Books, Arts & Manners: Duke, Django, and Throttlebottom

Edward Kennedy Ellington, otherwise known as the Duke, occupied a very special place in jazz. Almost everything he put his hand to—studio recordings, concerts, etc.—has been immortalized. And most of it almost certainly deserved preservation. The distinctive Ellington beat, his orchestral palette, and the voices of the musicians he recruited for his successive bands are part of the legacy of jazz—and those of us who were there are taken back to the excitement of the Thirties and Forties.

There are those who argue that the Ellington sidemen—clarinet Barney Bigard, alto-saxophone Johnny Hodges, trumpets Cootie Williams and Rex Stewart, to name but four—contributed more to the Ellington œuvre than the Duke himself. But those of us who watched the Ellington orchestra at work in the recording studio know that, whatever great solos and great ideas began with these sidemen, the gestalt was the Duke’s. He could walk in with a few ideas that had come to him on the A Train—ideas scrawled on the back of an envelope—and music was born.

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Ralph de Toledano

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Edward Kennedy Ellington, otherwise known as the Duke, occupied a very special place in jazz. Almost everything he put his hand to—studio recordings, concerts, etc.—has been immortalized. And most of it almost certainly deserved preservation. The distinctive Ellington beat, his orchestral palette, and the voices of the musicians he recruited for his successive bands are part of the legacy of jazz—and those of us who were there are taken back to the excitement of the Thirties and Forties.

There are those who argue that the Ellington sidemen—clarinet Barney Bigard, alto-saxophone Johnny Hodges, trumpets Cootie Williams and Rex Stewart, to name but four—contributed more to the Ellington œuvre than the Duke himself. But those of us who watched the Ellington orchestra at work in the recording studio know that, whatever great solos and great ideas began with these sidemen, the gestalt was the Duke’s. He could walk in with a few ideas that had come to him on the A Train—ideas scrawled on the back of an envelope—and music was born.