The record changer (Mar-Dec 1947)

DUKE ELLINGTON I Don't Know Why I Love You So T.T. On Toast Tough Truckin' Indigo Echoes Blue Mood Delta Bound Slippery Horn Clouds In My Heart Columbia Album C-127 About ten years ago, when George Frazier introduced me to the Negro and Negroinfluenced music for which he had a strong intuition, I passed through the experience of the Ellington band on records. Frazier was one of those who had encountered the Duke in the late 1920's and early '30's, the period following Paul Whiteman's domination of popular dance and concert music by means of his slick "symphonic jazz" — a commodity certainly as cunningly and gallingly presented as canned soup or packaged breakfast food. Frazier was at Harvard, At Yale there were Wilder Hobson and John Hammond. At Princeton the group centered by "Squirrel" Ashcraft and Albert McVitty. They were all listening eagerly to dance bands and they all, at just about the same time, were finding their way around the blocks set up by Whiteman and his similars to music that had a more intelligent ring. The Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington bands seemed, by contrast, marvelous, delivering a beat and a variety of expertly conceived instrumental solos against abundant choir timbres that in combination were just plain relief. The university students of popular music went on from there. At Princeton some one dug the Chicago Rhythm Kings' and the Nichol's Five Pennies' and the Wolverines' records. These, and then the Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens were discoveries which produced not only a tremendous momentary excitement but also — and this is particularly true of the Armstrongs — a desire for further discovery and knowledge. When John Hammond, for example, regarded the depths in the voice of Bessie Smith his amazement was so profound that it drove him into a career of devoted search for the unknown wonders of jazz and folk music in the South and Southwestern areas of the United States. Bessie wasn't enough to purge Hammond of certain aberrant musical enthusiasms : the rock and ride Basie band or the impressive Goodman "swing." Hammond's early worship of Henderson and Ellington made him forever susceptible to the ritual of the big band. But Bessie has been with 8 IB HOTED him coaxing and pacifying and drawing him toward ventures of incomparable value to us all in our exploration of jazz. 1 Hammond's a simple illustration because he has had the chance to continue his activities in music. He's by no means an individual case. No one who confronted the Ellington band at that particular moment in history ever got over it. In American Jazz Music, published in 1939, Wilder Hobson could write that the best of Ellington's music "is a sort of vivid summary of its Negro folk-musical sources, which have led alike to lovely clarinet songs above muted, whispering brasses, and to steaming expressions when the air is drenched with the brilliance of massed trumpets and trombones over exuberant reeds and urgent, shivering percussion." And I remember in 1937 and 1938 George Frazier's nostalgic reverence for East St. Louis Toodle-oo} No, Papa, No, The Mooche, Dicty Glide, and so on. We played the Ellington again and again. But we also played over and over again the Chicagoans, Bix, Louis, Bessie, Goodman, Bob Crosby, Henderson, Meade Lux Lewis, Lang-Venuti, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Wingy Manone, Jelly Roll, Fats Waller, Teagarden, Red Norvo, Moten, Chick Webb. I assume this was the same kind of thing available for George Avakian at Yale and for Mike Levin a class or so after me at Harvard. We, not so much a second jazz generation as a company closely following the first line of university advance, were thus able to penetrate evenly a number of different jazz sectors. The effect of Ellington reached us in no greater degree than did any of the others named above. (Goodman, perhaps, due to his notoriety and the band's skilled performance in the atmosphere of New Deal optimism, bothered us more persistently. But that's another, related story.) At any rate, with the background as sketched, it's curious to find Avakian and Levin approaching Ellington as affectionately as ever did Hobson or Frazier. Avakian, who prepared this Columbia album of eight hitherto unreleased sides, writes in his album notes of "the historically significant and musically distinguished recordings (made) between 1932 and 1938, when the Duke and his men were developing into the most remarkable organization the popular music field has ever known." Later, speaking of the sextet which performs Tough Truckin' and Indigo Echoes, he says the sextet "plays hauntingly intense music ... on these sides, which rank among the finest Ellington has ever made." In reviewing the album for Down Beat Levin winds up writing: "This album is a must for collectors and those plain people who just like hauntingly superb music." The repeated "hauntingly," a word owning definite romantic connotation, may be justified. But the "distinguished," the "intense," and the "superb" can be applied to these records only in a commercial sens' and though Avakian's notes are meant sell and sell with the album and Levir employed by a trade paper, neither wr gives any indication that his adjectives thereby limited. Levin, with that patroniz air of incorruptibilitv arrogated by instr tors from Down Beat— the HONEST in tution — points out that Avakian is of coi not a free agent at Columbia, a sample Mike's heroic reporting on the safe side might be more heroic — and less safe — to velop the hint Levin throws in when he I fers to the "whistling-Lombardo II Hodges used to play." For it seems to me that except for a m ber of dazzling details these eight sides very much like "the sweetest music side of heaven." The details are well known. They are "lovely clarinet songs above muted, wli pering brasses," et cetera as quoted aire from Wilder Hobson, whose descriptioi would let stand in all its veiled glory as proper attitude of adoration ordained the Duke ceremony — where the rich tr pings, the well-rehearsed movements, timing of effects, the entrances and ex! the beautifully controlled unison chanti the flow of part into part, where all th mesmerize the attendants and send tlr forth convinced that what happened r really important in their lives. Ellington assembles his arrangements intricate fashion ; his themes — SUM Horn — are often appealing; the band's d blue velvet tone color doesn't run ; the ecution of the soloists and the sections precise beyond compare. But when Hob in his trance calls Ellington's music "a vi summary of Negro folk-musical sourc he's hearing things. Ellington has never g. near such sources, and the only claim band can make on jazz is the nati Negroid tone of, say. Bigard's clari Cootie's horn, Tricky Sam Nanton's trc bone. Even these, however, are usu; "purified" by the requirements of the from Negro harmonies. (The blues s doesn't anchor Ellington compositions. 1 Indigo Echoes in the traditionally Europ minor mode. As for rhythm, it's mostly ta stuff, no momentum, no lift, no basis swing — which gets manufactured by s obvious and hackneyed syncopation as brass interchange in the first repeat of B Mood. Negro folk-musical sources? This b; relies on classical orchestration, symphc harmonies and on arrangements more cc plex and diversified than Lombardo every bit as mechanical. Such elemei: crossed with the band's full tone, tota compromised music bound for the sucC Ellington has enjoyed. The reasons for s 4 ti cess that lie outside the sound of the b: are mentioned by Wilder Hobson in New York chapter in Jazzmen: ". . . j lington . . . had Irving Mills' plugg management, a bandstand in the purple gl lamps of the Cotton Club which was a d ter of the Harlem entertainment vogue, i widespread radio facilities." An incidenta the fact that the Cotton Club was opera in those Prohibition days by a beer-runn syndicate, white racketeers organized in big time. Ellington's musical escape ab eight years later into Delius and Debuss; these influences don't show up in the Cok bia album — indicate the need he felt reimburse himself for exploitation. {Continued on Page 15) THE RECORD CHANGi