© Introduction Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
With previous features on pianist Wade Legge, the Great Day in Harlem Photograph “Mystery Man” - William J. Crump, drummer Frankie Dunlop, vocalist Jimmy Rushing, critic and author Nat Hentoff, and Jazz Party: A Great Night In Manhattan featuring the Miles Davis Sextet, bassist Doug Watkins, pianist Sonny Clark, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the September 9, 1958 fest that Columbia Records put on at the Plaza Hotel for its executives and guests, trumpeter Dupree Bolton, vocalist Helen Merrill, and Bob Weinstock and the Prestige All-Star Sessions over the years, Steve Siegel has assumed the role of “unofficial” staff writer for JazzProfiles.
© -Steve Siegel copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.
Duke Ellington: The Making of New Orleans Suite
By Steve Siegel
“Duke Ellington was never offered a formal academic appointment at any institute of higher education. But if he had been offered one it could possibly create a dilemma for the university's august administrators, that being, what academic area would Ellington be most suited for.
If members of the faculty search committee had focused just upon the names of the many suites that Ellington wrote (as opposed to actually hearing the recordings), such as the Far East Suite, The Afro-Eurasian Suite, or the Latin American Suite, they would quite possibly concur that Ellington must have studied the indigenous folk music of these regions and that his strengths might lie in the area of ethnomusicology and assign him courses accordingly.
But if Ellington's esteemed future colleagues had actually taken the time to gather around a turntable and spin a few of the records of these suites, it would become quite clear to them that very little, if any, of the indigenous music of those regions was actually contained within them.
Therefore his appointment would be on hold until a suitable academic unit could be found that properly utilizes the would-be professor Ellington's many other strengths.
The confusion over the content of the suites lies in the fact that Ellington conceptualized and wrote many of these suites more from the perspective of a sociologist than he did as one studying the formal musical structure of the region. Ellington’s suites took an impressionistic view of the regions he visited and not one based upon their native traditions. The academics would soon discover that much of Ellington's suite music reflected Ellington's worldview and might characterize him as a “rooted cosmopolitan” – a citizen of the world who, in Ellington's case, borrowed musical ideas from many disparate cultures.
When it came to writing music evocative of the people, their culture and their music, Ellington filtered all he heard through his personal experiences and what he wrote was not necessarily solely based upon the music he encountered while in those countries. It was based primarily on an amalgamation of the locals’ customs and habits, sounds (both ambient and musical) that he heard, perhaps even the unique speech patterns of the languages he encountered. One only has to listen to the records produced, such as the aforementioned Latin-American Suite, Far East Suite, Afro-Eurasian Suite and a few others of the over 20 suites that he wrote, to perceive the consistency of his rather unique approach.
Ellington on the Far East Suite:
I hope much of this will go into (the) music… but doing a parallel to the East has its problems. From my perspective, I think I have to be careful not to be influenced too strongly by the music we heard because there is a great sameness about it, beginning in the Arabic countries and going through India all the way to Ceylon.
Therefore, Ellington was more interested in transferring his impressions of the cultural touchstones he encountered, may they be of people’s experiences, the places they populate or possessions they possess - all that serves to define the region they inhabit, as he saw it - into his musical palette.
To prove the point it might be an interesting experiment to take all of the individual compositions from, say, the Latin American Suite and from the Far East Suite and play them back for the casual listener and ask them to place each piece under the correct suite.
That exercise would probably yield a result of randomness, but that's beside the point. Ellington’s best suites are well respected within his canon simply because most of the individual pieces can stand alone as examples of Ellington at his musical best.
Ellington:
The minute you become academic about it, you are going to fall into the trap of copying many other people who have tried to give a reflection of the music.
This quote is consistent with Ellington's mindset of never being satisfied with simply expanding on the musical work of others, but creating something totally fresh and unique. Therefore, Ellington was not just a musician but also a master storyteller as well as an impressionistic “painter” of sound.
Not all of the many suites that Ellington wrote were impressionistic in form. There were a few that actually were highly descriptive of place and time. A listener’s ability to identify the suites by Ellington that were descriptive and less impressionistic is wholly dependent on how a listener might personally interpret what they hear in the music or what thoughts and emotions are evoked. But three suites that might stand out as rather literal interpretations of the subject matter at hand are: A Tone Parallel to Harlem, (1959); Black, Brown and Beige (1943); New Orleans Suite (1970).
In Music Is My Mistress, Ellington provided the literal interpretation of his intent when writing Harlem:
It is Sunday morning. We are strolling from 110th Street up Seventh Avenue, heading north through the Spanish and West Indian neighborhood toward the 125th Street business area. You may hear a parade go by, or a funeral, or you may recognize the passage of those who are making civil rights demands. Harlem has its heroes, too: Jackie Robinson, Ray Robinson, Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Bill Robinson.
In writing of Black, Brown and Beige, broadcast journalist, Audie Cornish opines:
The title Black, Brown and Beige refers to three movements of a suite, and each one represents a period in black history: "black" being the lives of slaves; "brown" I understand [as] emancipation and service in American wars; and "beige" is when he was taking on contemporary black America at that time.
But of all the recorded suites, 1971’s New Orleans Suite stands out among the more literal suites.
The suite was written by Ellington on a commission from impresario George Wein, the organizer of the 1971 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Ellington and his orchestra premiered the suite at the festival.
It was imperative that the music written and performed was very literal and evocative of the various periods of New Orleans’s musical growth. The common strain that Ellington used to accomplish this was to make liberal use of the Blues, as well as interpreting the very colorful musical history of the city.
Ellington’s success can be measured by the fact that most anyone listening to the entire suite who is a native of New Orleans or has spent a great deal of time there would easily recognize the music as clearly being descriptive of the “Big Easy” at various times during its musical history.
Ellington was far from a native of New Orleans. Unlike his experience working in Harlem as well as his experiences as a Black man, he had spent very little time in New Orleans. Though the Ellington Orchestra had toured the South and had played in many small towns, he had minimal exposure to the city probably because New Orleans, before the civil rights era, had one of the strictest and most stringently enforced Jim Crow laws in the South. He had visited the city in a professional capacity only twice, previous to his appearance in 1971.
In July of 1935 Ellington was invited to bring his orchestra down to New Orleans. Ellington was to be honored by the Autocratic Club, an all-Black social club. The Orchestra then gave two concerts – one at the Municipal Auditorium for an all-White audience and a second at another venue for people of color.
Ellington's next professional visit to New Orleans was in 1951 as part of a show called “The Big Show of 1951” which, in addition to the Ellington Orchestra, featured Nat Cole, Sarah Vaughan and other Black performers.
With that rather limited exposure to the city, what additional experiences might Ellington have drawn upon in writing the suite?
In 1923, Ellington heard the “father” of the soprano saxophone, New Orleans native Sidney Bechet, at the Howard Theater in Washington. Later in the 1920s, Bechet briefly toured with Ellington through New England. That exposed Ellington to the sounds of New Orleans but not to the culture directly.
Probably the biggest influence on Ellington came in December of 1927 when New Orleans native Barney Bigard joined the orchestra as their clarinetist. Bigard's clarinet sound was seeped in the sounds of New Orleans.
Bigard brought to the band the unique New Orleans clarinet style which utilized the chalumeau register, stressing the instrument’s middle to lower range, with a big mellow sound which sounded conversational, avoiding the shriller sound of many of the clarinetists of the day. Bigard was also very adroit at the polyphonic technics that were so prevalent in New Orleans music in the 1920s and beyond.
Ellington’s charts were influenced by Bigard. He utilized Bigard's unique sound as a fill in to offset the brassy sounds of the trumpets and trombones and his polyphonically trained ear created opportunities for Ellington to overlay Bigard's warm, woody sound over the music. adding richness and depth to the it.
Beyond the commission from Wein and the implicit expectation that the suite should be truly representative of the city, I would imagine that the pragmatic Ellington, was aware that most all the music in New Orleans is distinctive - It could not be mistaken for the music of any other region of the country. For that matter there are few parts of this country which could be easily identified through its music; one exception being the country music sounds of Nashville ( which is regional in scope). But the indigenous music of New Orleans is so tied to the city's identity and is so identifiable as to provide Ellington with a musical template to work with.
New Orleans’ music was greatly influenced by the music and routine of the daily life of the gumbo of various ethnicities found in the city, in particular the many Creole inhabitants.
To write music which ignores this tie is to risk composing a non-recognizable parody of the city.
So, Ellington was well grounded in the music of the Crescent City and understood the necessary stylistic elements which laid the groundwork for how he approached the writing of what was to become the New Orleans Suite.
Once Ellington completed the Suite, it was imperative that the orchestra have adequate rehearsal time to fit all the pieces together for the festival appearance on April 25 and 26, 1971 and for the subsequent recording.
Ellington's orchestra arrived in New Orleans on April 20, 1970 and immediately began a five-night appearance at trumpeter Al Hirt's club from April 20 to 24. Presumably Ellington arrived with a complete suite – or at least the five pieces that eventually were recorded at the first recording session a week later. Originally there were six pieces in the suite but a piece titled “Rex" was not recorded and therefore left off the album.
There is no record of what Ellington played that week at Hirt's club but we must assume that those five pieces of the suite were rehearsed during the day and played at the evening performances.
Oddly, recorded evidence supposedly indicates that only one selection from the suite was performed at the Festival, “Blues for New Orleans.” If this is true, could Ellington have been unhappy with how the rehearsals went and didn't feel that the other pieces were ready to be performed in public? George Wein's commission to Ellington was for a complete suite and we might presume that Wein was paying Ellington for the entire suite to be premiered. Given that Ellington had just spent five days of rehearsals and performances at Al Hirt's club and that the five pieces were soon to be recorded, we might assume that the suite was completed and performance ready. Therefore, it’s reasonable to conclude that all or most pieces were likely performed at the festival.
The album, on Atlantic Records, was recorded during two sessions at National Recording Studios in New York City, with the first session on April 27th, 1970. Recorded were “Blues for New Orleans,” “Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies,” “ Thanks for the Beautiful Land on the Delta,” “Second Line” and “Aristocracy a la Jean Lafitte.” These were all the non-“Portrait" pieces that comprised the original portion of the suite that was performed at the festival. The “Portrait” pieces, which would serve to complete the album, were Ellington's homages to four of the greatest New Orleans musicians.
Ellington and the band then headed up to Toronto for a six-day stay at the Imperial Room of the Royal York Hotel. During the engagement Ellington played selections from the Suite and most likely worked on and rehearsed the four “Portrait” pieces which were to be recorded soon after the band returned to New York from Toronto.
The Portraits (all subjects were natives of New Orleans) were recorded back at National on May 13th and included “Portrait of Wellman Braud” (one of Ellington's early bassists), “Portrait of Louis Armstrong,” “Portrait of Mahalia Jackson” and “Portrait of Sidney Bechet.”
On May 11th , two days before the second recording session, back in New York, Johnny Hodges died in the office of his dentist, suffering a massive heart attack. Ellington had been hopeful that Hodges would play his soprano saxophone, which he had not played on a recording in decades, for the Sidney Bechet “Portrait.” Instead Ellington gave the assignment to tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves.
The completed album was released in May of 1971.
The album contains excellent liner notes from Ellington's longtime friend and jack-of-all-trades, Stanley Dance. Dance provides short, concise and informative comments about each composition.
A few additional observations on my part…
The centerpiece of the album is the first band on the album, “Blues for New Orleans.” Ellington brought in his occasional guest artist with the orchestra, organist “Wild” Bill Davis. Davis played the Hammond B3 organ. But unlike Jimmy Smith, Davis favored a fuller sound playing fat block chords, with all of the organ's drawbars pulled out. He sometimes created a sound like you might hear at a roller-skating rink but he was essentially a small orchestra on to himself and very adroit at playing the Blues. In the late 1960s when Ellington might be on hiatus from touring, Davis played gigs with Hodges at Atlantic City and they had recorded a few albums together. So musically, they were very familiar with each other.
In “Blues for New Orleans” Ellington essentially created a piece for Hodges and Davis to solo over a repeated background figure provided by the orchestra, with excitement building throughout the piece as the orchestra really digs in. This is one of the deepest blues that Ellington had ever created and given that this was the last recording that Hodges ever made he definitely went out in style, doing what he had excelled in for so long with the band – playing the Blues.
“Second Line” depicts a New Orleans tradition of attendees at one of the city's many parades (some were for festivals, others for funerals) falling in line behind the marching band and dancing their way down the parade route to celebrate either the life of the living or the life lived by the deceased. Having personally been present at this spectacle, this piece in the suite might be where Ellington best captured the sheer joy and high spirits that these omnipresent parades can create.
“Aristocracy a la Jean Lafitte,” Frenchman Lafitte and his gang of pirates were instrumental in helping General Andrew Jackson win the Battle of New Orleans by offering crucial material and tactical support in exchange for a full pardon for all his gang for the crimes they had committed. The music is in 3/4 time and starts out sounding like a French minuet and then accelerates in tempo (as well as about a century or two) into more of a waltz.
“Portrait of Louis Armstrong,” Cootie Williams evokes the young as well as the mature playing of his idol, clearly expressing both the power and sheer exuberance of Armstrong’s playing.
“Portrait of Mahalia Jackson” is Ellington's love letter to his dear friend, which in musical terms showcases the dignified and gracious manner that she demonstrated throughout her life. As Dance pointed out in the liner notes, the piece acknowledges the importance of the church in New Orleans.
‘Portrait of Sidney Bechet:” Gonsalves utilizes the upper range of the tenor and softens his tone. It's interesting that Ellington did not utilize either of his alto players, Norris Turney or Russell Procope for the solo voice. If only Hodges had lived and dusted off his soprano…
The album was well received by the jazz media:
Dan Morgenstern's glowing review of the album in 1971 for DownBeat magazine awarded it a perfect five stars.
The music is evocative, highly atmospheric and marked throughout by the gorgeous ensemble textures that set this orchestra apart from every other big band in the history of jazz, This is a great record, and by any standard one of the major musical events of 1971.
Jack Chambers points out in his book Sweet Thunder (2019):
The period from 1970-1972 was “ … an extraordinarily productive period for Ellington…” and New Orleans Suite might have been the prime recorded accomplishment of that period.
Critic Max Harrison:
New Orleans Suite…was jazz without pretense.
And went on to say about the Suite:
The strength of the Ellington unit as a self-perpetuating phenomenon is well instanced here. Four years prior to Ellington's death there were, in the orchestra, players providing links with the beginning and the middle period, and new men also who, like many who had come and gone, were borne up in the collective inspiration which had helped to make those veterans what they had become.
The record was honored at the 1971 Grammy Awards, receiving a Grammy for “Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band” (also referred to as Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance).
As Duke Ellington was entering his “Golden Years" in the mid 1960s, he could have retired, taken his Social Security check and every Wednesday meet up with some of his retired compatriots at McDonalds for breakfast and engage in some reminiscing about the “old days.”
But instead he preferred to enter into another of his many “Golden Eras” composing additional iconic pieces. This period lasted from around 1966 until his death in 1974. In doing so he not only defied the grim reaper (for a while) but quite surprisingly he managed to hold his own against a dramatically changing demographic (young baby boomers); purveyors of the new sounds such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elvis's comeback, etc.; newer genres - soul music, modern folk music, progressive rock; the loss of many of his best musicians to retirement (e.g. , Jimmy Hamilton) and death (e.g. , Johnny Hodges, Billy Strayhorn) or studio work (e.g. , Clark Terry).
His productivity during this period produced a profound boost to Ellington’s legacy. It provided a generation of young people, the early Baby Boomers, an opportunity to experience in essentially real-time, the genius of Ellington - with many eventually becoming lifetime devotees. If Ellington had not produced such fresh well recorded music during this period, few of this generation would have bothered to look back at the music of what they might have considered their parents’ generation and considered Ellington (if they considered him at all) an anachronism. As Ellington entered his sixth generation of music making in 1970, New Orleans Suite sated the appetite of both Ellington's older followers and provided a gateway for new converts who, having discovered Ellington for the first time, purchased his older works and carried his legacy forward.”
