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Duke Ellington’s production as a composer

A survey of a selection of sources to his entire production and a methodological discussion.

by

Jørgen Mathiasen

Here is in chronological order a selection of assessments of the size of Ellington’s production, as matters were in 1999:

One notices that the first assessment was proposed by Jan Bruér as early as in 1975, that is shortly after the death of Duke Ellington, - two researchers, namely André Hodeir and Wiedemann have changed their assessment, and the assessments are very different. Sometimes it is one result, sometimes another and these are figures not suited to be presented to an audience generally interested in Ellington. The figures create uncertainty about the quality of the research, but below I shall present some results of my own survey and also try to explain why these widely diverging assessments can nevertheless be said to be all talking about the same thing, if a couple are ignored.

 As expected new literature emerged at the Centennial and with it has come important new information with regard to Ellington’s production as a composer. I’d like to mention three publications: Firstly we saw an update of the Italian discography on Ellington, now with the title The New DESOR, and compiled by Massagli and Volonté. Wiedemann has assessed that the first edition contained information on more than 15,000 recordings – by far the largest jazz discography. Secondly Van de Leur published a survey on Billy Strayhorn as a composer. The authors of the Strayhorn literature have more than anyone else questioned the composer credits of the Ellingtonian music, and with Van de Leur’s book we came closer to a clarification of the co-operation between Strayhorn and Ellington. Thirdly John Franceschina published a survey on Duke Ellington's music for the theatre – the first of its kind – in which the considerable effort in this field by the Duke was examined. The book also contained a large contribution to a list of works.

 To these works come weighty contributions from Ellington himself in Music Is My Mistress, in the discographies by Willie E. Timner and Ole Nielsen and the filmography by Klaus Stratemann. Contributions are to be found in many other works, for instance in Wiedemann’s articles, which also include a discussion of the problems associated with a listing of works. During my survey of a selection of sources still more methodological problems of compilation emerged, however, and with these we begin to suspect a possible explanation of the uneven and divergent results of the earlier research.

 Wiedemann also stressed the many inconsistencies in the literature, and it is necessary to apply a source critical apparatus to this literature. This has not been the least important part of this project, and since the sources are quite comprehensive, the database of the project contains more than 35,000 records. The survey of the sources has resulted in a model for the structure of Duke's entire production and a new assessment of the size of the oeuvre, but before discussing this I’d like to mention a couple of methodological problems: The list in Music Is My Mistress contains more the 900 titles with composer credits, but we should not take for granted that Elling­ton is the author of all these compositions. The Strayhorn research has corrected some of the credits by deleting Ellington. Certain members of the Ellington orchestra claimed that their contribution to the music was not duly credited in all cases. Ellington is not always the cause of this, since members of the orchestra considered musical ideas as commodities they could sell to the leader of the band.

 There are also pieces credited to Mercer Ellington, where Duke has had an audible influence and rightfully should have been credited. Finally the Strayhorn research has also added Ellington as a composer of certain pieces he has not been connected to previously. Since there is some uncertainty about the provenance, the survey has been directed towards music where Ellington in the sources has been credited as a composer.

 The sources divide the material into pieces and works, but before we reach that point, we meet the orthographic problem:

The six titles of the table indicate six different pieces in Ellington’s production and show how the plural element and articles may suggest a musical difference. If they do so one has to evaluate in each case whether or not a musical difference is there, but there are examples of exchanges of each of the pairs.

 There are also examples of how the Ellington organization, the record industry and the authors of the literature between them have created an almost chaotic collection of titles. This is for instance the case with the twelve variants of Brown-Skin Gal In The Calico Gown:

Beside the various spellings the literature has an almost impenetrable pattern for the chronology of The Brownskin Gal.

 In numerous cases the same thematic material has more than one title, and together with the varying spellings this means that several titles may be connected to one and the same theme. How quickly new titles could be invented is shown by the following sixteen variant titles for a single item of thematic material:

A principle by Ellington is that a new title does not necessarily mean a new composition and the authors of the literature have concentrated an impressive musical effort in finding all the titles of a thematic material, and – with regard to a couple of discographies – to collecting these titles in sets. Title sets is a crucial notion in discussing the structure of Ellington’s output and without this notion is it difficult to get a comprehensive idea of the oeuvre. The Brown-Skin Gal and Midnight Indigo indicate two of the title sets of the output.  Goof is a third such title set, irrespective of the fact that there is just one single title in this set.

 There are quite a number of inconsistencies in the literature with regard to the compound of the title set, and it is in some cases like going through a labyrinth to reach the goal. Here is an excerpt of a complex set of sources to the title set John Sanders’ Blues. In this table the index titles in the sources have been underlined and below these are the alternate titles. The table shows the inconsistencies in both cases:

The sources also disagree on the next title set, but apart from this the set (see below) has the character of a model. This title set is very often indexed as C Jam Blues. On the basis of the dating I have used C Blues as the index title. Such titles belong to the main group I, which also marks the inner core of Ellington’s production. Then follow three subsequent title variants, all of them recorded, and two of them copyrighted and listed in Music Is My Mistress. Main group II marks the outer core of the production. In main group III we find a number of dated and undated variants of the titles of the two other main groups. These can be placed on the periphery of the production, and with this we have a model for a rough division of the entire source material of the Ellingtonian oeuvre.

In this example we see an original composition and its various variants. It is well-known that Ellington has also made contrafacts of his own pieces as well as pieces by other composers, and such pieces are – just like the derivatives – in the literature considered original compositions by Ellington, and as such parts of the inner core of the production.

 The pieces denote the largest part of the Ellington oeuvre, but as I have already touched on, there is another group of compositions which we may name 'works'. Among the Ellingtonian compositions titles like Free As A Bird, My People and Paris Blues are used for pieces and also for works, and so we need to distinguish between these two categories. With few exceptions this differentiation is also used in the literature beginning with Ellington’s autobiography. Apparently his notion of a work was closely related to the so-called extended works. In any case compositions, which in Music Is My Mistress by way of typography are marked as works, have a title and are divided into several thematic parts, which for their part are as a rule provided with titles which are used when the part is being performed or recorded independently. When the former condition is not met, it is not a work. It is for instance rather remarkable that the programme music composition A Tone Parallel To Harlem, which consists of different parts and lasts more than thirteen minutes on the recording, has been deemed to be a piece. Works are also title sets and are in the model treated along the same guidelines as pieces.

 When works have been included, a number of additional results appear among the total sources now available, and with these we also arrive at a new assessment of Ellington’s production as a composer:

Works and pieces (inner core) have been totalled up to 1694 titles, which is equivalent to the number of title sets of the corpus. The outer core adds 538 additional thematic variants of the first group, bringing the total core up to 2232 titles. In addition the corpus contains another 951 titles making a total of 3183 titles. We can now return to the earlier attempts at assessment of the oeuvre, this time arranged by number:

Beginning with Ken Rattenbury, he could have made a better assessment on the foundation he chose, but apart from this the foundation itself is incomplete. At the other extreme we have Hodeir’s first assessment of 6,000, a figure, which is still unaccounted for. It is regrettable that this figure is to be found in The New Grove, while Hodeir's and Schuller's revised estimate is to be found in Jazz Grove. Wiedemann’s survey aimed – as does mine – at the inner core of the oeuvre, and I can confirm the accuracy of his assessment, when taking into consideration the sources available in 1991. The result of my survey, 1,700 title sets, is based on additional sources, which have added new title sets. The most frequent assessment is still the number 2,000. (It was for instance repeated in the latest edition of Politikens Jazzleksikon, 2003.) There is reason to believe that this assessment all along has denoted the total core summed up according to the principles I have outlined. In any case the number was up to Ellington’s centennial consistent with the sources, but it has lost its value after the appearance of updated or new sources.

 The sources also make some contributions to the issue of composer credits. Among other things they show that Ellington had many musical collaborators. In about 450 cases he is credited together with others. In more than 1900 cases, however, he is credited solely. The business ability of Ellington the bandleader is well known, and when Ellington expressed regret that his careers as a bandleader and as a composer were being confused, he was contributing to the confusion himself.

 Billy Strayhorn was by far the most important collaborator. Impresario Irving Mills is among those relatively frequently credited too, but his musical contribution to the oeuvre is disputed. Apart from that there is reason to mention the orchestra members Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard and Mercer Ellington. The two last-mentioned figure approximately with the same frequency as Peter Tchaikovsky does in connection with Ellington and Strayhorn’s arrangement of the Nutcracker-suite, which just goes to show how dominating a position Ellington had as the composer for the orchestra.

 As previously mentioned there have been disputes with regard to some composer credits, - approximately 130 titles of the material. Certain members of the orchestra were credited on early versions of Mood Indigo and Sophisticated Lady but their names disappeared from later versions. In some cases a composer credit in one source is a lyricist credit in another, which for instance is the case of Irving Mills and Sophisticated Lady. The number marks exclusively that there are inconsistencies in approximately 130 cases and each case should be treated independently.

 The largest part of the oeuvre was written for the orchestra, while only a small number of title sets are connected with movies and television. John Franceschina’s survey made it clear, however, that an important part of Ellington’s production as a composer – approximately 30% of all title sets – is related to his efforts, largely frustrated, as a composer for the stage, but this often disappears from the overall picture of Ellington. Interest is concentrated on the music for the orchestra.

 The literature on the oeuvre contains three types of dating, as the example ”C Blues” above shows.  These are datings of the time of composition, datings connected to a piece being performed or recorded, and copyright datings. Distributed on the three levels 95% of all title sets are dated and this gives us an outline, albeit an incomplete one, of the chronology of the overall corpus. It is well-known that Ellington was ambivalent with regard to the label jazz and he is frequently quoted for the remark "We stopped using the word jazz in 1943". The survey has a correction to this as it shows that not only did Ellington use the word jazz in his titles after 1943, but that he did so more frequently than he had done before 1943.

 Finally I would like to stress the importance of working source critically with the Ellington literature. In this respect it is in this case particularly necessary to consult more than one source for each question, and to do this on the basis of a well-founded understanding of a particular source's worth to Ellington research generally, and a grasp of the mutual relation of the various sources. To read the literature on the simple assumption that it reflects accumulated knowledge is to invite trouble. There are errors, shortcomings and uncertainties in all major sources on Duke Ellington – of course not always to the same extent – and the source critical aspect has so far been given insufficient priority in the Ellington literature.

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