The swing era (duke ellington)

In 1932 Duke Ellington (1899-1974) wrote a song, It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing, that provided a label for a new style of jazz developing among big bands during the 1930s. Duke was no newcomer to the field of jazz, having written his first song, Soda Fountain Rag, at the age of fourteen and having organized his first band not too many years later.

He had little formal training in music other than piano lessons. As a pianist he came in contact with Harlem's active pianists during the time and was particularly influenced by the playing of James P. Johnson, Willie-the-Lion Smith, Luckey Roberts, and Fats Waller. But Ellington's ideas were his own and his genius led him to create an orchestra style marked by rich and daring harmonies, by subtle contrasting of colors and timbres, and by an ingenious handling of solo and ensemble relationships. The orchestra became the vehicle through which Ellington expressed his creativity; it came to represent the ideal big "swinging band".

68

When Ellington's band began its memorable engagement in 1927 at the famed Cotton Club in Harlem, it included two trumpets, trombone, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone (doubling with clarinet), guitar (doubling with banjo), bass, drums, and piano. Later it was enlarged to include three trumpets and two trombones, and in 1932 a third trombone and a fourth saxophone were added. It was during the Cotton Club years that Duke's orchestra began to win distinctions for its thorough musicianship and

homogeneity.

Duke, as the leader, could accept the credit for it, but the contributions of his sidemen were significant. They were brilliant soloists in their own rights; they fitted in well with Duke's temperament; and they remained with him over long periods of

time.

Many of Duke's arrangements were worked out with his sidemen in the true tradition of collective improvisation. Duke would bring to the meeting his musical ideas, and one or another of the bandsmen would make suggestions for changes or additions. Things were tried out on the spot in order to find out whether they worked. Often a composition was changed after it had been performed three or four times, sometimes resulting in an entirely new work. Duke's constantly reiterated statement was, "Good music is music that sounds good". Sometimes other musicians of the orchestra would bring their compositions to "creating sessions" to be worked out by the entire group. In 1939 Billy Strayhorn (1915-67), pianist-composer, joined Duke's orchestra as an arranger ana over the years developed into Duke's musical alter ego.* The collaboration between the two men was so close that often neither could identify which part of a musical work was his.

Ellington left more than 2,000 compositions, an impressive record equaled by few composers in the history of American music. His best known works included the symphonic suites Creole Rhapsody (1931), Black, Brown, and Beige (1943), Deep South Suite (1947), Liberian Suite (1947), Such Sweet Thunder (1957), and Far East Suite (1970); the ballet The River (1970); the pageant My People (1963); the television musical A Drum Is a Woman (CBS,* 1957); and the musicals Jump for Joy (1941; 1959) and Beggar's Holiday (1946). Best known of the hundreds of songs he wrote were Sophisticated Lady, In a Sentimental Mood, I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart, Mood Indigo, and / Got It Bad and That Ain't

Good.

Ellington made enormous contributions to the development of jazz and, indeed, to American music in general. His innovations, unusual at the time introduced, passed into the sounds of jazz so quickly that the jazz world accepted them as if always there; for example, the use of the voice as an instrument in Adelaide Hall's wordless solo on Creole Love Call (1928), or the employment of Cuban elements in Caravan (1937), or the use of concerto form in

69

Concerto for Cootie (1939). He was the first jazzman to write concert jazz in extended forms, and for seven years (1943-50) he presented annual concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York. He also was among the first to present jazz in the church.

From: The Music of Black Americans by E. Southern