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Featured Review > Jonathan Eig > Duke Ellington
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(page four)
From the first notes of the Smithsonian group's performance, it was clear something special was at work. "Drop
Me Off in Harlem" opened with harmonic and dynamic subtleties rarely heard among the hundreds of bands that attempt
Ellington: a sweet trombone chased by a softly muted trumpet chased again by a gently growling, plunger-muted
trumpet; saxophones briskly fanning the fires of the trumpet section. The Smithsonian men had crafted a
sound as close to Ellington's as anyone can get these days, I suppose. The reeds didn't quite capture the
tone of Ellington's reeds, but that might be a function of changes in the instrument itself. Nevertheless,
Daybreak Express still has the power to startle. Caravan, played well, takes one's breath away no matter
how times one has heard it before.
Yet even as Bobby Watson did a beautiful job playing Johnny Hodges' part on Warm Valley, I couldn't help but feel
a little sad. I felt as if I were back up on the second floor of the museum exhibit watching an old
film clip of the band, with Duke hamming for the camera and his musicians playing it straight and narrow,
with no signs of inebriation, nor, for that matter, any sign they were having fun. The large audience
gasped at the beauty of the sounds. The gasps seemed good but not quite right. I was sitting next
to a couple of guys who drive hundreds of miles every year to Glenn Miller's high school in Iowa, where a couple
of thousand people gather to hear the modern incarnation of the Miller band, which is no doubt filled with
well-trained and well-meaning college grads in their 20s. The fellow to my left asked me which was my
favorite big band. "I didn't know there were any," I said. It seemed to me that these travelers
were in search of the same thing as I; something that isn't there. We missed the age when big band
music made people sweat, scream and fall in love. Today, I suppose, rock and rap do the same thing.,
and maybe they do it just as well. But I doubt it.
We talked awhile about some of the great college big band, including The One O'Clock Lab Band at the University
of North Texas, and how these groups seem to be the best and only hope for the preservation and resuscitation
of this music. Our only hope, we said, is that the young musicians in those groups go on to multiply, educate
and conquer, because without them, the spirit that moved music-lovers of the Ellington era is long gone. Joe
Williams told me that he heard all the big bands come through Chicago long before he sang with them because he
learned to love women at those concerts. He felt the press of a woman's chest for the first time while
dancing to the powerful sounds of a big band. From that moment on, he was gone. That was the same
magic Duke Ellington felt when women first gathered beside his piano. It's the same feeling, heard so
beautifully in his music, that we cling to now.
©1996 Jonathan Eig
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