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GARY EICHTEN: Thank you, Greta. 12:06 o'clock. Programming on NPR is supported by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, a grassroots organization of businesses and local chambers of commerce throughout Minnesota.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GARY EICHTEN: And good afternoon. Welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. Glad you could join us. Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington was born 100 years ago this week. And today on Midday, we're going to bring you some memories of the man and his music.

Ellington was born in Washington, D.C, back on April 29, 1899. By his early 20s, he was playing piano in clubs. He spent the next 50 years crisscrossing the country and traveling the world with his orchestra. When he died in 1974, Duke Ellington's son Mercer took over the band and led it for over two decades until his death.

Today, we're celebrating Duke Ellington's 100th birthday. And we're going to start this hour by hearing from the late Mercer Ellington, remembering his father. This is from a 1989 interview with Fresh Air host Terry Gross.

[DUKE ELLINGTON, "COCOA"]

TERRY GROSS: That's Duke Ellington's Cocoa, recorded in 1940. After Duke Ellington's death in 1974, the orchestra was conducted by his son, Mercer, until 1996 when Mercer died of heart failure at the age of 76. Much of Mercer Ellington's life was spent working with the orchestra.

As a young man, he was the gofer. In 1950, he briefly played with the orchestra as a trumpeter. And in 1964, he rejoined as a trumpeter and became the road manager. Mercer also wrote several compositions that became part of the orchestra's repertoire, including Things Ain't What They Used to Be, Blue Serge, and Jumpin' Punkins. I spoke with Mercer Ellington in 1989.

Can you tell us what a rehearsal would be like with Duke Ellington?

MERCER ELLINGTON: Well, first off, the 2 o'clock rehearsal got started around about 3:15. And then the guys would come in, they would put down the music and start playing it. And it would sound like the worst thing in the world.

By the third playing of it, it took on a sound which was completely different and completely identifiable as something that could only be Duke Ellington. And it depended on whether what he thought of it and what the purpose of what he was rehearsing was for.

Many times, for no reason at all, he would rehearse a tune and spend five or six hours on just one number. And on another occasion, he would just play the number twice and find that the engineers didn't get it properly if we were in a record tape.

And then he declared, well, OK, that's enough time on that, because now the feeling is gone, and the soloist can't come up with the same emotion that he had on the first time of playing it. So he'd abandon it until we got to the next studio or the next rehearsal, go over it again.

Studio, rehearsal, studio, rehearsal, until one day he decided, well, now we got the one that's right. So a rehearsal with Ellington was never something that was like systematic or that you knew there were some form of mythology that would be called for.

TERRY GROSS: You are with the Duke Ellington orchestra, playing some of Ellington's neglected works, some of the extended works, as well as some of his most popular compositions. When you take out a work that hasn't been played in a long time and you're looking at the score, is it difficult to read?

And I ask you that because in a memoir that you wrote about your father, Duke Ellington, you say that he frequently wrote really cryptically because he was afraid that people would steal his composition, which was, I guess, pretty common then, that people would steal other people's ideas. So he'd write it so it couldn't be stolen that easily. Are you stuck with having to decipher that now?

MERCER ELLINGTON: No, not really, because I did so much copying that I recognized the symbols and all the little things he did to disguise the music. For instance, one of them would be to write a part and put the wrong clef sign on it. So if somebody had started naming the notes, they'd have it completely messed up.

The other thing was to use this cryptic titling on numbers so that if you heard a number and you wanted to get it out of the book, for instance, make an arrangement that was a new concept of In My Solitude, you'd never find it. If you wanted to say-- he did a tune called Squeeze Me, well, on one occasion it would be titled sleuth sleuth. And then another time he called it subtle slough.

So if you looked in the music to try to, say, take the parts out and copy them over or get some kind of idea of what was happening, you couldn't recognize the tune by the writing that was on it because the saxophones had one name on it and the trombones had another, and you could never really piece them together.

TERRY GROSS: So how common was stealing through sheet music?

MERCER ELLINGTON: Well, in days, it was very blatant at one point. And even in the old Cotton Club days, the guys from downtown would come in with their pencils in their hands and just blatantly sit there with the music and sit in the front row copying down what they heard.

TERRY GROSS: That's amazing. In Music is My Mistress, your father's collection of memoirs and reminiscences about musicians, he wrote a couple of pages about you, and he started it by saying, my son Mercer Ellington is dedicated to maintaining the luster of his father's image. Did you ever feel that he perhaps took that for granted?

MERCER ELLINGTON: No. What he was doing, in essence, he was saying something in print that he could never say to me individually. And it was not necessarily meant for the reader as much as it was meant for me, because he had the difficulty of being able to talk intimately to me. And I have the same difficulty.

And if I had to say to my wife or my children or something else that they did something I liked, I'd find it difficult to make the statement. I think this was his way of expressing approval of what many of the things I had done or saying thanks for having done it.

TERRY GROSS: Did he spend a lot of time with you? I know when you were growing up, your parents separated when you were pretty young. You divided your time between each of their houses. Did you get to see him much? Were you close?

MERCER ELLINGTON: Oh yeah. And in those days, I spent 50/50 as far as my time was concerned, one half of the year of my mother or two weeks here and two weeks there, and so forth. And I got the value of two worlds. And each was very important. I got the value of living, as I would say, high on the hog because I'd be around pop and the important people that he knew. And a lot of the great stars in show business, Fats Waller, Art Tatum, and so forth.

And with my mother, we lived an average, everyday existence. No one knew who I was. I was just somebody also on the street. And I got to know how that kind of a person lived. And I never got to the place where I felt I rose above that, that I was not someone who was highly privileged and could afford to ignore the feelings or the way anyone else felt. So I think for that reason, the way I raised was, in a sense, a rich possession to have.

TERRY GROSS: Do you have any of your father's show business superstitions? He had a lot of superstitions.

MERCER ELLINGTON: He's gotten us all to the place where we've been brainwashed. And when it gets down to it, there were only two colors, which he really allowed, and that was blue and white. And once in a while, he allowed a little red to come in. I guess maybe that had to do with his patriotism. But you dare not whistle in the dressing room or bringing a newspaper nor peanuts. And he hated green. Green was always bad luck to him.

TERRY GROSS: Where do these things come from? Do you have any idea?

MERCER ELLINGTON: Well, related to experiences. He hated green. And he hated brown because he was wearing a brown suit the day his mother died. And so he had a reason behind it, an experience to relate to.

TERRY GROSS: So would you wear brown now?

MERCER ELLINGTON: Oh, sure.

TERRY GROSS: Yeah. OK.

MERCER ELLINGTON: I wear green. He, however, did not object to green on the back of dollar bills.

[NAT KING COLE, "DON'T GET AROUND MUCH ANYMORE"]

Missed the Saturday Dance. Heard they crowded the floor. Couldn't bear it without you. Don't get around much anymore. Thought I'd visit the club. Got as far as the door. They'd have asked me about you. Don't get around much anymore.

Darling I guess my mind's more at ease but nevertheless why stir up memories been invited on dates. Might have gone but what for. Awfully different without you. Don't get around much anymore.

Darling I guess my mind's more at ease but nevertheless why stir up memories been invited on dates. Might have gone, but what for. Awfully different without you. Don't get around much anymore. Awfully different without you. Don't get around much anymore.

GARY EICHTEN: Nat "King" Cole singing Duke Ellington's Don't Get Around Much Anymore. Ellington's son, the late Mercer Ellington, talked with Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. Today on Midday, we're observing the 100th birthday of the legendary Duke Ellington.

Robert Lee Morris doesn't call Ellington's music jazz. He calls it American music. Morris is associate professor of music at Macalester College in St. Paul. And once while he was a college student, Morris met Ellington at Morris's hometown of Chicago. Morris came by the studio recently to talk about Ellington with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson. Morris is founder and director of his own group, the Lee Morris Chorale.

[DUKE ELLINGTON, "COME SUNDAY"]

Come on Sunday. Oh, come Sunday. That's the day.

DAN OLSON: A few months ago, you performed downtown Minneapolis on a winter's night as part of the series that's been ongoing for a couple of years. And you chose, I gather, your arrangement of Ellington's come Sunday. Is that right? Do you want to say a word about the piece?

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: Yes, it's a wonderful, wonderful piece that he has and other people have recorded many times. And it is now in the United Methodist hymnbook. For those of you who will look, turn to number 728, and you'll find that Come Sunday is there.

And it's a wonderful statement, which came, I guess, toward the end of his life, even though the song is not from the end of his life. But it's a wonderful statement of perhaps religious and moral and civic beliefs that were germinating in Duke Ellington a long time.

I arranged the song in 1963, and I rearranged it again for the Lee Morris Chorale, and we sang it that night at the Bridges Program with Libby Turner singing the solo.

[DUKE ELLINGTON, "COME SUNDAY"] Dear Lord I've loved God Almighty God of love please look down and see see my through.

DAN OLSON: Ellington's Come Sunday arranged by Robert Lee Morris, and in that case, directed by Robert Lee Morris, the Lee Morris singers there, not too long ago, recorded downtown Minneapolis first Baptist church, I think.

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: Yes. Yes.

DAN OLSON: And the soloist Libby Turner.

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: And Sanford Moore was playing the piano with us.

DAN OLSON: Wonderful.

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: There are two different stories on this Come Sunday. And one of them is that Ellington included this work in-- this song in a larger work Black, Brown and Beige. He recorded this many years ago on Victor, and he gave some notes to Inez Cavanaugh.

And in them, he described the larger work from which this came, Black, Brown and Beige. And he said the piece begins with a work song, the voice of fighting men-- of a fighting man working like a diamond put to work.

The rest is celebrated in Come Sunday when the workers are set to exclaim, we have no organ, no Lovely white church with distinct white steeple shining in the sun. But we are singing and we do believe.

Now, that's one story. There's also one other story, and I'm not sure of it. And I'll take a chance by reciting it. It's that at one point in time, because we're talking about this Black, Brown and Beige, Black people were sometimes artificially separated by skin color. But it was on Sunday when they were all in church that they could come together.

And it was as if someone was outside the church praying that someone would see his people through. And because throughout his life, we find that Duke Ellington has a fierce love of the contributions and the input of Black people in this country.

[DUKE ELLINGTON, "COME SUNDAY"] Lord, dear Lord I've loved, God Almighty, God above please look down and see my people through

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: And I do recall one time that he mentioned that he also recorded this piece, Mahalia Jackson. And that in the studio at the time, Mahalia Jackson sang the song. And then they were getting ready to end it. And she took off on another chorus, sort of just humming.

And he said it was so powerful that the band just played along, and they just let her do whatever she wanted to do. It is a wonderful song, and for those people who think of it only as popular music, you have to think in broader senses because it has a wonderful message.

[DUKE ELLINGTON, "COME SUNDAY"]

(SINGING) I believe that sun and moon will shine up in the sky when the day is gray. I know it, clouds passing by. He'll give peace and comfort to every troubled mind.

Come Sunday, oh, come Sunday. That's the day. Often we feel weary but he knows our every care. Got to him in secret. He will hear your every prayer. Lilies on the valley they neither toll nor spin. And flowers bloom in spring time. Birds sing.

GARY EICHTEN: Mahalia Jackson singing Duke Ellington's come Sunday. Today, we're observing the 100th birthday of Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington born April 29, 1899. Let's return to Dan Olson's conversation with Macalester College music Professor Robert Lee Morris.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

DAN OLSON: We're going to hear more Ellington, in just a moment, East St. Louis Toodle-O. Robert Lee Morris is going to take us on a little tour about East St. Louis Toodle-O and explain how it was that Ellington changed the pieces. But we need to do a little bit of catch up. You met Duke Ellington in 1963?

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: Yes.

DAN OLSON: How did this come about? What was happening?

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: Well, the Negro exposition happened in Chicago, and Duke Ellington volunteered, I believe, to present something as his contribution. So he came to Chicago and auditioned choral groups. And he auditioned a group that I was with under the director Irving Bunton.

And so he asked Irving Bunton, who was the director of a church choir in Chicago, "Who is your arranger?" which is an odd question because most times church choirs don't have arrangers, so to speak.

But it so happened that this particular church did because it was an online church. And every Sunday, the music ministry included an anthem, an arranged spiritual, and an arranged gospel. And I arranged those gospel songs. So Irving Bunton turned to me and said, oh here is the young man sitting at the piano.

DAN OLSON: How old were you at the time?

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: Let's see. I was in my teens.

DAN OLSON: Whoa, I love it. You're being pointed to as the arranger.

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: Yes. Yes. And he gave the music to me and said, arrange this for the group. And so I did this. And my friends at school where I was attending, DePaul, told me not to recently-- not too long ago, that somebody asked me if we wanted to take time out one day and sit around and play a game of cards.

And I said, no, I'm busy. I'm arranging music for Duke Ellington. And somebody said, oh he's joking. And my friend said, no, he's really serious. He's arranging music for Duke Ellington.

DAN OLSON: All right.

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: And so he listened to the pieces and made comments and helped me a lot.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

DAN OLSON: Now we want to ask you about East St. Louis Toodle-O. And let's hear an early version of it, one version of it, and we'll come back and you can explain what it is we're doing here.

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: Yes.

[DUKE ELLINGTON, "EAST ST. LOUIS TOODLE-O"]

DAN OLSON: Robert Lee Morris, what was Duke Ellington doing there? What was he exploring?

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: Well, he was keeping up, setting trends and making the pace even more difficult for others who were seriously listening. He wrote for his sidemen. And so there were some signature things there, like the growling trumpet.

Duke did the same thing that some of the early Baroque composers did in that he took his earlier compositions and brought them up to either a new place for a new setting. And that puts him right along with those composers that only those persons who only listened to classical music, especially the Baroque composers, they'll find him there. And if they will just open, they'll find that this music speaks a lot to the American situation.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: He had a way of making things happen. For example, if you look at the music that is written for that, you see the chords, but you don't see all that stuff that happens between the chords.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

DAN OLSON: Ellington composed 2,000 pieces of music, maybe more.

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: No one really knows the accurate number. And the pieces that have been given to the Smithsonian are not completely in order yet.

DAN OLSON: Wow, so there's still a lot of cataloging to do and figuring out what--

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: We're not talking about a room. We're talking about a warehouse.

DAN OLSON: Wow. You wanted to illustrate something for us with something called Concerto for Cootie.

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: Cootie Williams was one of his sidemen who, as Ellington always did, had men who had distinctive colors to add to his band. In fact, he called them his color entities or identities.

He wrote this piece to show the particular colors that Cootie had to offer to the orchestra. And everybody that he had in his band had something to offer as a solo color. And he put them all together in a well-blended soup, as you would. And that became the distinctive sound of Ellington.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

DAN OLSON: Robert Lee Morris, here was Duke Ellington, a jazz musician born in Washington, D.C. Was it later in his life, close to his death in 1974, when he became apparently very interested in composing big pieces on a much larger canvas for the concert hall?

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: No, actually in the '40s, perhaps even before in terms of what was germinating in his mind. And I guess it wasn't understood because people bring a lot of baggage to the term jazz. And so people didn't understand.

And of course, when you go to the American Temple of Music, Carnegie Hall, then people were expecting that they would hear entertainment, music, only entertainment. And he had something else in mind because he saw a greater place and stance for his American music than just the dance hall. In fact, he even made statements to that effect. And so he did this matter of composing a large piece on a regular basis.

DAN OLSON: Which piece have you selected, which you think kind of illustrates the point you'd like to make about his larger pieces?

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: The Black and Tan Fantasy. And the term itself is interesting because in certain towns, there were black and tan clubs where people of different backgrounds could go, white and Black. And he wrote a lot of pieces. He was so many years ahead of what some people call the Civil Rights movement because he wrote things about that Black Beauty, Black and Tan, Black, Brown and Beige.

And he was always saying, through his music, almost covertly, that here's what it is, and here's what's going on, and here's what you should notice. And so his pride in his ethnic background was always there. He wasn't on soapboxes, shouting and lifting his fist in the way that some people did in the '60s. But he was there, and he was making a statement.

[JAZZ MUSIC]

DAN OLSON: One of Duke Ellington's definitive interpreters, I assume, is Ella Fitzgerald. What piece have you selected of hers that she does of Ellington's that you think would be a nice illustration?

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: Well, I've chosen Rocking in Rhythm simply because she starts off with this scat singing. Scat singing, as you know, is believed to have been started by Louis Armstrong. But Ella is the quintessential scat singer.

[ELLA FITZGERALD, "ROCKING IN RYTHM"]

DAN OLSON: Ellington wrote jazz. He played jazz. But apparently, maybe all during his life, he took umbrage at being called a jazz man. He thought of himself as a composer.

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: Yes. And I would say even more than jazz, American music. A great many people who follow music of any and all kinds have problems with American music. And I think that it's time for Americans to stop being stepchildren to Europe.

This does not say I don't love European music. I love it. I've been trained in it. But when you go to Europe, they want to hear American music. And they've recognized something that we have here, and they've recognized something that we give to the world, and we refuse to accept it and to perpetuate it. So a great many of our, quote unquote, "just jazz musicians" get their biggest play now in Japan.

France, in different parts of Europe, I think, that it's not that nobody would ever want to give up Mozart of any kind. But I think that we need to realize that this is American, and we need to be proud of what we have to offer.

DAN OLSON: Robert Lee Morris, thank you so much for your time and for coming by and helping us learn a little bit more about Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington.

ROBERT LEE MORRIS: I'm more than pleased to be here.

[ELLA FITZGERALD, "ROCKING IN RYTHM"]

GARY EICHTEN: Ella Fitzgerald singing Duke Ellington's Rocking in Rhythm. Robert Lee Morris is associate professor of music at Macalester College in St. Paul. He was speaking with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson.

The Ellington selections we heard this hour were Nat "King" Cole singing Don't Get Around Much Anymore, the Lee Morris Chorale performing Come Sunday from Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige, Mahalia Jackson singing Come Sunday. We heard two versions, one from 1927, one from 1930s of Ellington's East St. Louis Toodle-O. We also heard Concerto for Cootie and a portion of Black and Tan Fantasy.

So where can you get your hands on some Ellington music? Well, not surprisingly, his old label, RCA Victor, has released a 24-CD collection of Duke Ellington's music. Producer Orrin Keepnews talked with National Public Radio's Bob Edwards about the music and Ellington's players.

ORRIN KEEPNEWS: Johnny Hodges was certainly among the handful of premier alto saxophonists in jazz from the very beginning. And I guess, let's say, in the pre-Charlie Parker period, there's really only Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter to talk about. And Johnny Hodges spent virtually all of his career with Ellington. I guess Sophisticated Lady is one of the great examples.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ORRIN KEEPNEWS: There are a number of pieces through the years that have become Hodges associated. It was a great, great player of Ballard's. So that Ellington when he thought alto-saxophone solo, thought Johnny Hodges.

BOB EDWARDS: Well, when you write something called Concerto for Cootie, it nails it down who you want to play.

ORRIN KEEPNEWS: Cootie Williams was the quintessential Ellington trumpet player, although not the original one in the band, but he was the immediate successor. The first trumpet player in the early Ellington band, a man named Bubber Miley or known as Bubber Miley. And he was succeeded by Cootie Williams.

Cootie Williams was with the band straight on until the very early '40s when in about 1941, I think, strangely enough, he was enticed away by Benny Goodman and worked notably for a few years there, but came back into the fold so that Cootie Williams is again on a lot of the later Ellington recordings.

BOB EDWARDS: It was Bubber Miley, who got East St. Louis Toodle-O.

ORRIN KEEPNEWS: That's right. And Black and Tan Fantasy, the early instrumental classics and that particular muted sound, that oh woo woo mute sound originated with Miley.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I do not.

BOB EDWARDS: That just says Cotton Club to me for some reason. I hear that mingle with the crowd.

ORRIN KEEPNEWS: Well, actually, of course, the Cotton Club played a very, very important role in the early fame of Ellington. He began working at the Cotton Club that celebrated segregated nightclub that was located in Harlem, featured African-American performers and white audiences. But Ellington started to work there quite early.

The band, after a couple of years of existence, got to be designated on records as and his Cotton Club orchestra. And in those days, one of the great things that could happen to you is a late night live broadcast. So there was an NBC line in there, and the Ellington band from the Cotton Club was heard all over the country. And clearly, that was the initial breakthrough.

SPEAKER 1: Hello, everybody. Welcome to our famous Cotton Club. It's great to see so many friends here tonight enjoying themselves in spite of the cover charge. And if you can spare a minute from your merrymaking, I'd like to have the pleasure of introducing the greatest living master of jungle music, the rip roaring harmony hound, none other than Duke Ellington. Thank you, Bo Duke. First number tonight is going to play a brand new little tune entitled the Cotton Club Stomp. Let her go.

BOB EDWARDS: What did he write for Ben Webster?

ORRIN KEEPNEWS: Well, the classic Ben Webster piece is Cotton Tail, a virtuoso job, just showing the tremendous execution at a pretty up tempo.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BOB EDWARDS: If my memory serves me correctly, Ben Webster gets partial composer credit on that. But that happened-- there's a fine line that it's hard to judge. A number of the classic Ellington pieces are written by him, but a number of others are written by him in collaboration with various members of the orchestra. When Billy Strayhorn came into the picture, Strayhorn did a lot of the writing.

ORRIN KEEPNEWS: And without Strayhorn, you don't have A Train. You don't have the signature piece.

BOB EDWARDS: Right. By the very beginning of the '40s, Take the A Train had become the Ellington theme and remained the Ellington theme. And of course, a song title of tremendous significance, particularly to New York people who know perfectly well, as the eventual lyrics to that said, that you got to take the A train if you want to go to Harlem.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

BOB EDWARDS: Keepnews says RCA originally didn't plan to commemorate Ellington's Centennial with such a thorough retrospective. But in the end, it decided nothing less than a complete historical record of Ellington's work for RCA would be fitting.

ORRIN KEEPNEWS: People may have their favorite periods, or maybe they feel that Ellington's attitude at one point, or Ellington's employees at another point served him best. But to me, the best Ellington is the totality of Ellington. And that, of course, is to a limited extent what we have here, the least the RCA Victor totality.

BOB EDWARDS: Jazz producer Orrin Keepnews, he's the co-producer of the Duke Ellington Centennial edition, the complete RCA Victor recordings.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GARY EICHTEN: And that was National Public Radio's Bob Edwards. There are Ellington 100th birthday observations all year long, a big one being held this weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota Orchestra, led by Doc Severinsen, will be playing Ellington music at 8 o'clock tonight and at 8 o'clock again tomorrow night at Orchestra Hall.

Dan Olson produced this hour of our Midday program. We should also note he produced our Vaclav Havel hour on Monday. We also had help this week from Annie Feidt, John Bischoff and Sasha Aslanian. And Sarah Meyer is the producer of our Midday program, Melanie Sommer, our executive producer. I'm Gary Eichten. Thanks for tuning in today.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER 2: On the next All Things Considered, Brown County is undertaking a large scale effort to replant farmers windbreaks and tree groves lost in last year's tornadoes. That story on the next All Things Considered weekdays at 3:00 on Minnesota Public Radio.

GARY EICHTEN: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. We have a sunny sky, 71 degrees at KNOW-FM 91.1, Minneapolis and St. Paul. Sunny-all afternoon with a high reaching the mid 70s, clear tonight with a low in the low to mid 40s, and then sunny and warm tomorrow with a high in the upper 70s, very nice on Sunday as well.