Wilder Hobson: “Introducing Duke Ellington” (1933)

Abstract Leaders are not so fortunate. Manager Mills wastes considerable money buying Ellington special arrangements of standard tunes. By the time the orchestra plays them they are Ellingtonian-lustered with his own harmonies, pungent with his rhythm. Ellington spends his spare moments writing a score for a Negro musical show to be produced next season by John Henry Hammond Jr., son of the New York lawyer John Henry Hammond, and one of the leading jazz con noisseurs of the country. Ellington is also conceiving a suite in five parts, tentatively entitled Africa, The Slave Ship, The Plantation, Harlem-the last being a climactic restatement of themes. Whether this will be arranged for his band as now constituted or for an augmented group has not been decided. The composer expects to leave the piano, taking a baton in the form of a drumstick which, while conducting, he will beat on an elaborate choir of tom toms. And he is trying desperately to find a reed instrument lower even than a contrabassoon with which to produce voodoo accents in the opening section. His friends say he will ultimately invent one.