Member-only story
Duke Ellington
A New World A-Comin’
Duke Ellington’s music inhabits a rich, lush world of its own, and it’s been that way for thirty years now. No other band in jazz has come close to staying in existence for so long, with more than a few musicians having established truly astonishing records, in such a quick-turnover, for length of service with one leader. No other composer has come close to creating such a string of tunes that manages to combine valid jazz feeling with whatever it is that makes a song a hit. No other big-band leader or arranger has ever mastered so thoroughly (and few have ever cared to try) the difficult art of writing for each of his major sidemen — whether in building an ensemble passage or merely indicating the direction an improvised solo should take — so that the musician’s strong points and the contributions, of sound or of emotion, that the band most needs from his instrument can merge and become as one. The most important clue to his success may lie in the oft repeated comment that Ellington does not so much play piano as play a whole band, using an orchestra as a lesser musician would use a single instrument.
The above is from A Pictorial History of Jazz by Orrin Keepnews & Bill Grauer. Jr, a book that was first published in 1958 by Spring Books (an offshoot of Hamlyn, the London publishing house), which is a splendid large format volume that is extremely well written, as you…
