Duke (75 page)

“We were the first”:
Greer, oral-history interview.
“I was out thousands of dollars”:
Irving Mills, unpublished film interview, in
RIT,
90–91.

CHAPTER FIVE
“I BETTER SCRATCH OUT SOMETHING”

SOURCES

Documents

Barney Bigard, oral-history interview, IJS; Lawrence Brown, oral-history interview, IJS; Helen Oakley Dance, oral-history interview, OHAM;
A Duke Named Ellington,
TV documentary (WNET); DE, unpublished interviews with Carter Harman, 1956 and 1964, EC; Ruth Ellington, oral-history interview, EC; Jimmy Jones, oral-history interview, IJS;
Memories of Duke,
film documentary (Time Life); Irving Mills, oral-history interview, OHAM; Juan Tizol, oral-history interview, IJS; Cootie Williams, oral-history interview, IJS.

Books

Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke;
Bogle,
Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams;
Bradbury,
Duke Ellington;
Calloway,
Of Minnie the Moocher and Me;
Chevalier,
My Paris;
Davis,
Outcats;
Delson,
Dudley Murphy;
Dietrich,
Duke’s ’Bones;
Ellington,
Duke Ellington in Person;
George,
Sweet Man;
Horak,
Lovers of Cinema;
Jewell,
Duke;
Jones,
Jazz Talking;
Lambert,
Music Ho!;
Lawrence,
Duke Ellington and His World;
McLeod,
The Original Amos ’n’ Andy;
Newkirk,
Letters from Black America;
Rose,
I Remember Jazz;
Schuller,
Early Jazz;
Serrano,
Juan Tizol;
Shaw,
Let’s Dance;
Stewart,
Boy Meets Horn;
Stratemann,
Duke Ellington Day by Day and Film by Film;
Ulanov,
Duke Ellington;
van de Leur,
Something to Live For.

NOTES

Dudley Murphy:
For more on Murphy, see Delson.
DE’s talking-picture debut:
The Ellington band made a previous
uncredited on-screen appearance in
Headlines,
a 1925 silent film directed by Edward H. Griffith. (A print of
Headlines
is at the Library of Congress.)
Black and Tan:
The film was retitled
Black and Tan Fantasy
when it was re-released in the forties.
Carl Van Vechten:
Horak, 132.

“This short, though billed”:
Review of
Black and Tan,
Variety,
Nov. 6, 1929.
“Excellent entertainment”:
“‘Black and Tan’ Is All-Race Talkie,”
The Chicago Defender,
Nov. 16, 1929.
“Nauseating lowdown niggerisms”:
Vere E. Johns, “radio :-: drama,”
The New York Age,
Aug. 13, 1932.

After 1928: The earliest known photograph to show the scar was taken in December of 1928. (It is reproduced in Bradbury, 25.) DE may have acquired it as early as 1927. See Steven Lasker, “Dating Duke and Edna’s Breakup—and the Infamous Scar Incident,”
Blue Light: The DESUK Newsletter
, Autumn 2013. “I have four stories about it”:
MM,
471.

“Women was one of the highlights”:
Mills, oral-history interview.

“The most beautiful woman”:
Michael P. Zirpolo, “In Duke’s Head,”
IAJRC Journal
(Summer 2000).
“I just had to accept”:
Bogle, 131.
“A torrid love affair”:
Ellington, 47–48.

“Hurt, bad hurt”:
Marc Crawford, “A Visit with Mrs. Duke Ellington,”
Ebony,
Mar. 1959.
“Something happened between [Ellington] and his wife”:
Brown, oral-history interview.
Brown married Fredi:
They were married in 1933 and divorced in 1948. Some of their surviving correspondence is reprinted in Newkirk, 74–76, but it sheds no light on her relationship with DE. Washington died in 1994.
Five, Mercer claimed:
Ellington, 127.
“Quite a figure in the music world”:
Bigard, oral-history interview. Contemporary Harlem gossip identified Edna’s lover as Benny Carter (Steven Lasker, personal communication).
“A close friend”:
Jewell, 31. Rex Stewart mistakenly believed that Ivie Anderson had been involved with DE, found him in flagrante delicto, and slashed him (Ibid., 31–32). While it is not impossible that Anderson had a later liaison with DE, she did not meet him until several years after he was scarred.

“A Park Avenue socialite”:
Ellington, 48.

DE left everything behind, including his clothes:
Mercer recalls that when DE left Mildred Dixon for Evie Ellis in 1939, “He never came back . . . and
once again
he left all his clothes behind” (Ellington, 77, emphasis added).
Duke Ellington in Person
contains no prior reference to DE’s having done such a thing, which suggests that he also did so when he left Edna but that Mercer’s reference to the earlier event was dropped from the book for unknown reasons.
“I came home from school one day”:
Davis, 58.
A five-room flat:
The building, at 381 Edgecombe Avenue, still exists.
“The Finest and Most Exclusive Section”:
New York Amsterdam News,
Apr. 25, 1922.
“If you ever sat on a beautiful magenta cloud”:
MM,
182.
“Nice high-rent houses”:
Langston Hughes, “Down Under in Harlem,”
New Republic,
Mar. 27, 1944.

Press reports always referred to Mildred as DE’s wife:
See, for example, “Duke Ellington’s Wife in Hospital,”
The Chicago Defender,
Jan. 6, 1934.
“Mildred became Mrs. Ellington”:
Ulanov, 114.
“Sweet Bebe”:
Ellington, 49.
“Innate class”:
Ellington, 48.
“Very nice, extremely nice”:
Helen Oakley Dance, oral-history interview.

DE’s earliest surviving interviews:
The first known interview with DE is Janet Mabie’s “Ellington’s ‘Mood in Indigo’: Harlem’s ‘Duke’ Seeks to Express His Race,”
Christian Science Monitor,
Dec. 13, 1930, in
Reader,
41–43.

“Duke used to gamble”:
Bigard, oral-history interview.
Mildred lived in another apartment:
“What he tried to do, he roomed Mildred upstairs, but she just kept appearing, you know? Until finally she was kind of there” (Ruth Ellington, oral-history interview). This may explain why she is not listed as a resident of the apartment in the 1930 census.
“Being put out to pasture”:
Ibid.
“He just thought I should be there”:
Ibid.
Mercer was forced to wear his hair in braids:
Ellington, 18.

“We would be in the recording studio”:
Roger Ringo, “Reminiscing in Tempo with Freddie Jenkins,”
Storyville,
Apr.–May 1973.

“His pure white countenance”:
Stewart, 152.
“A legit man”:
Quoted in
RIT,
98.
A classically trained musician:
Serrano, 25–26. See also Dietrich, 51–67.
“I take all my solos straight”:
Boyer, “The Hot Bach,” 231.

“This thing ain’t supposed to work, man”:
Jimmy Jones, oral-history interview.

DE “wrote in such a cryptic fashion”:
Ellington, 43. (Mercer unconvincingly claimed that this was to prevent other people from copying his music.) It should also be noted that DE’s autograph scores were untransposed, with all instrumental parts written at their sounding pitch. Except for Sergei Prokofiev, no other first-rank composer has written untransposed orchestral scores. This suggests that DE either did not learn the correct transpositions for brass and wind instruments or, more likely, never became fully comfortable with the arcane mechanics of transposition.

“He could write for [Tizol] along with the saxophones”:
Ibid., 51.

“Tizol is a very big man”:
MM,
56.
“You would never believe it”:
Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke,
56.

“I went to hear him”:
Chevalier, 128.
“I am French”:
Daniel Ringold and Philippe Guilboust,
Maurice Chevalier, le sourire de Paris,
quoted in Bernard Dupuis, “Maurice Chevalier,”
DEMS Bulletin,
Dec. 2002–Mar. 2003.

“He fought to have us play in concert with Maurice Chevalier”:
MM,
77.
“MR. IRVING MILLS”:
Variety,
Apr. 2, 1930. The ad is reproduced in Stratemann, 28.
“Mills signed Ellington”:
“Duke Ellington and Orchestra to Play for Amos ’n’ Andy Picture,”
The New York Age,
July 12, 1930.

Mills arranged for DE to appear in
Check and Double Check:
So, at any rate, he claimed. For his version of the story, see
RIT,
108.
The most popular radio comedy team in the world:
For the show’s popularity and significance, see McLeod.
It was covered as news:
See, for example, “Duke Ellington Asked to ‘Black Up,’”
The Pittsburgh Courier,
Aug. 30, 1930.
“They made me and Barney a lot darker”:
Tizol, oral-history interview.

DE and his musicians were paid $27,500:
Stratemann, 38.

“Duke was more than suave”:
Calloway, 91.

“‘Workshop’ period”:
Schuller, 348. These comments refer to the originally issued Victor version of “Old Man Blues,” recorded in Hollywood on Aug. 26, 1930, not the later, slightly less effective version credited to the Harlem Footwarmers that was recorded by DE for OKeh in New York on Oct. 30. (The introduction and opening chorus are cut from the abridged version of “Old Man Blues” performed in
Check and Double Check.
)

DE thought that “Old Man Blues” was his best composition yet:
Cootie Williams, cited in Lawrence, 138. This statement is unsourced and must be treated, like the rest of
Duke Ellington and His World,
with extreme caution. (For a lengthy list of errata and plagiarisms in Lawrence’s book, see Steven Lasker, “An Open Letter to Mrs. Sylvia Miller,”
DEMS Bulletin,
Aug.–Nov. 2001.)
“Old Man Blues” was never played in later years:
DE is not known to have played the piece after 1933, though he included it in a 1952 list of his favorite recordings (
Down Beat,
Nov. 5, 1952, in
Reader,
268). Sidney Bechet, who recorded “Old Man Blues” in 1940, appears to be the only other major jazz musician to have performed it.
“Exquisitely tired”:
Lambert, 188.