Day of the Duke
"A problem is a chance for you to do your best."-Duke Ellington
!!!!HAPPY DUKE ELLINGTON DAY!!!!
Ah yes, Duke Ellington’s Birthday. His 124th. When does this day become a national holiday…an international holiday…celebrating the greatest composer of the 20th century?
Yesterday I was having lunch with a group of music industry luminaries including Mike Lipskin. Mike has a foot in both sides of the music industry. As a musician, he is one of the last great stride piano players, a protégé of Willie “The Lion” Smith who he met as a teenager in Harlem, where he recorded the legend, catching him in fine form even though the world had passed him by, as it did to all practitioners of said art form. Mike was also a music industry executive, working from the mid-60s onward on reissue projects and new records by a varied cavalcade of stars like Gil Evans, Sam Cooke, Jefferson Airplane and Errol Garner.
In between the won ton soup first course and the main lunch, the conversation between the four or five folks I was sitting near at lunch turned to the photograph The Great Day In Harlem, the photo taken on August 12, 1958 by Art Kane featuring the greatest Jazz musicians of the past three decades (except for Duke Ellington and band, that Lipskin mused must have been on the road). Lipskin was there when the photo was snapped…even taking his own photo of the group. He had insights on how the musicians were grouped together (around their perspective ages because they knew each other from playing with each other). He talked about how Thelonious Monk had spent a good amount of time choosing the suit he wore, so he would stand out amid the mass (he assumed most of the jazzbos would be wearing black so he work a light grey)…and he placed himself in the forefront of the group.
But it was when I was driving Lipskin home from the lunch, that the true headline was revealed. He knew Duke Ellington. He not only knew him…he spent time with him. Spent time with his band. He had the kind of stories that only those close to Duke would know…he got to see the legend interact with the world…interact with his fans while simultaneously always thinking about the next project, the next composition. I asked Mike Lipskin if he wouldn’t mind writing something about Duke to help us all celebrate his birthday today, and he kindly obliged. So I turn the newsletter over to Mike:
Edward Kennedy Ellington, “Duke,” born 124 years ago, today, was one of pre-bop jazz's most multi-faceted icons, skilled nuanced jazz and composer, leader of maybe the longest operational large jazz band. His hit tunes include Take the A Train and Mood Indigo. His individual skill as arranger included voicing of horns and reeds to make his band sound larger than its actual size.
Never musically static, he used many of the ground breaking harmonics of the white 1920s dance band arrangers and eventually wrote 1950s and 1960s contemporary material.
Born in Washington D.C., he started studying piano, age seven, and went to NYC with his first band in the early 1920s. He was a stride jazz pianist, heavily influenced by the genius James P. Johnson, and my teacher, Willie the Lion Smith, who befriended the younger pianist upon his arrival in Harlem, NY. Many of Duke's 1920s recordings are partially orchestrated by James P. Johnson. Also, you can hear Duke's energetic but too brief stride jazz piano solos with excellent swinging improv creativity. He recorded Portrait of the Lion and quoted various Willie the Lion piano sequences.
Through Willie, my mentor, I was able to hang out with Duke at private parties, and even jam on the piano with his band. Jamming with the Ellington band was a thrill and honor. Most supportive was Russell Procope, telling me "You play beautiful chords." Later, when a producer at RCA Records I watched the Ellington band record. 90% of the time at a studio session one can tell if the band is recording, or taking a break. Not with Ellington. They were so relaxed that there seemed to be almost no difference. You could hear this magnificent ensemble sound coming through the control room speakers, but looking through the window to the studio, once could see Johnny Hodges or another member, going to the coffee machine, then coming back to his seat in time for his solo.
MORE ON JAMES P. JOHNSON: Throughout jazz history, until late 1950s when communication saturation destroyed regional dialects, certain primary jazz giants: James P. Johnson, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Coleman Hawkins, Bix Beiderbecke or Charlie Parker created their own style within idioms. Because their originality was so inventive and appealing to other jazz musicians, many of the others would improvise using these giants' musical vocabulary1. James P. Johnson was a stride jazz pianist of singular genius and influence. If not for him, Fats Waller, Count Basie, Art Tatum, Donald Lambert, and even Thelonious Monk would have sounded completely different. He also wrote Charleston, If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight, Carolina Shout, and the show Runnning Wild. If there had been no James P., Fats Waller, his closest disciple's music would have sounded different by using another mentor's riffs, timing, melodic and harmonic construction.
Happy Duke Ellington Day, y’all. No better way to celebrate than to listen to the wonderful recordings he left as his legacy. With so many to choose from, may I suggest a few that I have been digging into lately? I have been loving the 1963 recordings Duke produced himself in New York found on the release The Private Collection, Vol. 4. And of course, there is always the Cotton Club recordings, done as Dukes star initially rose: they are always tremendous to behold. And if you want to dig in deeper, check out my past Duke Ellington Day newsletters (here and here), where I feature other recordings from the hundreds he released.
Vincent Liebler: Shaping the 360 Sound
My friend Chris Owen sent this to me. Obviously, anything with a new adition to the Robert Johnson story is very much worth a gander. From Chris: “Ted Liebler, who was the music director at my college radio station before I took over. He sent me this great blog post he wrote about his great uncle Vincent Liebler.” Liebler was a pioneering engineer.
Turner Prize, Britain’s Top Art Award, Names Four Nominees for 2023 Edition
“The Turner Prize, a closely watched award given annually to a British artist, has named the four people nominated for this year’s edition. Up for consideration this year are Jesse Darling, Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim, and Barbara Walker, all of whom will show their work at Towner Eastbourne in East Sussex in September as part of the prize’s annual exhibition.”
Rice University Acquires Replica of William Blake’s Printing Press
“The replica printing machine, a star-wheel copper-plate rolling press, joins an extensive collection of Mr. Blake’s work already at Rice.”
My friend Geoffrey Weiss send me a link to this crazed-out Space Station computer art project. An ever expanding group of rooms, each with stories involving humans, machines, animals, famous characters…it is hard to stop watching the antics of Floor 796.
THE BOOGEYMAN Just Scared The Hell Out Of CinemaCon
All reports say that this new Stephen King adaptation is incredible. Scary as hell. Oh yeah.
The Fourth Sign Of The Zodiac
by Mary Oliver
1.
Why should I have been surprised?
Hunters walk the forest
without a sound.
The hunter, strapped to his rifle,
the fox on his feet of silk,
the serpent on his empire of muscles—
all move in a stillness,
hungry, careful, intent.
Just as the cancer
entered the forest of my body,
without a sound.
2.
The question is,
what will it be like
after the last day?
Will I float
into the sky
or will I fray
within the earth or a river—
remembering nothing?
How desperate I would be
if I couldn’t remember
the sun rising, if I couldn’t
remember trees, rivers; if I couldn’t
even remember, beloved,
your beloved name.
3.
I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.
so why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.
4.
Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat,
all the fragile blue flowers in bloom
in the shrubs in the yard next door had
tumbled from the shrubs and lay
wrinkled and fading in the grass. But
this morning the shrubs were full of
the blue flowers again. There wasn’t
a single one on the grass. How, I
wondered, did they roll back up to
the branches, that fiercely wanting,
as we all do, just a little more of
life?
Music vocabulary means riffs, chord progressions, piano technique, rhythmic and dynamic tension and release that the younger players picked up on by LISTENING to James P and to each other. They also traded musical IDEAS and enlarged on what James P showed them at cutting contests, performances and on RECORDINGS ( A very specific example of the trading back and forth between young jazz pianists is an obscure Chicago pianist, Jimmy Blythe, on a 1923 Paramount recording ending his solo with a cadence that Fats Waller had used on a 1923 QRS piano roll recorded in NYC).
Duke is now fueling my Monday listening. Thank you ✨