| Contents |
"I want to tell America" -- "I just couldn't be shackled": fortunate son, 1899-1917 -- "Soft and gut-bucket": becoming a professional, 1917-1926 -- "Only my own music": with Irving Mills, 1926-1927 -- "The utmost significance": at the Cotton Club, 1927-1929 -- "I better scratch out something": becoming a genius, 1929-1930 -- "A higher plateau": becoming a star, 1931-1933 -- "The way the president travels": on the road, 1933-1936 -- "Swing is stagnant": diminuendo in blue, 1936-1939 -- "The eyes in the back of my head": with Billy Strayhorn, 1938-1939 -- "The sea of expectancy": the Blanton-Webster band, 1939-1940 -- "A message for the world": jump for joy, 1941-1942 -- "I don't write jazz": Carnegie Hall, 1942-1946 -- "More a business than an art": into the wilderness, 1946-1955 -- "I was born in 1956": crescendo in blue, 1955-1960 -- "Fate's being kind to me": apotheosis, 1960-1967 -- "That big yawning void": alone in a crowd, 1967-1974. |
| Abstract |
Edward Kennedy 'Duke' Ellington was arguably the greatest jazz composer of the twentieth century - and an impenetrably enigmatic personality whom no one, not even his closest friends, claimed to understand. His music, too, was powerful and entirely original. Andre Previn compared him to Stravinsky and Prokofiev, Percy Grainger to Bach and Delius. But in fact he was very much his own man. The grandson of a slave, Ellington dropped out of high school to become a musical showman of incomparable suavity, as comfortable in Carnegie Hall as in the nightclubs where he honed his famous style. When he raised his fingers, the music that blazed out had its own unique richness and range. He wrote hundreds of compositions, many of which remain beloved standards, and sought inspiration in an endless string of transient lovers, concealing himself behind a smiling mask of flowery language and ironic charm. In this revealing biography, the author skillfully peels away the countless layers of Ellington's evasion to tell the unvarnished truth about a creative genius and musical pioneer. |
