Essays
DUKE ELLINGTON
A Cold from Little Eddie
Published in Jazz Journal in March 1963
added 2011-07-24
Duke Ellington, composer, pianist, band leader: born April 29, 1899, died May 24, 1974
The phone rang in Stanley Dance's home in Connecticut. The call was from London. "This is Little Eddie. Just to let you know that we arrived all right.."
Considering that they seem to live normally in a state of almost mindless fatigue, it is amazing that the Ellington band members manage to be so composed and sociable most of the time. Perhaps the most imperturbable of them all is baritone sax player Harry Carney. He has an elephantine memory that is almost supernatural. Standing outside the Empire in a Jacques Tati beret and overcoat, which made one wonder where he had left his motor bike, he recalled his first visit to Liverpool. 'In 1933 we stayed down that street. I think it was the second turning on the left, and their name was Jackson. I wonder if they still live there?'
Later he was talking to clarinettist Jimmy Hamilton. 'I was thinking of phoning home today, but after that hotel bill last night, I can't afford it. Five quid just for bed and breakfast.'
The dressing room belonged during the week to Morecambe of Morecambe and Wise, who was appearing at the theatre in pantomime. Mr. Morecambe had left a pleasant note inviting Duke to help himself to a drink and to make use of the television set in the room. Duke switched on the television while the half bottle of gin on the table went round the room. The time was 7.30 p.m. and I realised with no little discomfort what was about to happen.
An unctuous and servile voice came out of the speaker: '.welcome you ladies and gentlemen once again to the Black and White Minstrel Show!'
And there they were, capering about in their patchwork suits and gollywog make-up. This, I said to myself, is going to be one of those famous moments of truth. Duke and Strayhorn watched in baleful silence. Strayhorn took off his glasses, examined them, and put them back on. Suddenly the Minstrels went into 'Caravan', and George Chisholm came on.
'Well produced show,' said Duke, and turned back to the problem of his underwear.
A mother and daughter, whose interest in jazz must have been tenuous, suddenly appeared in the room. Apparently Duke had met them somewhere and promised them tickets for the show. All the seats were sold, so I gave them my tickets.
There followed a stormy tussle between Sinclair and the stage foreman, a belligerent and disenchanted person whom I learned to avoid years ago. His attitude was almost as cold as the stage of the theatre.
'If you had wanted to borrow ten bucks and I had never met you before, these guys would show you right into my dressing room,' said Duke, 'but if you were someone important who had just come in to see the show before signing a contract or something, they'd practically come to blows keeping you out.
On stage the Ellingtonians were shivering behind the curtain. Johnny Hodges examined his alto and began calling for anti-freeze. We sat down on two stools just off-stage from the piano.
Duke didn't appear backstage until the band crackled into 'A Train'. He walked briskly to the mike, did the 'we love you madly' bit, and walked briskly off-stage to our side.
'Jesus!' he said. 'When they built this place they forgot to put the roof on.' He called out for spotlights to be placed to shine on the piano stool. Would someone mind going out there and breaking the ice between the piano keys?
The concert progressed more or less normally except that they left out 'Kinda Dukish' and 'Pretty and the Wolf' but added 'Mainstem'. The next day the Liverpool Daily Post said that 'Kinda Dukish' was one of the concert highlights. During the last tour the Liverpool Echo claimed that the trumpet solos of the alto saxophone player Johnny Hodges were very moving.
The big drawback about listening from the wings was that the normal bite of the sax section was a bit muffled. But this was more than compensated for the ability to hear the continuous battery of asides that goes on between the members of the band.
After Hodges had blandly laid down three of his masterworks, he was in the process of sitting down again when Ellington called him out for another bow. While smirking politely at the audience Rabbit was muttering all the time to his boss. 'Lay off it, Dukie. Every time I bend down I can feel the ice cracking off the back of my pants.'
At the interval 'Dukie' hustled off to his room to change into ankle length underpants. The trumpet and trombone sections, who hadn't missed the goings on in the wings, gathered around Sinclair's chair, removed his flask, and emptied it. Sinclair stood in the middle in his overcoat, looking for all the world like some football coach with his team at half time. I almost expected him to produce a plate of sliced lemons from somewhere.
The teams changed ends and crashed into the second half with a heat that had obviously come from Sinclair's flask, now lying forlornly abandoned behind the piano stool.
'Little Eddie', who kept bounding into the wings to give us a rundown on the state of the weather on-stage, had still not warmed up and was having constant trouble with his cold. The piano was by now full of abandoned Kleenex tissues.
'Tell Stray to have my ugly pills ready when we come off,' he said as the last number approached.
'Man,' said Jimmy Hamilton as they came off-stage, 'Will I be glad to get out of this freezing theatre and into that freezing coach where I can at least die in an undignified posture of my own choosing.' (The band was making the 200-mile trip back to London overnight).
In the Duke's room the Wardrobe Section were busily packing his clothes. Duke and Billy Strayhorn were discussing how best to reciprocate Mr Morecambe's gesture with the gin. The half-bottle was by now as empty as Sinclair's flask. With a little pressure Duke extracted the fact that Billy had a full bottle of gin in his bag.
'This fellow has been very gracious to us,' said Duke. 'We should try to be even more gracious in return. I think you should leave the full bottle.'
'Why not just refill the half from my bottle?' suggested Billy. 'There's going to come a moment of crisis on that train' (Stray and Duke were going back to London with Sinclair on the train) at about three o'clock in the morning when I'm going to need that gin.'
'No,' insisted Duke. 'We must be more gracious than he. The gracious thing to do is to leave the full bottle.' (Duke doesn't drink these days).
'Edward, you're being gracious as all hell with MY gin.' Stray jammed his hands in the pockets of his collarless George Melly-type corduroy suit and looked disconsolate. Harry Carney, who was going back on the coach and stood no chance with the gin either way, roared with laughter.
With Duke absorbed in his dressing, Billy cautiously refilled the half bottle and slipped his own bottle back into his bag.
We reached the Adelphi Hotel at eleven o'clock, and with customary British Railways grace (the hotel belonged to BR) the headwaiter refused to serve us. 'I have to have my staff in by seven in the morning, and I'm not keeping them back now for you.' In a second-class hotel they would have probably had the bouncer throw us out.
Duke walked past as though he didn't know that the headwaiter was there (he probably didn't) and sat down at a table. Eventually a waiter arrived and Duke ordered soup, bacon and eggs 'with the eggs cooked easy', toast and 'as many kinds of jam as you've got.'
'Give me my Ugly pill,' he said to Strayhorn, abandoning yet another tissue. Strayhorn produced two pills, one a murky white large enough to choke a big horse, the other (the Ugly pill) smaller and bright emerald green.
Duke explained when I asked him that he had to take them to get any kind of relief from his cold, which was a really remarkable one. 'They put me in an ugly mood, and I get rude, very rude, to people I have no right to be rude to. I get very nasty, and really I shouldn't. I get very ugly.'
'Come now Edward, you're not the monster you would have everyone believe you are,' said Billy.
'I'm not a monster,' retorted Duke. 'You're the monster. You're a monster among monsters.'
'I guess I must be a monster,' Billy agreed, 'because the king monster says I am.'
Edward poked into the two plates of jam in front of him - one blackcurrant and one strawberry. He stopped a passing waitress: 'What other kinds of jam have you got? And bring me more milk and grapefruit juice.' She looked at him as though he was mad, but came back with raspberry jam, milk and grapefruit juice.
Billy surveyed the remains of Duke's snack. 'The inside of your stomach will be like Chicago on St. Valentine's Day. Your germs will be tightening their hold.'
'It couldn't be much tighter. These germs have got inside my lovely, lovely body and they reckon on staying there forever. They must like my piano playing.'
Duke collected a huge supply of paper napkins, and I drove them to Lime Street Station. 'You should be wearing a coat,' Duke said to me at the station.
I left them in the frozen station to face what transpired to be a night in a train without heat - too cold to stay in their sleepers, in fact. Three days later I had one of the most aggressive colds I have yet encountered. I took consolation in the thought that it had probably originally belonged to Little Eddie. I think I could do with some of those Ugly pills.
-Steve Voce
Briefer writings
Jugged Rex
Published in Jazz Journal in January 1966
added 2011-08-19
Hearing Humph playing Rex Stewart’s record of Jug Blues with Sandy Williams made me wonder if the Rex Stewart sides recorded in Europe will ever be released here. Although I have never heard the very rare Jug before, I have a half a dozen of the 12 inch Blue Star 78s which include Mobile Bay, quite the outstanding record of trumpet/cornet playing which I know of. And then there was Old Woman's Blues from the it German session and quite a few others. Rex is one of the great masters, sounding as though he had three hands and five and a half valves.
I am looking forward to his intended English visit with more than a little enthusiasm because, after having lobbied for it for so long, I am sure that it will be an eventful one.
Rex has taken up writing these days, and several extracts from what promises to be a well-written book by him have already been published. There is some muttering at our newspaper-empire HQ in Willow Vale that Rex is also writing at least one piece for Jazz Journal. What with the article by Duke in December, the serialisation of the Clayton letters
and Rex's contribution, it looks like Stan and I might be looking for a job.
-Steve Voce
Interviews
CAB CALLOWAY
The Marquis of Harlem
Published in Jazz Journal in June 1958
added 2011-08-07
The recent visit of Little Jimmy Rushing to this country brings back memories of another great American singer who visited this country not so long ago. Although he has little in common with Rushing, he did popularise a number which is now a standard in the Rushing repertoire -"Evening".
Cab Calloway spent several weeks in the autumn of 1955 playing to cheerless and diminutive variety audiences throughout the country. It seems a pity that he couldn't have put his visit forward a couple of years to the present time when he would probably have gained the acclamation that his talents merit.
Possessing all the attributes of a great jazz singer – a perfect ear, superb phrasing and timing, and the ability to swing a band with his own voice, it is highly desirable that Cab should be unearthed by somebody like John Hammond or George Avakian and restored to the place in jazz that should be his.
Following a decade of virile hot music which placed Cab and his band second only to Duke Ellington for popularity, the Calloway band came to be regarded, in the late 'thirties, as the school for anyone with something new to say. It featured such progressives of the time as Ben Webster, Cozy Cole, Tyree Glenn and Dizzy Gillespie. Later it formed a refuge for such mid-period men as Jonah Jones, Sam Taylor, J.C.Heard, Keg Johnson, Shad Collins and Greely Walton. Among the jazz greats whose talents flowered and matured with Calloway were Chu Berry, Milt Hinton,Danny Barker and Quentin Jackson.
Cab himself, equipped as he was with a strict musical training and natural perfect pitch, required of his musicians that they should be equipped with fluent techniques, a sympathetic approach to section work and the ability to turn out a jazz chorus that was more than just good.
"It's no good trying to be a musician unless you're satisfied that you've had a full musical training. I spent a lot of time at grammar school and all my time at high school studying voice – about eight years in all. "
On such of his records as "St. James' Infirmary", "Harlem Camp Meeting" and "Harlem Hospitality" you can hear a combination of musical abilities not to be found anywhere else in jazz. Along with Ella Fitzgerald, upon whose singing he has had a great influence, he has that technical confidence in his ability that enables him to give free rein to his jazz ideas without stumbling over any technical limitations.
After hearing Cab's observations on the necessity of hard musical study, it was interesting to confront him with the case of Armstrong who has devoted about as much time to the subject as Lady Astor has to drinking draught Bass. But Louis was the great exception: "When you've got that much, man! You don't want any more. "
Louis and Cab have a certain similarity of phrasing, and I asked Cab about this.
"Of course, Louis was singing and playing way before I was, and he influenced me quite a bit. He was the only male singer around at that time, excluding the country boys, who was doing anything other than straight singing, and we became competitors later on. But I don't say that I've ever copied anything from him. Each of Louis' phrases was a thing of beauty on its own. You listened to Louis – you didn't listen to the band. I was concentrating more on swinging and getting the band to swing with me. "
According to Cab his first record was "Miss Jenny Lee", made for the Conqueror label, a subsidiary of RCA Victor, in 1928. Cab says that the band was a pick-up group and he can't recall the personnel. However, this would appear not to be Rust-proof, since the Hot Discography lists "Sweet Jennie Lee" on Conqueror 7769 as his second recording date on 14th October, 1930.
Cab's first band was formed in 1929 and was known as the Alabamians, and he played second alto as well as taking the vocals. It is a fact completely overlooked by most discographies that Cab played alto on several of his earlier recordings.
"I brought the Alabamians from Chicago to New York in late 1928 and we went to work in the Savoy Ballroom. We were a big flop there because we were playing Chicago jazz, and they didn't like it too much in New York. They were playing the Eastern style, and it had a more solid and cumbersome beat to it. The kids couldn't dance too good to our music, and they really didn't like it. But while they didn't like the band. they went for my vocals.
"One night the manager of the Savoy arranged a battle of jazz between my band, the Alabamians, and another band called the Missourians. The Missourians had a leader and vocalist called Lockwood Lewis, and during the battle I out-did Lockwood Lewis but the Alabamians were outplayed by the Missourians. So the manager decided to put the Missourians and me together. Most of us stayed put together for the next seventeen or eighteen years!"
The Missourians changed their name back to the one they had used in 1925 - the Cotton Club Orchestra - and replaced Duke Ellington in the Cotton Club show. Broadcasts followed, and the group built up a large following, second only to that of Duke Ellington himself. Soon Cab was billed as leader and began recording for American Brunswick. With such great soloists as Reuben Reeves and Lamar Wright on trumpets, De Priest Wheeler on trombone and Walter "Foots" Thomas on tenor and baritone, the records sold like hot cakes.
Louis had recorded "St. James' Infirmary" some years before and made a hit with it: a year before, Woolworth's had issued a cardboard disc of the number by Ellington as the pop tune of the week. On 23rd December, 1930, Cab set down the version that was to make it his tune and was to be his first best-seller. Foots Thomas on baritone and Jimmy Smith on tuba laid down a sombre, compelling rhythm for Lamar Wright's pure-toned introduction. The ensemble followed and then Foots' baritone played a surprisingly agile chorus that even Harry Carney would have been hard put to match. Cab's vocal was masterful. Full of blues feeling, it ranks today as one of his most dynamic and convincing recordings.
The reverse, a tearaway version of "Nobody's Sweetheart", featured another vocal, some Bubber Miley-like work from Reuben Reeves, and a clarinet solo, full of vitality, by William Blue, who had previously played with Dewey Jackson's Peacock Orchestra. Blue was at this time making use of a style as pungent and biting as Teschmaker's and yet still fluid and full in the manner of Bigard and Noone.
Reuben Reeves, who joined the band from Chicago's Regal Theatre Orchestra modelled his style on that of Bubber Miley with a dash of Louis thrown in. However, when playing open horn his style was very similar to that of the other two trumpeters, Lamar Wright and R. Q. Dickerson (nobody seems to have bothered to find out his christian names) and it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between them. The fact that Cab insisted on shouting encouragement to "Red" during Reuben Reeves' solos gave rise to the theory that Red Allen was in the band. Harry White, who had done stints with Ellington and the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, shared the trombone chores with De Priest Wheeler. In addition to William Blue and Foots Thomas. Andrew Brown was in the sax section. He stayed there until the late 'forties. Earres Prince played piano until he was replaced in 1932 by Bennie Payne, who was later to become Billy Daniels' accompanist. The rhythm section was completed by Charley Stamps (banjo), Jimmy Smith (string-bass and tuba) and LeRoy Maxey (drums).
With Reeve's trumpet and the Nanton-styled soloing of De Priest Wheeler the band had quite an Ellington flavour.
"Ellington had at that time the greatest array of sidemen jazz has ever known" says Cab. "Artie Whetsel, Bubber, Tricky Sam, Bigard, Carney, Hodges and Wellman Braud. Braud was just about the finest bass-player around in those days. He was just about the first bassist to pick the bass, and he really started the style. All the guys patterned themselves after Duke's soloists because they had no one else to pattern themselves after. It was the Duke and his men who started the big band business and throughout the years since he's always been at the top. "
At this time Cab's arrangers were Foots Thomas and Eddie Barefield. Foots, who hasn't played for some six or seven years, is still in the band business running a booking agency in New York. Barefield does most of Cab's arranging today (for a small accompanying group) and is still playing, running a quintet in New York. He also made a recent appearance on a Buck Clayton jam session.
-Steve Voce
Obituaries
HAROLD ASHBY
Published in The Independent in June 2003.
added 2011-08-07
" 'Smilin' Jack' Harold Ashby?" said the alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges of his acolyte in the Duke Ellington band. Ashby blushed and looked embarrassed. "He's a gambler," Hodges went on. "He plays the old Chinese game 'Chuck-a-Luck'. The more you put down the less you pick up. And he's been putting down a lot lately. . ."
When he became a regular member of the Ellington band in 1958, Ashby took the seat next to Hodges that had been occupied until 1943 by Ben Webster, another tenor-playing friend of the altoist. Webster had been Ashby's idol, and he first modelled his style on Webster's warm and lush sound.
But not for long, because Ashby soon developed a sound of his own - hard swinging, with long lines of ideas broken by swift flurries of notes. He originally joined the band as a replacement for Jimmy Hamilton, a man who played mostly clarinet. As a result the Ellington band was over-endowed with tenor players, for the main soloist on the instrument, Paul Gonsalves, was still a potent force in the band and Norris Turney also played tenor sax amongst his other instruments. Gonsalves and Ellington died in May 1974 and Ashby became the main soloist in the band when it was taken over by Ellington's son Mercer.
Ashby had begun playing alto and clarinet as a teenager but gave up music while he was in the US Navy from 1943 to 1945. On return to his native Kansas City in 1946, he was soon playing again and backed the singer Walter Brown, making his first recording with Brown in 1949. He spent most of the Fifties in Chicago playing in blues bands before moving to New York in 1957 to work in the bands of Milt Larkin and Mercer Ellington.
He then found the fringes of Duke Ellington's band and began deputising for some of the sax players. Accepted as a friend and colleague by Ellington's sidemen, he recorded with Webster (1958), Hodges (1960), Gonsalves (1961) and Lawrence Brown in 1965. Once he joined the band permanently he became a regular in all the small groups that came from the band to record. He was given more prominent roles as the band played across Europe and the Far East and won many fans across the world.
After Ellington's death, Ashby worked with Sy Oliver in 1976 and made brief tours with Benny Goodman in 1977 and 1982. Ashby was always welcomed back to Europe where most of his fans were. He toured there with the Ellington Alumni in 1978 and returned the following year with the Kansas City pianist Jay McShann.
Another European tour paired Ashby with the pianist Junior Mance, and he was also one of the stars of the 1985 Nice Festival. He recorded often under his own name in the late Eighties and early Nineties, but illness curtailed his activities and he confined his work to the New York area.
He made an exception for one of his last appearances at the 2001 Duke Ellington Conference in Ottawa when Ashby played one of Ellington's compositions written to feature him, "Chinoiserie". Happily he was able to regain his top form, but it was his final appearance before an audience of any size.
Harold Kenneth Ashby, saxophone player: born Kansas City, Missouri 27 March 1925; died New York 13 June 2003
-Steve Voce
Reviews
Ellington Error
Published in Jazz Journal in January 1964.
added 2011-08-16
While welcoming the three-volume "Ellington Era" set on CBS, I would qualify my enthusiasm by remarking on the poor sound quality at least in the one record I have (CBS BPG 62179). Until the entire Ducal recording output is available on LP there can never be too much Ellington on record. But the poor nature of the reproduction on these, some of the most masterly of Ellington's works, is so irritating that it makes one wonder if the otherwise magnificent Frank Driggs has been meticulous enough with this production.
Certainly the original 78s on American Brunswick and English Parlophone were no great shakes, and the quality of the original LPs which included many of these tracks (Jazz Cocktail on Columbia 33S 1044 and A Blues Serenade on HMV DLP 1172) was much worse, but, if Decca can do so well in cleaning up sound on their Ace series, one wonders that the Columbia corporation of America can do no better. (It should be pointed out that the HMV A Blues Serenade was so bad in sound quality that it should not have been issued).
Stanley Dance has contributed a thorough and erudite set of notes. I am a little doubtful about his listing of Cootie as the trumpet soloist on Saddest Tale, but bow to his superior judgement -particularly when I remember Brian Rust and his bloody tuba.
-Steve Voce
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