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Last week Bandleader Ellington returned to New York from a four-night swing through New England and spent his first 24 hours in the company of his arranger, Billy Strayhorn, poring over a pad of hot score paper. Next night the band met to record the four new songs they had written, while wives and friends looked on. At midnight the whole crew got on the bus and left for Buffalo, where the next night they played for a Negro fraternity meeting. The affair lasted till 4 a.m. Back in New York Duke stayed up late (noon) and got up early (2 p.m.) in order to keep appointments with TV crews and the press. At week's end he was off for a handful of one-night stands before settling down for one of his periodic long runs: a fortnight's engagement in Chicago's Blue Note Café.
Hot Licks. Although Ellington's outfit is the only big band that has never been disbanded in its 29 years, its character has changed over the decades as death or a yen for adventure changed its roster. Yet the Ellington sound is as distinctive today as it ever was. Apart from the Duke himself, its dominant personality is provided by two men who have been with it longest: Harry Carney and the hoarse, jovial tone of his big baritone saxophone, Johnny Hodges and the refined, almost brutally sensual whine of his alto. The other characteristic sounds are the tantrum-tempered groans and howls of the growl brasses with plunger mute,* an effect originally discovered by the late Trumpeter Bubber Miley, now played on trombone by Quentin ("Butter") Jackson and on trumpet by Ray Nance.
When the saxophones play together, their tone is tinted by one of Duke's innovations, the split harmony, which hauntingly inflects the whole quality of a chord. They seem to play with a fierce joy which is stimulated by the rude sting of the trumpets—or by their melting pleasure—and the short-tempered, but softhearted bleats of the trombones. The sound combinations are already fairly routine in almost any band of today. But in the Ellington band such background licks take on the coherence of speech and frequently turn into lively conversation. In My Funny Valentine, for instance, the blue mood of its start turns black in the second chorus; the dialogue becomes desperate and reaches a violent climax before tranquillity is restored.
Fickle Tricks. The man who is responsible for this remarkable musical idiom is a tall (6 ft. 1 in.), rangy (185 Ibs.) fellow whose newfound trimness parallels his rediscovered energies. His habitual expression combines curiosity, mockery and humor. In his pleasant Harlem apartment or in his dressing room, he usually goes about in his shorts, possibly to preserve the creases in his 100-plus suits of clothes. His public personality resembles his public appearance, which is fastidious to the point of frivolity; few are the people who get a glimpse of the man beneath this polished exterior. "You gotta be older," he explains, "to realize that many of the people you meet are mediocrities. You have to let them run off you like water off a duck's back. Otherwise, they drag you down." Even his close friends say he never exposes himself to unpleasantness if he can help it. Says one: "He likes pretty pictures and pretty melodies."