The golden age of Duke Ellington

In 1931, as the great depression was biting its hardest, Duke Ellington left the economic security of a long-term residency in Harlem’s Cotton Club to begin what would turn out to be many years of touring with his orchestra. It was an important move in a strategy that would reposition Ellington as a serious composer whose music could be set alongside that of the great Europeans.

By the end of the decade, Ellington was being compared with Liszt, Stravinsky and Ravel and his popularity breached all social divisions, pushing hard against the boundaries of racial segregation.

This month, for the first time, the 1930s recordings that helped confirm the Duke’s artistic status have been collected into a single 11-CD set by mail-order specialist Mosaic. These recordings reveal Ellington to be a creative master consolidating his craft with such consistency and potency that the first recorded versions of such classic Ellingtonia as “Caravan” and “In a Sentimental Mood” still sound fresh.

Ellington’s hectic touring diary and many commissions took in the full range of popular music and were enthusiastically received by all levels of society. Arranged chronologically, the CDs of this set juxtapose smooth, rhythmically staid dance music and brash film scores with the rich vignettes that established his reputation.

The set opens in 1932 and immediately produces an Ellington classic, “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got that Swing”, the first outing for vocalist Ivie Anderson. Six tracks in, “St Louis Blues” confirms the richness of the Ellington palette as new textures fly by every eight bars to set up singer Bing Crosby – the slippery rhythms, moaning horns and a daring change of tempo form a brilliant contrast to Crosby’s cool vocals.

Most successful swing bands were organised on authoritarian principles and used standardised arrangements so that musicians could easily be replaced. Ellington’s orchestra, by contrast, was a living organism made up of strong, individual musical personalities.

When musicians did have to be replaced, the sound of the band could change dramatically, as when the tragically short-lived bass virtuoso Jimmy Blanton joined in November 1939, or when saxophonist Ben Webster joined shortly after. The final tracks, four re-orchestrated classics of the Ellington repertoire, were the first recordings by the “Blanton/Webster” band. The sombre mood and impressionist palette of “Mood Indigo” and “Stormy Weather” ushered in a new era for Ellington; they were the first flush of what many argue is the greatest jazz orchestra ever.

Its rich individual talents get more room to shine on Duke Ellington: The 1936-49 Small Group Sessions, also released on Mosaic. The original recordings were sold at a budget price with the new jukebox market in mind but were produced with the same attention to detail as the orchestral recordings.

Ellington used the smaller format as a laboratory: “Caravan” is one example of a composition making its debut in the smaller format, while Blanton was introduced to a wider public through two duets with his employer – but the real reward is hearing Ellington and his soloists stretch out over elegant, bittersweet arrangements that maximise the impact of the stripped-down brass. “Jeep’s Blues”, “Echoes of Harlem” and “Hodge Podge” are well known, but the consistency is extraordinary with compositions such as “Kitchen Mechanics Day”, “Toasted Pickle” and “Rent Party Blues” capturing the everyday with dignity and realism, though the consecutive ordering of alternative takes makes for a somewhat specialist listen.

Taken together, the two sets confirm Duke Ellington’s genius at capturing the opulence, harsh realities and aspirations of New York in its art-deco prime. Intimate details of life in each social layer were melded into a single unifying aesthetic.

Harvey Cohen’s recently published biography Duke Ellington’s America shows this to be a central strand of Ellington’s work. Cohen sets out a wealth of biographical detail and social context on the composer’s role in America’s racial politics and his quest for artistic status.

By the time these recordings were made, Ellington, who was born in Washington DC in 1899, was already beginning to be accepted as more than just another Negro purveyor of hot music and licentious rhythms. He had mixed professionally with the upper crust and the lower echelons in his home town, but his long residency playing to the “high-class”, racially segregated clientele of the Cotton Club gave him the chance to perfect every nuance in his composer’s palette.

But music rarely speaks for itself and, Cohen explains, Ellington could never have broken the mould without the brilliantly sustained marketing campaign conceived by music entrepreneur Irving Mills, who became Ellington’s manager and business partner in autumn 1926. Cohen’s chapters on the 1930s are focused on the mutual benefits that flowed from their relationship. Ellington expanded his audience, broke down racial barriers and got more control over his music; Mills – a second-generation Jewish immigrant – made handsome profits from a commodity that was marketable across racial boundaries at a time when extreme racial stereotypes were the norm.

All this was played out not only against a rapidly changing market, new technologies and power struggles within the music industry, but also, of course, against the ebbs and flows of racial politics, economic collapse and recovery, and the perceived need for an authentic American art form. Cohen impressively pulls these many threads together with academic rigour and a strong narrative drive.

‘The Complete 1932-1940 Brunswick, Columbia and Master Recordings of Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra’ and ‘Duke Ellington, the 1936-49 Small Group Sessions’ are both available by mail order from Mosaic, www.mosaicrecords.com

‘Duke Ellington’s America’ by Harvey Cohen is published by the University of Chicago Press, 688 pp, RRP£26