Authors: Harvey G. Cohen
ISBN-13: 9780226112633, ISBN-10: 0226112632
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date Published: May 2010
Edition: 1
Harvey G. Cohen, a cultural historian, is associate professor of cultural and creative industries at King’s College London.
Few American artists in any medium have enjoyed the international and lasting cultural impact of Duke Ellington. From jazz standards such as "Mood Indigo" and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," to his longer, more orchestral suites, to his leadership of the stellar big band he toured and performed with for decades after most big bands folded, Ellington represented a singular, pathbreaking force in music over the course of a half-century. At the same time, as one of the most prominent black public figures in history, Ellington demonstrated leadership on questions of civil rights, equality, and America's role in the world.
With Duke Ellington's America, Harvey G. Cohen paints a vivid picture of Ellington's life and times, taking him from his youth in the black middle class enclave of Washington, D.C., to the heights of worldwide acclaim. Mining extensive archives, many never before available, plus new interviews with Ellington's friends, family, band members, and business associates, Cohen illuminates his constantly evolving approach to composition, performance, and the music business-as well as issues of race, equality and religion. Ellington's own voice, meanwhile, animates the book throughout, giving Duke Ellington's America an intimacy and immediacy unmatched by any previous account.
By far the most thorough and nuanced portrait yet of this towering figure, Duke Ellington's America highlights Ellington's importance as a figure in American history as well as in American music.
…undeniably valuable. Harvey G. Cohen…has done prodigious research, much of it as a Kluge Scholar at the Library of Congress, and has unearthed an astonishing amount of material. All of this lends powerful support to his view that Ellington's high stature derives not just from the music he composed and played but from the remarkable life, both private and public, that he led.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Washington/New York
2 The Marketing Plan
3 Serious Listening
4 Credits/Exit Mills
5 Swingin’
6 Black, Brown, and Beige
7 Postwar Struggles
8 Reinvention and Nadir
9 Rebirth
10 Money
11 My People
12 1963 State Department Tour
13 Sacred Concerts
14 Fighting Nostalgia
15 1970s State Tours
16 Final Days
Notes
Index