Customer Reviews

Duke Ellington and His World

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4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I found this book reasonably entertaining, approaching, you might say "attacking", Duke Ellington from a psychologizing angle. Interesting. Few people ever really knew Ellington, and the ones who did didn't talk much about him, at least not in any revealing way. And the man was clearly an affable narcissist, with a tendency to be passively cruel to band members and some family members. If this personality hadn't existed, Thomas Mann would have invented him, with a little help from Freud. And of course there's nothing wrong with taking a figure so frequently deified down a couple of pegs. So the author's tack seemed, for the nonce, acceptable.
Unfortunately, I noticed quite a few oddities, in dates, attribution of composer credit, and elsewhere. I also wondered how this guy could have interviewed all these old timers, this late in the era. And I'd never heard of a trombonist of this name who played with Benny Carter, Luis Russell etc. in the Forties. And though I'm a thorough Ellington fan and personal admirer, I'm no scholar. So I had to wait till I stumbled on the "brief" by Steven Lasker, who is a scholar, to realize what a hoax this book is. Stick "depanorama stratemann lasker lawrence routledge" into the google search engine. You'll get a issue of the Duke Ellington Music Society bulletin from late 2001. Read it before you buy this book.
Routledge didn't originate the contract on this book. They bought it from some other outfit. Routledge used to be a standard issue publisher of unreadable academic jabber of the paramarxist school, parasitizing on English universities. In the last few years they've tried to break into the American popular market. Hence opportunistic stuff like this.
There's a Duke Ellington industry out there, appealing to scholars, musicologists and plain enthusiasts of good music. So there are bogus reissues on CD and preposterous books like this. The same thing happens with Mark Twain; you come to expect it. But damn Routledge for getting involved in the seamy side of it as they scramble to find a place in the dwindling high end market.

A. H. Lawrence has written a book filled with errors on almost every page. Lawrence's lack of scholarship will seriously call into question the lack of Routledge's editorial integrity if not its motives - unless the publisher decides to recall the product.

If you really want to see this book, wait until it is remaindered or piled on the "free" table - that should be soon.

Duke Ellington is such a towering subject that any book about him contains some items of interest. This is the first full length biography I've read on Ellington, although I did take a course with Mark Tucker, author of "The Ellington Reader" in college. This book is written by a psychologist and a musician of the 1940s, not a researcher, and the previous reviewers have criticized him for a lack of research. Lawrence relies heavily on Sonny Greer and Mercer Ellington as interview subjects and there may be the value in skimming through this biography. As a drummer, the story of how Greer got his magnificent drum kit that you see in all of the 30s and 40s footage of the Ellington brought me a smile. Stories like this lead me to believe that Lawrence would have been better served facilitating a memoir of Sonny Greer and some of his musical contacts [he admits that he was trying to do this until Hentoff's "Hear me Talkin' to Ya came out in his introduction] than writing a flawed biography of Ellington, a towering figure who deserves a thorough scholarly biography like the one that Lewis Porter did for John Coltrane.

The book has two other big flaws. First, the 50s and 60s are really quickly treated and he will go through a year of the band's life in a couple of pages. I personally was first drawn to Ellington's music through this musically rich period and while the creation of some of Ellington's key suites like the Far East Suite is mentioned, I would have liked a better sense of what life in the band was like at this time.

The biggest problem, here, however, is that Lawrence the psychologist intervenes at times and leaves the reader with a sour taste in his mouth. I do not need speculation on the psychological nature and "narcissistic" elements of Ellington's personality. I'd rather get detailed research as to what happened in his personal life from varied sources and allow me, the intelligent reader, to draw my own conclusions. The fact that the last paragraph of the book concludes with a statement of his "profound narcissism" and how Ellington just wanted "everybody in the palm of my hand", diminishes the ultimate musical and spiritual legacy that Ellington left behind.

Right now, I don't see a major full length biography of Ellington on the market that I can completely endorse. This book has some value as a quick, though flawed, overview of the band while introducing members like the great Sonny Greer.

2 stars.

--SD

This abysmally inaccurate "biography" should never have been published. It is obvious that neither Routledge nor A.H. Lawrence had any reverence for the facts, despite the liberal use of plagarized passages from authoritative works. There are many books on Ellington that are well worth having. Not this one.

This book is so filled with factual errors (wrong dates, misspellings of names, etc.) that it is impossible to take seriously. Please don't waste your money.

[Now that I have the book in hand, I can see why it might irritate and even offend a few Ellington fans. The writer doesn't show a great deal of sympathy much less empathy for the Duke's human qualities much less any insights into the pressures of the music business, multiplied manyfold when you're the star-icon-leader-moderator-party guest-soloist-legend from whom much is expected. The book reports a number of facts, and no doubt "factoids," about Duke's life much in the manner of a tabloid publication. Nevertheless, for those who know Duke, and who think they can feel his beating heart next to theirs, it's great to have the information. The reader is free to dismiss and accept, and to flesh out and qualify as need be. I wouldn't recommend the book for a newbie or "outsider"any more than some of the below-the-belt sniping accounts of Sinatra's life. But unlike so many Americans these days, who apparently never lived through the '60s--or perhaps never went beyond the Salem witch trials--I have no difficulty matching some of the unpleasantries about Duke with the equally unattractive qualities of the reader. So judgment is beside the point not to mention premature (shouldn't it be preceded by understanding?). The book is no accolade or encomium, nor does it do such a great job in communicating the positive qualities of Duke. But if you're a good reader (which implies an "active" reader), you will be a participant with the author, perhaps supplying the other voice, or alternative point of view, when it's missing.

Regarding the unresolved question of why Duke would not continue with drummer Bobby Durham, the Maestro would no doubt feel comfortable with a "swing machine" like Bobby, a favorite drummer of Oscar Peterson and Monty Alexander. Not enough has been made of the impact of Oscar Peterson on swing. He made the absolutely synchronous, unfailing statement of the bass note and hi-hat a requirement for a sense of swing so kinetic it elevates the listener, no less than a meditating follower of the Maharishi, right off the floor. The "freedom" communicated by the Oscar-modeled rhythm section belies the drill-team requisites to its achievement. Duke's sense of time is looser, more related to the New Orleans bands, than the rhythm sections-on-ball-bearings that followed in Oscar's wake. My guess is that Duke felt like Bobby was climbing all over him and preferred a drummer who was a tad more forgiving with his beat. In fact, Duke's use of the rhythm section more often brings to mind Monk than Oscar.]

A Google search led me to this book, which has been printed on the internet, and I soon found myself addicted. I never knew that Bobby Durham (phenomenal drummer) had played half a year with the band let alone been fired by Duke (who is said never to have fired any musician). So what if the book relies on too few interviews, is not reliable, is less than 100% positive in its praise of Duke Ellington. I'd rather hear what Mercer Ellington or Lawrence Brown actually had to say than read another one of those faux new journalism accounts in which one author presumes to tell us what Miles Davis and all of his detractors actually "thought." If you're aware of Duke Ellington's significance and accomplishments you can't help but welcome one more piece of the puzzle, regardless of how small a piece it is. I started trying to print the thing before realizing the cost to my sleep, stamina, and finances. Thank goodness, I found a copy on Amazon. Ten previous reviewers have given the book a single star. From the pages I read I can tell you right now that there's no way it can been less than three. And if, after receiving and reading the entire book, I'm wrong, you'll be the first to hear about it--and I promise not to attempt reselling it.