Mercer going, but not really accepting just how near his end really is, scrambling to keep it going... Not for people who don't like final pages (even if they do like final chapters,) but I'm of the mind that it's not over until it's over, and those last few gasps count just as much as the fullest, deepest breaths.

“… (T)here’s some really uncomfortable things going on with singers… and new guys, and the drummer not always being locked in. Overall, it's a mess. If it had been a few years earlier, it would be like, ok, well, Duke's gonna work it out like he always does, might take a year or two, time will take care of it all. But November, 1973? Six months left? It's frantic, the tension between “just keep going” and “there will no longer be the ability to go forward” and you can feel in the music that, no, Duke's not gonna work it out.

“I say I like it. Ok, I like it in the sense that it's intensely real, not in the sense that it's fun. It's not fun at all. But it is powerful.”

The comments were made specifically in response to two CDs-r put out on the bootleg label Squatty Roo, Rugged Jungle and Last Trip to Paris.

The writer’s prose is a little overcooked for my taste and he overstates the case but it is an interesting perspective with merit, expressed with feeling and conviction.

To quote the poet on age and then the only end of age, at this stage in the life of the Orchestra, which was the life of Duke Ellington – they are the same thing – “you break up: the bits that were you/Start speeding away from each other for ever/ With no one to see.”

It is true that the band was not in the shape it had been. The old hands must have been near exhaustion, the newer inexperienced players not yet entirely broken in. Ellington’s creative relationship to his men was different, the pieces he was currently working on – Three Black Kings, Queenie Pie – written in the abstract, as it were, scored not with the particular soloists in his own orchestra in mind but likely for aggregations other than his own.

It is precisely because the orchestra was not all that it once was, that a particular poignancy, a kind of truth or bleak beauty emerged from their performances which would otherwise not have been present. And the same can be said of Ellington himself in the two interviews that took place following the band’s arrival in Europe in October 1973. Interrogated at  airports, shortly upon arrival, the mask has all but slipped entirely. It is not so much what Ellington says (confronted time and again throughout his professional life with much the same questions he always was, Ellington has his responses down pat) but, rather, the contrary if not confrontational manner in which he couches his responses. Despite Ellington’s obvious irritation with his interlocutor’s blandishments, what emerges is a cogent and articulate statement of the core principals and beliefs that had shaped Ellington’s life.    

At some point, in my mind’s ear, I had run these two interviews together as one. Clearly, they are two separate occasions, however, although there is considerable crossover in theme between the two and both take place at airports it would appear very shortly after Ellington had disembarked from his flight.

We can date with some certainty, however, what I believe to be the later of the two interviews, thanks to research undertaken on Duke Ellington in Sweden. The first of the two interviews took place on 27 October 1973 at Umeå Airport, Sweden. The second interview took place on 7 November 1973 at Ljubljana Airport, Slovenia. 

Ellington had flown to Sweden the day after the première of The Third Sacred Concert at Westminster Abbey, London. Duke Ellington and his Orchestra performed two shows in Malmö that same evening. Following a concert at Tivoli Koncertsalen in Copenhagen, Denmark on 26 October, Ellington then flew back to Sweden and to Umeå where the first of the interviews took place.

Such was the extent of Ellington’s peregrinations, it is little wonder he met the usual questions with little patience. He speaks about the business of music in ways I do not believe he had ever previously, making clear distinctions between music and money. Commerce may well build higher than cathedrals, but Ellington makes plain that he is having none of it. He discusses the business of music in a direct and uncompromising way, pulling no punches and quite in contrast to his usual oblique way of addressing difficult issues – saying it, famously, without really saying it. In this instance he says it out loud. Ellington’s comments on this subject begin, as they had begun many times before, with his dealing with the issue of the label ‘jazz’:

“Jazz? Well I mean the word to me means freedom of expression that’s what I think of it, that’s all. I mean, and if it is accepted as an art it is the same as any other art. The popularity of it doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean anything because when you get into popularity, then you’re talking about money and not music.

“…When you say young people, that means that young people are dictating. They are the dictators or the ‘dictatresses’ of the day as far as the art is concerned and this is not true. The young people are the people who are buying because they are told to buy and they cannot buy what is not pressed and there is a little man known as a sales manager who tells them how many million to press and then they tell the little children. They say ‘Now you buy this million,’ and they do it. It has no relationship to music and it has nothing to do with taste.”

Rarely in public before can Ellington have allowed his disenchantment with the business of music and the cynicism of the commercial markets to have shown itself so baldly. It is difficult to determine in this statement if Ellington is in fact conflating three distinct grievances. “They cannot buy what is not pressed,” Ellington asserts. Given the huge number of private recordings we subsequently discovered Ellington had stockpiled, none of which were issued during his lifetime, the fact that in this period of his career and for long stretches he was without a regular recording contract, the lack of pressings of his own work must have rankled. The final studio recordings he made which featured singer Teresa Brewer who, coincidentally, had quite recently married the label’s owner, Bob Thiele of Flying Dutchman Records would not see the light of day until the following year. The most recent album of the Ellington orchestra in the studios was The Latin American Suite, released in 1972, portions of which had been recorded as long ago as 1968. It is not difficult, then, to imagine Ellington’s frustration.

Then, there is Ellington’s defence of the young people of the day. He sees them not as “dictating” trends or what will sell. (He coins a new word here, also – “dictatresses”. However exhausted or distracted Ellington was, he would always go out of his way to acknowledge the female – quite literally upon his arrival at the airport as we shall see.) He sees the young, (“little children,” no less) rather, as innocent victims, babes in the wood, prey to the wiles of the marketing men” “ ‘Now you buy this million’, and they do it.”

Most significantly, however, and this touches Ellington’s preoccupations most profoundly, he asserts that “It has no relationship to music”. Here he is picking up on a theme he developed in what I think is probably the interview the day or two earlier when he first arrived in Sweden. Popularity don’t mean a thing: “… because when you get into popularity, then you’re talking about money and not music.”

This is Ellington on Art. This is his credo. It is not The Reverend Doctor King Ellington is channeling on this occasion so much as Martin Luther himself. “Here I stand. I can do no other,” is the claim Ellington is making about his art, his music.

Ellington is even more bellicose in his attitude towards art in the second interview in Ljubljana.

The footage of Ellington arriving, which is included on the video posted to various sharing sites, is fascinating in itself and may explain in part the composer’s slipping composure. We shall discuss these scenes at the end of this present essay but first, a focus on the way Ellington cleaves to his theme and his belligerence with the idea there should be limits set on what constitutes his art.

Ellington treads old ground in the responses he gives to the interviewer. The fact that he has made these same stock responses before may explain his irritation on this occasion with having to do it again although undoubtedly his sheer exhaustion by this point would have played into his almost aggressive approach. Ellington has given exactly the same examples of individualism before but never in so surly a way as he does here. Reference to pop music and electrically amplified music is interpreted as a reference to categories and Ellington launches into his usual reaction to that concept:

“I don’t believe in these categories. What is a category? What… er… whose jazz? Bechet? Django Reinhardt?  Art Tatum? Louis Armstrong? Tell me what is there about one of them that is like the other that gives them… that puts them in the same category?”

Ellington sounds like an impatient university tutor interrogating a particularly obtuse student in these exchanges. It is the concept of ‘guidelines’ the hapless interviewer introduces in a thread of questions about the ‘evolution’ of Ellington’s music that particularly ignites Ellington’s wrath:

“What are the big guidelines? I didn’t know there were any…”

Ellington’s unfortunate interlocutor tries to clarify the point. “The main the way you compose…”

“I don’t have any… way.  Are you telling me or asking me? Well, you sound like you have a diagram for me to stay in you have a category, a cubic pigeonhole.  Am I supposed to stay in that little thing?”

The interviewer only makes matters worse. It may be at this point that Ellington is playing up to the comedy of the situation, but if so, his fatigue gives only a leaden attempt at humour.

“I didn’t know I had any guidelines,” Ellington says. “You’ve just given them to me. You never told me about them before.”

“Do you feel the evolution of music has been important?” the interviewer asks, changing tack slightly as though he is trying to negotiate a particularly muddy road with a particularly heavily laden handcart.

“The evolution of music generally has practically no meaning,” Ellington asserts, cutting that avenue of exploration off.  “If you talk about me, then you talk about me. I don’t know about anybody else. What I do is no relationship with what anybody else does. When people come to see us, they come to see us and when you go to a Count Basie concert, everybody in that hall went to see Count Basie. They didn’t go to any guidelines.  Or when they went to see anybody for that matter that’s what it is. No guidelines.  I don’t know what guidelines are all about. I mean if this music that you’re talking about if it means anything at all, it means freedom of expression and without which I mean there’s nothing. Is there any reason why it should not have freedom of expression? If it is any kind of an art, is it still an art if it does not enjoy freedom of expression? What does that mean? I don’t know. What are you saying?”

In the past, Ellington had frequently trotted out the expression ‘freedom of expression’ as his pat response to questions about the label (or category), ‘Jazz’. If jazz means anything at all, Ellington would say, it means freedom of expression. And usually that well-worn exchange took place with Ellington’s customary grace which for various reasons he is unable or unwilling to summon on this occasion.

 The interview ends on comparatively good terms. 

“What does it feel like,” the interviewer asks beating a hasty retreat on the thorny issue of evolution, pop and electrically amplified music, “to be… Duke Ellington, representing many things to many people not only musically. How does it feel to come here? To feel that you are Duke Ellington, awaited by people wanting you to play, waiting for you to play?” 

“I don’t know,” Ellington muses, referring to himself Caesar like in the third person. “Duke Ellington is a guy who will go over there (the second day of the Jazz Festival at Malmö Stadsteater) tonight and try and communicate with the audience and if he does, he will figure that it is one of his very, very lucky days. Fortunately, he’s had many lucky days.”

Prior to this exchange, there is telling footage of Ellington disembarking at the airport which may explain Duke’s subsequent ill-tempered disposition towards the young interviewer.

The minute-and-a-half or so of video gives us a rare insight into just how taxing it was to transport the Behemoth that was Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra from place to place. 

There is a melée of stewards, the airport reception committee, Ellington’s own small entourage and assorted hangers on, each pulling in their own direction and trying to organize the logistics of the operation. “Take them to the hotel,” an anonymous attendant says, “and when the rest of the band and the equipment comes, the truck will be here.”

At the same time, arrangements are being put in hand for Ellington to dine. “You would like to eat something or something?” a solicitous steward asks. Ellington shakes his head and wrinkles his nose.

The fate of Ellington’s luggage seems to be another issue. “You have a bag with you?” the attendant asks.

“I had some carry-ons and then I had some cheques too, of course,” Ellington replies, concerned above all with the whereabouts of Jim or Jimmie Lowe (Arnold ‘Jim’ Lowe, one presumes) who does not appear to be with the party.

At the heart of this hoo-ha, the essential Ellington remains: he manages a wan smile as he emerges from the aircraft’s cabin which quickly fades. “They’ve got me mixed up with somebody else,” he only partly jokes, perhaps believing he is not quite receiving the level of attention he deserves.

His vanity proves rather more enduring than his smile, however.

“They can’t photograph me with my doggie bag,” he says.

“Let me carry that,” an ever- assiduous Stanley Dance says.

 And subsequently, as they travel through the arrivals lounge which, for all the world, is as blanched and stark as a hospital corridor, still mindful of his appearance, Ellington says, “I will stay with Castro (Fernanda de Castro Monte?) until I am a little bit more photogenic.”

And however exhausted Ellington is by the rigours of his itinerary, he still manages a “Good morning,” to an attendant air stewardess. In the second of the two videos (the link to which is posted at the end of this piece), again, Duke is never so discombobulated that he will not raise his hat to what in those days one might term a bevy of young women awaiting his arrival.

Much of this tableau seems to take place regardless of Ellington or in parallel, at least, to the great man’s own preoccupation with his welfare and progress. One could almost say Ellington seems lost, the whereabouts of his bags no more a concern than those ‘accumulations of virtue’ beneath his own tired eyes.

“I have to get some information about my…” he begins but the thought tails away. The most telling phrase to which Ellington gives utterance is: “Loaded down trying to get out.”

Many thanks to Ulf Lundin of Duke Ellington Society of Sweden and website Ellington Galaxy who provided corrected information about the location and dates of the two interviews.