For Duke Ellington, America’s pre-eminent jazz composer, it was a love affair that started hot and never cooled down.
Whether he was playing the glittering theaters of the Loop or the swank showrooms of the South Side, whether he was swinging in plush hotel ballrooms or bringing the crowd to its feet in wide-open Grant Park, the man was smitten with the tempo and the flavor of the city he once called “the most glamorous place in the world.”
Yes, he was born and raised in Washington, D.C. – 99 years ago on April 29 – and ultimately made his home in New York (though he rarely saw it, spending most of his life on the road).
Yet there are few cities on earth that Ellington played more often or with greater anticipation than Chicago. What’s more, the city embraced him as one of its own, an artist whose sumptuous music, elegant wardrobe and palpable charisma seduced Chicagoans for five decades running.
Moreover, the man’s imprint is still apparent on the face of this city and its musical culture, nearly a quarter-century after his death in 1974. The music festivals that attract tens of thousands of listeners to Grant Park each summer, for instance, grew out of a series of Ellington tribute concerts launched there the year of his death.
So when hundreds of musicians, scholars and fans swing into town Wednesday for the 16th annual Duke Ellington International Conference — in the process bringing all things Ellington to our stages, clubs and public spaces — they will be revisiting a romance that still resonates in the cultural life of Chicago.
“Chicago always sounded like the most glamorous place in the world to me when I heard the guys in Frank Holliday’s poolroom talking about their travels,” Ellington wrote in his memoirs, “Music is My Mistress” (1973).
“By the time I got there in 1930, it glittered even more. . . . Chicago then was all that they had said in the poolroom: the Loop, the cabarets, the biggest railroad center in the world, beaches that ran along Lake Michigan the full length of greater Chicago, city life, suburban life, luxurious neighborhoods — and the apparently broken-down neighborhoods where there were more good times than any place in the city.”
If Ellington was impressed when he arrived here, though, the feeling was mutual, with Chicagoans lining up for hours to hear him play an extended Loop run in the midst of the Great Depression.
“I remember the first time my mother took me to see Duke, in 1931, at the Oriental Theatre,” says Chicago author Dempsey Travis. “There was a line so long it almost went around the block. Duke was to music what Michael Jordan is to basketball — he was a superstar; he had no competition; he was truly without category.”
More important, Ellington — even as far back as the early ’30s — was more than just another star alighting briefly in this city as he traveled across the country. Rather, he ensconced himself in Bronzeville, the intellectual and cultural epicenter of black Chicago on the South Side.
“It’s important to remember that at that point (the ’30s), although black artists could play downtown, they couldn’t stay downtown,” says Timuel Black, a Chicago cultural historian who also caught Ellington’s shows in 1931.
“After Ellington would finish changing clothes in his dressing room after a show, he’d come out of the theater and go to the Palm Tavern. Then he’d stay at the Southway Hotel, on South Parkway. He’d regularly stop in at the (Club) DeLisa to see (bandleader) Red Saunders perform.
“He’d have dinner at a chop suey place on 58th Street where the food was delicious, and he’d go to Joe’s Deluxe Club, on 63rd and South Parkway, scouting for talent. He found (legendary trumpeter-vocalist) Ray Nance here in Chicago,” as well as singer Ivie Anderson, who had been working in Earl “Fatha” Hines’ band at the Grand Terrace Ballroom.
Black tie and tails
More Top Picks Sennheiser Hd 4 50
“So Ellington belonged to us,” continues Black. “55th Street, 47th Street, 63rd Street, that’s where you’d see him all the time. He was part of the community when he came to Chicago; everyone knew him, even though he was larger than life.”
Because Ellington typically used the South Side as Midwest headquarters for engagements as near as the suburbs and as far as Detroit, his presence was felt during a large part of any season. The residencies were noteworthy not only because of the man’s fame but, perhaps more important, because of his demeanor.
“Ellington was so unusual because, at that time, many of the entertainers who were black tended to act somewhat clownish on stage,” Black says. “Ellington was dignified, he was beautifully dressed, his speech was impeccable and his band was marvelous.
“We could brag about Ellington without ever feeling a sense of embarrassment. That was a major contribution that Ellington made, and even people who didn’t understand or like his music felt pride about him.”
In part, that had to do with the very way the man looked on stage. Wearing a pearl-white tuxedo during one show, black tie and tails another, Ellington exuded style and elegance, and his music — with its exquisite voicings and lush harmonies — reflected that image in sound.
“People just ate him up because his presentation was so incredible,” recalls veteran Chicago tenor saxophonist Eddie Johnson, who turned down a chance to join Ellington’s band in 1945 (he signed up with Louis Jordan instead). “A lot of people went to Ellington’s shows not only for the music but just to see what Ellington would wear and what the band would wear. Then the band would take an intermission and change clothes! It was just so beautiful — with all that lighting and those golden instruments — you couldn’t believe it.”
That `skin disease’
But there was an ugly side to life and music in Chicago, as well, and it was called Jim Crow. Ellington, characteristically, addressed the tragic issue poetically, “talking about those people afflicted with the `skin disease,’ ” remembers Travis. Like many of Ellington’s fans in the early days, Travis would listen to his hero from the dressing-room area whenever the maestro performed in downtown showrooms where blacks were barred.
But Ellington apparently was not shy about dealing with potentially explosive racial situations.
“Just before I went into the service, in about 1941, Duke was playing a place on the Northwest Side,” recalls Black, “and a few of us decided to go hear him, though with some trepidation. Perhaps we got our nerve up because we had had some beer.
“We came up to the ticket booth, and the lady said, `We’re all sold out.’ But then we saw white youngsters going in, so we challenged that. One of the young women in our group said: `I know (drummer) Sonny Greer; would you tell Mr. Greer to come out?’ He did, and then Sonny said, `Let me get Duke.’ And Duke comes out in his debonair, suave way, which means that the ticket-taker’s status has been lowered, so she asks the manager to come out too.
“The manager says, `There will be a problem if we let these people in.’ And Ellington says, very coolly, `If my guests cannot attend this performance, then this performance is over.’ Now the place is really crowded; there are a lot of people who will be very unhappy if the performance does not happen. So Ellington just says it again, real suave: `If my people cannot enjoy this show, the performance is over.’
“Guess what? They let us in, there were no problems, and I’ve never forgotten that.”
Incidents like that obviously make a deep impression on the people involved, but they don’t tend to make it into the history books, which may help explain why Ellington has been criticized for not speaking out on matters of racial injustice.
As former Tribune columnist Vernon Jarrett wrote in 1974, “This is not a `new’ criticism. I heard it expressed 25 years ago in a variety of views from people who admired Ellington `only as a great musician and nothing more.’
” `Not only does Duke have a white personality, the white world has stolen him from us,’ commented a very bright young observer several years ago,” added Jarrett.
Ellington’s statements on race may not have been explicit or revolutionary, but his music surely speaks to racial pride. That’s apparent in such Ellington compositions as “Jump for Joy” (a celebratory stage musical), “Black, Brown and Beige” (an epic tone poem) and, most notably, “My People” (a vocal-instrumental theater piece with dance).
Written to mark the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, in 1963, “My People” examined the evolution of black life in America over the past century and had its world premiere in — where else? — Chicago.
A message of hope
The city may have been the most segregated in America at the time, but Ellington’s message in “My People” — staged during the Century of Negro Progress Exposition, in McCormick Place — was, as always, one of optimism and hope in the face of despair. (The musical will be presented on May 8 in the New Regal Theatre.)
It was a message that lured Chicagoans to Ellington’s concerts to the very end, whether he was serenading listeners at the First National Bank plaza in ’73 (“Even rush hour slowed down and relaxed,” the Tribune reported) or in the last concert of his life, a 90-minute drive from the Loop, at DeKalb’s Northern Illinois University on March 20, 1974.
“I went into his hotel room before the concert, and tried not to show my shock at how he looked,” remembers jazz educator Ron Modell, who knew that Ellington was dying of cancer. “He was sitting on the bed and slumped over, but he got up to greet me. . . . When I went to my seat (in the auditorium), I told my wife I didn’t think there was any way he could play a concert that night.
“And yet, when he hit that stage, he looked like there was nothing in the world wrong with him, he sounded fantastic at the piano, the band was great, his banter was as good as it ever was.”
Ellington never played a complete concert again, but with his death, on May 24, 1974, at 75, his stature seemed only to rise, perhaps nowhere more than in Chicago.
In August of the same year, Chicago jazz singer Geraldine de Haas and others organized a Grant Park tribute to Ellington that grew in size and stature every year, eventually blossoming into the Chicago Jazz Festival (which, in turn, spawned the blues, gospel and other summer music festivals). So Chicagoans who today munch their way through Taste of Chicago and dance in the aisles during the Viva! Chicago Latin Music Festival may not know it, but they have Duke Ellington to thank for their merriment.
“There was no doubt Duke loved Chicago madly,” says longtime Ellington drummer Louie Bellson, evoking a line that was Ellington’s calling card: “Love you madly.”
“One night in December, when we were playing the Blue Note — and it was 25 below zero — we were stunned to find out the place was packed,” Bellson recalls.
“That’s when we realized how much Chicago loved Duke.”
THE CONFERENCE
Following are highlights of events surrounding the 16th annual Duke Ellington International Conference; for tickets and further details, phone 773-288-DUKE (unless another number is specified).
May 5-10
8:30 p.m.: Guitarist Kenny Burrell, Jazz Showcase, 59 W. Grand Ave. (phone 312-670-BIRD).
More Top Picks Best Desktop Video Magnifiers For Low Vision
May 7
4 p.m.: All-City Performing Groups, concert, Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State St.
5:30 p.m.: Ellington Alumni Concert, Chicago Cultural Center, 77 E. Randolph St.
6:30 p.m.: Duke Ellington Tribute, Chicago Cultural Center, with Studs Terkel, Mercedes Ellington, Sterling Plumpp, University of Illinois at Chicago Jazz Ensemble.
May 8
8 p.m.: “My People,” New Regal Theatre, 1645 E. 79th St.
May 8
8 p.m.: Jazz Unites’ 21st Annual “Musical Tribute to Duke Ellington,” Ramada Congress Hotel, 520 S. Michigan Ave., featuring Jimmy Smith Quartet, Andy Bey, Jazz Members Big Band (phone 773-734-2000).
Through May 15
“Duke and His Men” photo exhibit, South Side Community Arts Center, 3831 S. Michigan Ave.