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Featured Review > Jonathan Eig > Duke Ellington
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(page three)
But for all his down-to-earth qualities, Ellington still cast an image of proud sophistication, even in
an age when he had to enter many theaters through the service entrance. These were men who wore gleaming
tuxedos not because they were serving food or drinks to white men but because they were important enough
to dress with the best. That prideful image spoke volumes to his fans. "There was a swelling
in your chest when you went to the Chicago Theater to hear Duke Ellington," Travis said. "You identified
with Duke Ellington the same way you identified with Joe Louis. There was a certain kind of dignity
it brought you, as if it made the sun shine."
The panelists noted that Ellington was often overlooked as a civil rights leader. He played benefits
for the NAACP as early as 1928, and performed for the Scottsboro Defense Committee in 1932. He was a man
of many passions, with music always serving as the vehicle of expression. Ellington, like Fred Astaire will
always be remembered in top hat and tails. He put himself above the rest, musically and psychologically,
and he asked others to climb to his level. How many modern popular musicians would dare such a stance today?
Travis remembered two encounters with Ellington. At the Regal one night in the 1940s, Duke was in his
dressing room. Al Hibbler had the room next door and Duke could hear Hibbler, perhaps drunk, speaking
rudely to a Jehovah's Witness who had tried to engage him in a talk about God. Ellington came in the room,
jumped on top of Hibbler, straddled him and asked, "Have you ever seen God? How do you know that woman
wasn't God?" "He felt very strongly about religion," Travis said of Ellington. He also recalled
the last time he saw Duke. It was in the late 1960s, and Duke was enjoying a resurgence in his
career. By now, he was accepted around the world as a hugely important musician. He lived long
enough to hear a few critics speculate that he might have been America's finest composer. When Travis
visited his dressing room during intermission of a show, Ellington, wearing a rag on his head, got up and
asked what song he could play for his guest. "That's the kind of guy he was."
"Throughout his career," the critic Martin Williams wrote, "Ellington met audience after audience on its
own level and transported it up to his own. He made his music, guided his sidemen, and reaches his
listeners with a perceptive sense of the realities of his situation. He made his music out of a
positive optimism, a capacity for seeking the best and making the best of any situation and any individual.
But he also made a music that denied nothing in the American experience. He embraced it all."
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