Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout follows up his acclaimed Louis Armstrong biography (Pops) with a thorough and fascinating portrait of the greatest jazz composer of the 20th century, Duke Ellington (1899-1974).
Teachout peeks behind Ellington's elegant if enigmatic persona, explores the strengths and weaknesses of his celebrated musical craft in great technical detail (which might be frustrating to follow for the casual reader) and offers a larger African-American perspective.
Best-known for such standards as Sophisticated Lady, Mood Indigo, Take the A-Train, It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing and Don't Get Around Much Anymore, Ellington helped popularize jazz around the world with simple yet dynamic melodies. Although he had a voracious appetite for food, drink and women, he lived for his music and was in his prime in the '30s, '40s and '50s. He let nothing distract him: composing, recording and performing with a talented if temperamental band (progressing from the Cotton Club to Carnegie Hall).
The son of a butler and genteel, churchgoing mother, Ellington grew up pampered in a middle-class neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Indeed, his stylish dress and "princely" manner earned him the nickname "Duke" as a youngster. He was drawn to ragtime and played piano at dances and parties before moving to Harlem in 1923 at the height of the cultural renaissance.
Ellington wasn't formally trained or even well-versed in classical music, so he found it difficult to write hummable tunes or structurally develop themes with any complexity. But he could meld together disparate musical fragments from his band members' solo performances, mastering a "mosaic method of composition." While not a flagrant plagiarist, Ellington still took most of the credit.
Ellington's best collaborator, though, was Billy Strayhorn, a young, talented, classically trained composer, who represented the musical refinement that Ellington sought. When they first met in 1939, Ellington gave Strayhorn directions to his Manhattan apartment from the A-Train, which the protégé quickly turned into the popular song. For nearly 30 years, Strayhorn helped elevate Ellington's craft.
But Ellington was nothing if not ambitious and for a decade struggled with his answer to George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, eventually composing the magnum opus, Black, Brown and Beige, which he premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1943. The 45-minute symphony, which was critically panned by the classical establishment, was Ellington's most personal statement about the African-American experience.
Teachout suggests that Ellington extended beyond his reach, but at his best painted pictures in sound "with a feel for orchestral color as sure as anything to be heard in the music of Debussy or Ravel."
The biographer also finds it significant that the "status-conscious child of the black middle-class" chose to draw a direct parallel "between self-image and skin tone in a work that celebrated the history of his race."
Now that Teachout has written about these two jazz giants, how would he characterize them? While Armstrong was open and unguarded, Ellington revealed only what he wanted you to see in an effort to maintain respectability. Not surprisingly, Teachout finds mystery more intriguing than likability.
Bill Desowitz is the author of James Bond Unmasked.
