Duke Ellington's America /

This massive work is unlike any other volume in the extensive Ellington literature. Cohen (cultural history, King's College London, UK) examines Ellington in the context of culture, looking at various areas of his life and career. Foremost is Ellington's relation to racial matters and the civil rights movement. Ellington rarely made public pronouncements or used high-profile forums to express his commitment to bettering the condition of African Americans, but Cohen makes a convincing case about Ellington's lifelong commitment to the cause. Using documents from the Smithsonian Institution's Ellington archives, the author also explores business aspects of Duke's long career, particularly his complex relationship with longtime manager Irving Mills. Among other topics investigated is Ellington's sense about religion, and how that led to his three late-career "sacred concerts." Cohen also scrutinizes the Ellington orchestra's many international tours, including those sponsored by the State Department. Although John Hasse's Beyond Category (CH, Mar'94, 31-3712) is still the most concise biography of Ellington, and the best discussion of the music is found in works such as Gunther Schuller's Early Jazz (CH, Jul'68) and The Swing Era (CH, Sep'89, 27-0234), the present study illuminates different aspects of the jazz giant's life and makes an important contribution to Ellingtonia. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. K. R. Dietrich Ripon College

THE idea of a substantial book about a major musical figure that pays relatively little attention to his music might seem counterintuitive - or, to put it less politely, pointless. That "Duke Ellington's America" succeeds as well as it does is a tribute both to its author and to its subject. Arguing that Duke Ellington's "significance went far beyond the musical realm," Harvey G. Cohen, a cultural historian who teaches at King's College London, places Ellington's life as a public figure and "culture hero" in a larger social and political context. Others have written about his connection to the civil rights movement, or the many State Department tours on which he and his remarkable band functioned as cultural ambassadors during the cold war. Cohen makes such matters his primary concern. There are not many artists whose lives can bear the weight of such a non-art-oriented treatment. Ellington, who for much of his career was not just a musician but also a symbol - of jazz as high art, of America as a land of opportunity - is one of them, and the story of his place in the world turns out to be well worth telling. Cohen's in-depth examination of Ellington and civil rights is especially fascinating. Those who don't know much about Ellington might assume from his charming but aloof public persona that he floated serenely above worldly matters like the struggle for racial equality. Cohen demonstrates otherwise, expertly detailing Ellington's contributions to the cause - as a composer who addressed racial pride in ambitious works like "Black, Brown and Beige" and "My People," and as a high-profile exemplar of dignity in the face of prejudice. ("I started my own civil rights movement in the '30s," Ellington said in 1965. "I went down South without federal troops.") But even the aficionado might be surprised to learn that those contributions were not always universally applauded, or even acknowledged, by Ellington's own people. In 1951, a number of African-American newspapers printed an article in which Ellington was quoted as saying that blacks "ain't ready" for integration and that segregation was "something that nothing can be done about." Ellington was quick to respond that he had been misquoted (Cohen agrees that at the very least his words were taken out of context), but not quick enough; the article, Cohen writes, "tarnished his long reputation as a race leader in the black community" for years. That setback coincided with what Cohen accurately terms the nadir of Ellington's career, before his orchestra emerged from its "toughest period as the only big band to tour and record continually through the postwar era without an extended hiatus." Cohen's analysis of how Ellington negotiated the vagaries of the music business, and particularly how hard he worked to remain relevant in a fickle marketplace (there were even fleeting efforts in the mid-1950s "to affix the marketing term 'rock and roll' to the Ellington orchestra"), is among this book's many strengths. Unfortunately, Cohen has almost nothing of interest to say when the subject turns, as it inevitably must, to the music itself. Does a sentence like "'New York City Blues,' a track concocted in the studio by Ellington, functioned as a beautiful jazz miniature, full of personality, redolent of a late-night cab ride past Central Park up to Harlem" do anything to enhance our understanding of Ellington's art, or even to tell us what this piece actually sounds like? His comment that the 1966 album "Far East Suite" is "as good as anything Ellington ever released" and his characterization of three early-1970s albums as "worthy additions to the Ellington canon that should be much better known" may motivate a reader to seek out those recordings. But do they convey any useful information other than that Cohen likes them? I understand Cohen's decision to take a hands-off approach to Ellington's personal life, which is simply not on his agenda. ("Multiple sources concur that Ellington engaged in sexual relations with numerous women on the road" is about as far as it delves into that rich subject, before discreetly moving on.) Maybe I'm being counterintuitive myself, but I think "Duke Ellington's America," as good as it is, might have been better had it taken an even more hands-off approach to Ellington's music. 'I started my own civil rights movement. . . . I went down South without federal troops.' Peter Keepnews is an editor at The Times.

Cohen (cultural & creative industries, King's Coll. London) adds to the dozens of books about jazz great Duke Ellington with a new approach. Unlike Mark Tucker's Ellington, John Edward Hasse's Beyond Category, and Ellington's own Music Is My Mistress, Cohen delivers a social history that firmly places the bandleader within his time. The author first describes the racial mores of Washington, DC, at the turn of the last century that shaped the young Ellington and attributes Ellington's success during the 1930s to the marketing campaign of manager Irving Mills, who branded him as a suave, elegant genius who could appeal to black and white audiences. Cohen covers Ellington's postwar challenges, his return to fame, his State Department tours, the "sacred concerts," and his death in May 1974. Along the way, he focuses on changes in the record industry and music technology and the progress in civil rights. VERDICT Though sometimes writing like a Ph.D. student and quoting from secondary sources, Cohen offers a fascinating, exhaustively researched social history of Duke Ellington's world. Highly recommended for general readers and jazz aficionados alike.-Dave Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.