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Product Details
Hardcover: 496 pages
Publisher: Gotham; First Edition edition (October 17, 2013)
I was going to write an in-depth review but why? If you're familiar with Teachout's great book on Louis Armstrong, this is very much in that mold. Plus, when I looked closely at the cover photograph, I noticed that it was Ellington's left side--with the long scar from a razor cut inflicted by his wife in 1929--something he attempted to hide. So I was intrigued and fairly sure that this was no glossy, shallow (there's 81 pages of Source Notes!) look at Ellington. While Teachout never really is able (through the circumstance of Ellington not being able to speak for himself) to delve into the nitty-gritty of who and what Ellington really was (he never talked much about himself), his penchant for detail gives the reader a long inside look at Ellington himself.
Some details about the man's lifestyle (his self-centeredness for one, taking credit for compositions not entirely his own is another), and his views on life and people (he was a lifelong procrastinator and treated people--especially women--poorly) might surprise you. His life, both in music (most of the book) and out, the music itself (Teachout feels that Ellington may have tried to go further musically than he was able), and the people (Billy Strayhorn and their relationship is a good example) are looked at in depth. Plus, the many musicians/people he crossed paths with (including the 900 musicians who passed through his bands) throughout his life are open to Teachout's research and help immensely in giving a new, valuable, and interesting look at Ellington--even though his friends and band mates struggled to understand the "real" Ellington.Read more ›
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23 of 28 people found the following review helpful
The intent of this book is clear from the first page: to knock a revered jazz legend off his pedestal and drag him through as much mud as possible. Only the author can explain his motivation. Was it simply to generate controversy and publicity?
Here are Mr. Ellington’s chief offenses, as laid out in the Prologue: 1.) he was a terrible procrastinator, always frantically working at the last minute to complete charts for new compositions--this has been well known for quite some time; 2.) he was a sex-crazed serial adulterer--he abandoned his wife, Edna, but refused to grant her a divorce while shacking up with numerous other women; 3.) he stole musical ideas from others and claimed them as his own creations; 4.) his whole life was a facade, with the real man always hidden from the public’s view; 5.) he only produced a very few worthwhile, true extended works, many being “shapeless suites”; 6.) he was “a somewhat better than average stride pianist” [to be fair, the author credits him later in the book with some brilliant solo performances]; 7.) he employed a relentless public relations apparatus to hype his accomplishments and only present to the world the face he wanted perceived--so shouldn’t he be credited with being a celebrity ahead of his time?
Chapter 1: The author attempts to put the black community of dawn-of-20th-Century Washington, DC on a psychoanalyst’s couch. He appears obsessed with a battle for status within this community based on skin tone; this will be a recurring theme throughout the book. Teachout says Duke benefited from his relatively light coloration (“coffee with cream”)--as if he had a choice of how much melanin his skin contained!Read more ›
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
I am not an Ellington scholar, by any stretch of the imagination. But I have read quite a bit about him and have played and studied 100 or more of his 3 1/2 minute chestnuts. That said, I can say without reservation that this is the best single piece of Ellington scholarship I've read to date. There are opinions galore, of course, but most appear to be based on fairly solid research. (The bibliography and footnotes section at the end of the book are as extensive as I've ever seen in a biography.) I'd certainly recommend you read Terry's book before you read Duke's autobiography, which, to me, was largely a waste of time. As in most things personal to Ellington, the concept of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth appear to have been largely alien to him.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Terry Teachout's new bio of Ellington is briskly and engagingly written, and very informative. He has mined about as much personal information on Ellington as we are likely to get. There's no heavy musical analysis but lots of information about the music. He keeps the story clipping along and provides plenty of interesting anecdotes and social history of the period. I would highly recommend it for established fans, who will get a clearer understanding of Ellington as a person, as well as for the lay person, who will get a broad overview of Ellington's work and a nice glimpse of jazz culture.
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14 of 19 people found the following review helpful
If you want to find out how much of a slimebag he was, read Don George's book, Sweet Man. If you want to find out how much of a credit stealer he was, read David Hajdu's book on Strayhorn. If you want a great overall view of how people saw him, read either Mercer Ellington's book or Stuart Nicholson's Reminiscing in Tempo. If you want to read a book where the author cannot keep his own voice out of the text for more than a page, read this book. Teachout's problem is two-fold. One, he comes to the same conclusion most older author's on Ellington's career did, where the best period is the Blanton-Webster band. Two, he constantly suggests that Ellington wanted to be a composer at the level of a classical musician, and that he failed doing it. Both of these ideas cloud the entire book, which (typically) short changes the last three decades of his life. Teachout comes across as being what my mother would call "snippy." For those of us who view Ellington's work as a great front runner for a lot of modern music in many fields, we let the classical concepts of his work go. It is what it is, and in that, it has a lot of merit. Furthermore, there is the amazing story in merely keeping his band together under the banner for so long it became an institution. Having read numerous other books on Ellington, this one ranks as just a brief overview. Most of his research seems to be out of other author's work. I would worry that suggesting this as a first read for someone interested in Ellington, would turn them off.
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