Miley’s role was even more important. Born in South Carolina in 1903 and raised in New York, Miley was hired to replace trumpeter Johnny Dunn in Mamie Smith’s band. He is said to be the trumpeter on some Mamie Smith recordings of 1921 and 1922. Reedman Garvin Bushell told Nat Hentoff about a week he and Miley spent listening to King Oliver in Chicago, presumably in 1921 when they were on tour with Mamie Smith. Touched by the band’s blues playing and expressive overall sound, “Bubber and I sat there with our mouths open” (Hentoff, “Garvin Bushell and New York Jazz in the 1920’s,” Jazz Review, February 1959).
Miley worked with the Washingtonians in September 1923, and he brought his gutsy trumpet style to the Ellington band, where he stayed, with occasional sabbaticals, until 1929. He installed the growl in the Ellington band. As Ellington recognized his importance immediately, Miley helped transform the group, known first for its sweet melodies, into an intriguing jazz band, with elegant arrangements designed to feature “primitive” sounds. As Duke’s son Mercer Ellington opined, “The band was motivated around him and everything depended upon his being in it, not only because of his solo role, but because of the phrases he knew and because of what his knowledge contributed in the backgrounds”.
The growling trumpet sound, and later, with the addition of Tricky Sam Nanton as trombonist, the growling trombone, became an identifying characteristic of the band’s sound. When Miley left in 1929, eventually to die of tuberculosis, and was replaced by Cootie Williams, Williams gradually figured out that he should learn the growl as well, that that was what he was expected to do. Mercer, a trumpeter himself, has described the technique of the growl: “There are three basic elements in the growl: the sound of the horn, a guttural gargling in the throat, and the actual note that is hummed. The mouth has to be shaped to make the different vowel sounds, and above the singing from the throat, manipulation of the plunger adds the wa-wa accents that give the horn a language. I should add that in the Ellington tradition a straight mute is used in the horn besides the plunger outside, and this results in more pressure. Some players use only the plunger, and then the sound is usually coarser, less piercing, and not as well articulated”.
Miley provided the sound, and Ellington the context that made it significant. But even here Miley had something to add. Miley originated the key melodic phrases in the band’s first distinctive recordings, “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” (SCCJ) and “Black and Tan Fantasy.” Both titles were recorded repeatedly in 1926 and 1927, as was another early masterpiece, “Creole Love Call.” Ellington said that “Toodle-Oo,” or “Toodle-O” as it was sometimes spelled, referred to a broken, uneven walk–perhaps, he suggested, of an old man returning from work in the fields. (Mark Tucker’s important book on Ellington’s early years suggests a possible connection with sexual dancing as well.) The piece begins with a series of moaning saxophone chords, over which Miley enters with a speech-like first theme with wah-wah mute.
Ellington's achievements as a composer and bandleader began to attract national attention while he worked at the Cotton Club in the Harlem district of New York City from 1927 to 1932. The orchestra, now a ten piece conglomeration, and showing the distinctive sound that displayed the non-traditional voicings of Ellington's arrangements, the street rhythms of Harlem and featured the exotic-sounding trombone growls and wah-wahs, high-squealed trumpets, and sultry saxophone blues licks of the band members. With the success of compositions like "Mood Indigo," an increasing number of recordings and national radio broadcasts from the Cotton Club, Duke Ellington and His Jungle Band's reputation soared.
The ten years from 1932 to 1942 are considered by some major critics to represent the "golden age" for Duke Ellington and his Orchestra but it represents just one of their creative peaks. These years did bring an influx of extraordinary new talent to the band including Jimmie Blanton on double bass, Ben Webster on tenor saxophone and Ray Nance on trumpet, violin and vocals. During this 10-year span, Ellington composed several of his best known short works, including "Concerto For Cootie," "Ko-Ko," "Cotton Tail," "In A Sentimental Mood," and Jump For Joy, his first full-length musical stage revue.
Most notably, 1939 marked the arrival of Billy Strayhorn. While a teenager in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Strayhorn had already written "Lush Life," "Something To Live For" and the musical Fantastic Rhythm before joining the Ellington Organization. Initially hired as a lyricist, Ellington realized long before Billy's composition "Take the ŒA' Train" became the band's theme song in 1942 that Strayhorn's talents were not limited to penning clever lyrics. By 1942, "Swee' Pea" had become arranger, composer, second pianist, collaborator and as Duke described him, "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine." Many Ellington/Strayhorn songs have entered the jazz canon and their extended works are still being discovered and studied today. Strayhorn remained with the Ellington Organization until his death on May 30, 1967.
Ellington had often hinted of a work in progress depicting the struggle of blacks in America. The original script, Boola, debuted in Carnegie Hall in November of 1943 retitled, Black, Brown and Beige. The performance met with mixed reviews and although Ellington often returned to Carnegie Hall the piece was never recorded in a studio and after 1944 was never performed in entirety again by the Ellington Orchestra. Nonetheless, it is now considered a milestone in jazz composition.
After World War II, the mood and musical tastes of the country shifted and hard times befell big bands. The Ellington band was not always financially self-sufficient but during the lean times Ellington used his songwriting royalties to meet the soloists' salaries. One could assign to Ellington the altruistic motive of loyalty to his sidemen but another motivation may have been his compositional style. "The band was his instrument," Billy Strayhorn said and no Ellington composition was complete until he brought it to his orchestra. In rehearsals, he would fine tune his compositions, omit, augment or interchange passages and pave a verbal trail that set the course for his soloists' contributions.
In later years Ellington would say, "When was I born? I was born in 1956 in Newport, Rhode Island." referring to the American public's rediscovery of the Ellington Orchestra. The searing performances of tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves on "Diminuendo and Crescendo In Blue," his premiere soloist, alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges on "Jeep's Blues" and the crowd's ecstatic reaction have become jazz legend. Later that year Duke landed on the cover of Time magazine. As another indicator of his acceptance into mainstream entertainment, in 1959 Ellington and Strayhorn composed the score for Otto Preminger's film, Anatomy of a Murder, starring Jimmy Stewart and Lee Remick. Ellington had previously written music for film and television (including the short film, Black and Tan Fantasy in 1929) and continued to do so, earning an Academy Award nomination for the score to Paris Blues in 1961, featuring box-office stars Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier in roles as American jazz musicians in Paris. Throughout the 1960s, Ellington and Strayhorn continued to write music for various film, theatre and television projects, often in collaboration with established writers like Orson Welles. However, the projects were unable to find financial support and Ellington and Strayhorn's music was generally recorded later under different titles.
Ellington's first performance overseas was in England in 1933, but the 1960s brought extensive diplomatic tours overseas sponsored by the State Department. Ellington and Strayhorn composed and recorded exquisite extended works reflecting the sights and sounds of their travels, most notably the Far East Suite, 1964. During this time, Ellington and Strayhorn also wrote homages and adaptations of some classical influences. In 1957, they celebrated Shakespeare's works with the suite Such Sweet Thunder. In 1963, they adapted Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite and, with Ella Fitzgerald, continued the Norman Granz Songbook Series. Ellington also began to flex his considerable pianist skills and in 1963 recorded albums with John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Frank Sinatra and Money Jungle with Charles Mingus and Max Roach.
In his lifetime, Duke received numerous awards, doctoral degrees and honors including the highest honor bestowed on an American civilian, the Congressional Medal Of Freedom. In 1965, Ellington was recommended for a Pulitzer Prize to honor his forty years of contribution to American music but the recommendation was rejected by the board. The ever elusive Ellington's response was, "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be famous too young." Despite these awards, Ellington never rested on his laurels or stopped composing. To please his loyal fans, Ellington always featured some of his standards in every performance but he reworked them to sound fresh and to provide new meaning and a creative challenge for himself and his band members. Whenever he was asked to name his favorite compositions, his characteristic reply was "the next five coming up" and during his final stay in hospital, Ellington was composing the opera buffo called Queenie Pie.
Duke Ellington held a private, deep spiritual faith throughout his life and travelled with a cross, rosary and religious reading material. In his later years, he turned to expressing this faith through sacred works--most significantly with the debut of the First Sacred Concert in San Francisco's Grace Cathedral in 1965. Ellington added a Second (1968) and Third (1973) Concert of Sacred Music that introduced his music to a new audience and perhaps helped Ellington prepare for his next life.
Duke Ellington died on May 24, 1974 at seventy-five years of age. His funeral was held in New York's Cathedral of St. John The Divine; he was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery. His long-time companion Beatrice "Evie" Ellis was buried beside him after her death in 1976. He was survived by his only child, Mercer Kennedy Ellington, who not only took up the baton to lead the Duke Ellington Orchestra but assumed the task of caring for his father's papers and his legacy to the nation. Mercer Ellington died in Copenhagan, Denmark on February 8, 1996, at the age of seventy-six. Ruth Ellington Boatwright, Duke's only sibling, lives in New York City. Both Mercer and Ruth were responsible for shepherding the documents and artifacts that celebrate Duke Ellington's genius and creative life to their current home in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.
