Fifty years since the death of Duke Ellington. Did you know ? This jazz giant made Bordeaux dance

Little Edward’s parents want the best for their child and so pay for piano lessons. Unfortunately, the latter is not really happy with this project and prefers to let off steam during baseball games with his team, the Senators. But his sporting career came to an abrupt end after a skull injury, quickly replaced by jazz when he discovered the ragtime style of pianist Harvey Brooks.

A busy career

After a promising start in Washington in the 1920s, the artist decided to leave his hometown for New York. There, he played in many clubs in the Harlem neighborhood, sometimes with his group “The Duke’s Serenaders” sometimes as a solo artist. After the group disbanded, Duke quickly created a new one, assisted by Sony Greer under the name “The Washingtonians” and quickly gained popularity. They crisscross the United States on numerous tours, appear live on jazz radio stations and are even hired to play at the Cotton Club, the most exclusive jazz cabaret in the “Big Apple”.

Duke was launched at full speed on the road to success but was forced to slow down as the 1930s arrived. The financial crisis of the time was also felt in the musical world and his records had difficulty selling. Despite everything, the Duke and his orchestra survived thanks to the radio, which was very popular in its time. In the 1940s, the Duke entered a new era: he hired new musicians in his big band orchestra such as tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, signed a new exclusive contract with Columbia, and recorded a series of pieces. His biggest project is to lengthen the jazz pieces which have a limited duration of 3 minutes and becomes the first jazzman with “long pieces”. With this feat, he raised this musical genre to the rank of “serious” music in the same way as classical music.

During his career, Duke Ellington composed more than a thousand songs and collaborated with great artists such as singer Ella Fitzgerald in 1957, pianist (conductor) Count Basie and trumpeter Louis Armstrong in 1961, or the saxophonist John Coltrane in 1962.

Making the whole world dance… and Bordeaux

He will have made the whole of society dance, the poor and the rich alike, throughout the world, playing in the most beautiful cities on the planet. On numerous occasions, he landed in Paris, in the capital’s popular clubs.

“Four o’clock in the morning at “Maxim’s”: Duke on piano

This is what the journalist Denis Morellan told us in the columns of “Sud Ouest” in 1958 after a private performance in a Parisian club: “The great American jazz stars never play their instrument in public outside of concerts, this is prohibited to them by contract. Also, this photo is exceptional. It’s during the night from Wednesday to Thursday. Duke Ellington has just given the last of his four concerts in Paris. He found himself with the Jacques Brothers, Yves Montand, Claude Bolling and a few friends at Maxim’s, where, naturally, he refused to sit at the piano. But it’s now 4 a.m., we’ve had a few whiskeys… And the Duke has given up. He plays for Claude Bessy, of the Opera, Maria Esteban, Colette Marchand and Daphné Dèle, star of the ballets of the Marquis de Cuevas. »

This king of jazz also made a stopover in Moscow, Dakar… But also and especially in Bordeaux!

In 1969, the “duke” was in town for the Sigma festival. This contemporary art event took place in the Gironde capital every autumn from 1965 to 1996 and had the ambition to question all artistic creations. Over the years, this festival has acquired a national and international reputation for being the most avant-garde cultural event in France (besides Paris). During Sigma-5, 4,000 Girondins can boast of having attended the concert of “A young man of 70 years” in the legendary hall of the Alhambra.

But that’s not all, in 1971, the musician returned but his nickname had not changed, the “young man” of yesteryear became the “old Master”. This new regime does not detract from the beauty of the moment, and the public is still there as we can read in the article published at the time: “Last night, at the Alhambra, three thousand Bordelais had come to see and hear the ancestor, the pioneer, one of the last “greats””.

During his long career, the “duke” became a “god” of jazz and for our journalist at the time, hearing him was akin to a religious act: “A jazz concert is like a mass. We go there with the same intention of contemplation, enhanced with a little musical piety and above all a lot of joy. And when Duke is in Bordeaux it is a pilgrimage not to be missed.”

“Jazz in mourning, Duke Ellington is dead”

Unfortunately all good things come to an end. And that of the “duke” arrived on May 24, 1974. Just 50 years ago, this living legend joined his friends who had gone before him. The day after his death, “Sud Ouest” headlined “Jazz in mourning, Duke Ellington is dead” and wrote on the front page: “The world-renowned jazz pianist, composer and conductor Duke Ellington died yesterday, at Columbia Hospital in New York following a lung infection. Real name Edward Kennedy Ellington, the one Gunther Schuller called “the greatest American composer”, was 74 years old.

Many tributes

After his death, tributes poured in, such as in 1978, when Cat Anderson and six other musicians organized an event at the Alhambra. Here is what we could read in the newspaper “Sud Ouest”: “The Bordeaux-Jazz sessions present, under the aegis of ADAMA, Tuesday May 9 at 9 p.m., at the Alhambra: “Tributes to Duke Ellington” (Tribute to Duke Ellington).

Since this event, there has been no shortage of tributes and orchestras in his memory. The Duke Orchestra has perpetuated the legacy of Duke Ellington since its creation in 2003. In 2012, the orchestra visited the region, at the Olympia in Arcachon and began its show with “Take the A Train”, a must-see of the musician.

Even recently, groups are inspired by the style of this legendary jazzman, such as the Harlem Swing Orchestra, which was in concert during the Fontdouce Festival in Saint-Bris-des-Bois in Charente-Maritime in 2022.