Duke Ellington's “East St. Louis Toodle-O” Revisited

Abstract

“East St. Louis Toodle-O” is probably the only Ellington composition which displays Ellington's mode of reworking and modernizing a work over the course of forty-five years, largely through a process of accommodating the individual characters of the different stylists he had at his disposal at different moments in time. In its first two arrangements, the composition reflects Ellington's rise to success in an exemplary fashion. The first arrangement (recorded for the first time on Vocalion) reveals how “East St. Louis” was instrumental for Ellington in shaping a unique musical style that would later be exploited by Irving Mills as “jungle music.” It is also the first Ellington composition in which he had proven himself to be a serious contender within the highly competitive Manhattan “hot jazz” scene. “East St. Louis” may well be one of the few compositions (along with “Black and Tan Fantasy” and “Immigration Blues”) that allowed him and his band to cease their engagements at the Kentucky Club and move uptown to Harlem. The second arrangement (Victor) is a testament to Ellington's music during the early days of his tenure at the Cotton Club.

The third arrangement (Diva and Velvet Tone) reflects the band's expanding, growing proficiency. After Bubber Miley's discharge—the soloist of “East St. Louis”—and with the steady enlargement of the orchestra, Ellington was faced with the need to write a new arrangement, reflecting the taste and style of the early 1930s. With the beginning of the new decade, “East St. Louis” was primarily used as the band's signature tune, in its abbreviated form. The fourth arrangement under the title “The New East St. Louis Toodle-O,” recorded in 1937 on Mill's Master Records label, echoes the innovative features of the swing idiom.

In the fifth arrangement, presented at the Carnegie Hall concert in 1947, Ellington displays solid skill in adapting the composition to the prerequisites of the post-bebop and pre-cool jazz era. Finally in the sixth arrangement (Bethlehem Records, 1956), Ellington presents “East St. Louis” through a distant, ironic filter, as a self-reflective retrospective of his early work. From 1956 to the end of his career, “East St. Louis” played a marginal role in the band's repertoire.

Notes

¹In the same period, “Black and Tan Fantasy,” in comparison, was recorded four times (including the unissued takes).

At this place, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Steven Lasker and Gus Wildi for numerous, valuable contributions, to Walter van de Leur, John Howland, Steven F. Pond, and the anonymous reviewers for many constructive comments and suggestions and to Matthew Evans-Cockle for copy editing this paper.

²Roger Prior Dodge, “Bubber.” H.R.S. Society Rag (October 1940), 11. See also the respective music example there. Reprint in Tucker, Ellington Reader, 455.

³According to Mark Tucker's reconstruction in Ellington: The Early Years (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991, 187f.) of their itinerary, the Washingtonians did not play in Boston, but in many places around the capital of Massachusetts, such as Waltham, Brockton, Dedham etc. Since the band headquartered in Salem and Lewando was a dry-cleaning chain throughout the Boston area, Miley's initial spark might have ignited in Salem. Miley must have communicated his discovery to the rest of the band, since Ellington recalled later that every time the musicians saw a “Lewando Cleaners sign” they would start singing: “Oh, Lee-wan-do!” (Duke Ellington, in collaboration with Stanley Dance. “The Art Is in the Cooking,” Down Beat (7 June 1962), 13–15. Reprint in Tucker, Ellington Reader, 332–338: 335).

⁴Pryor Dodge. “Bubber Miley,” 253.

⁵Ibid., 253.

⁶See the comparison of Miley's solo in “East St. Louis” and the one by Green in “The Gouge of Armour Avenue” in Tucker, Early Years, 249–250.

⁷See the transcription of the vamp and theme.

⁸Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 327.

⁹Inez, M. Cavanaugh, “Reminiscing in Tempo: Tricky Sam Goes Over the Great Times He Had with Duke, Bubber, Freddie Jenkins.” Metronome (February 1945), 17, 26; reprinted in Tucker (ed.). Ellington Reader, 466. Nanton attributes the composition of “East St. Louis” solely to Miley (Ibid, 467).

¹⁰Martin Williams, The Jazz Tradition. Second Revised Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 103.

¹¹Tucker, Early Years, 252.

¹²Wolfram Knauer, “Ellington, Duke,” Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 2^nd edition, (Kassel and Stuttgart: Bärenreiter and Metzler, 2001–7), col. 269.

¹³See, among others: David Metzer, “Shadow Play: The Spiritual in Duke Ellington's ‘Black and Tan Fantasy’,” Black Music Research Journal vol. 17 no. 2 (Autumn 1997), 137–158, here 140.

¹⁴Schuller, Early Jazz, 335.

¹⁵Williams, Jazz Tradition, 102.

¹⁶James Lincoln Collier, Duke Ellington, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 112.

¹⁷Peter Gammond (ed.), Duke Ellington: His Life and Music, (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977), 73.

¹⁸Schuller, Early Jazz, 328.

¹⁹This is not to say that Tin Pan Alley writers would not have been influenced by the ragtime idiom.

²⁰The AABA form is hardly perceivable, since it only occurs once in its complete form, mostly because the bridge appears only once.

²¹Ellington's original composition, “Parlor Social Stomp,” which was recorded prior to “East St. Louis” (in March 1926), follows a ragtime multi-strain-form. The composition is based on the succession of several 16-bar sections: Introduction–A–B–B–A¹–transition–C (trio)–C¹ (trumpet solo)–D (alto sax)–D¹ (trumpet)–D² (see for a detailed discussion Tucker, Early Years, 157).

²²Ibid., 251.

²³Ibid., 250.

²⁴“Letter to Marshall Stearns, [n.d.], IJS vertical file. And Irving Mills told Pat Willard, one of Ellington's publicity people, the same thing (interview with Brooks Kerr, 20 March 1985),” Tucker, Early Years, 308.

²⁵It is not known whether Kapp's ledger entries “n[ot] g[ood]” for “A Night in Harlem” and “Who Is She” relate to the inferior quality of the composition, performance or recording. It is, however, known that Kapp rejected the other two Ellington originals recorded that day (Steven Lasker, Booklet of The Original Decca Recordings: Early Ellington: The Complete Brunswick and Vocalion Recordings of Duke Ellington 1926–1931. 3 CD Set. GRP Records, GRD 3-640, 1994, 39).

²⁸Ellington, in an interview with Jack Cullen for station CKNW, Vancouver, Canada, 30 October 1962. Reprinted in Tucker, Ellington Reader,” 338–341.

²⁶Tucker, Early Years, 250. See also the facsimile of the respective company ledger in Lasker, Booklet of Original Decca Recordings, 38–39.

²⁷ Variety, 9 June 1926, 42.

The toddle—an African-American dance—was fashionable in World War I and gained widespread popularity among whites in the early 1920s. Derived from an African-American shaking dance, the toddle is closely related to the shimmy and in the 1920s also to the Chicago. The C strain of “East St. Louis” could be best danced as a toddle. For a history of the dance see: Chadwick Hansen. “Jenny's Toe Revisited: White Responses to Afro-American Shaking Dances.” American Music vol. 5 no. 1 (Spring 1987), 1–19. Tucker discusses the different spellings of “toodle-o,” as they appeared on the numerous recordings of Ellington's tune (“On Toodle-oo, Todalo, and Jenny's Toe.” American Music vol. 6 no. 1 [Spring 1988], 88–91). See also the last installment of the discourse between Hansen and Tucker: Chadwick Hansen. “Reply to Tucker.” American Music vol. 6 no. 1 (Spring 1988), 91–92.

²⁹Charles L. Lumpkins, American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics, (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2008), 77 and 74.

³⁰Lumpkins, American Pogrom, 124.

³¹Denise von Glahn, The Sounds of Place: Music and the American Cultural Landscape, (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003), 145.

³²The metal parts were presumably destroyed soon after the session, and no test pressings are known to have survived.

³³Tucker, Early Years, 169.

³⁴Kurt Dietrich, Duke's Bones: Ellington's Great Trombonists, (Rottenburg, Germany: Advance Music, 1995), 28.

³⁵Eddie Lambert, Duke Ellington: A Listener's Guide, (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1999), 9.

³⁶Mercer Ellington, Duke Ellington in Person, op. cit., 51.

³⁷Antonio Berini and Giovanni M. Volonté, Duke Ellington: un genio, un mito, (Firenze: Ponte alle grazie, 1994), 129.

³⁸Schuller, Early Jazz, 328.

³⁹Richard M. Sudhalter, Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915–1945, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 428.

⁴⁰Tucker, Early Years, 253.

⁴¹Schuller, Early Jazz, 328–9.

⁴²Ibid, 329.

⁴³Tucker, Early Years, 255.

⁴⁴For a detailed discussion of the “jungle” idiom, 1920s New York society and Ellington, see Lisa Barg, National Voices/Modern Histories: Race, Performance and Remembrance in American Music, 1927–1943. Diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2001. See also, in the present issue, Kimberly Hannon, “Beyond the Cotton Club: The Persistence of Duke Ellington's ‘Jungle Style’” [ed.].

⁴⁵Abel Green's review of “Harlem River Quiver” at Ellington's debut show at the Cotton Club remarks: “One coocher, boyish bobbed hoyden, said to be especially imported from Chicago for her Annapolis proclivities who does the Harlem River Quiver like no self-respecting body of water. The teasin'est torso tossing yet, and how!” (reprinted in Tucker, Ellington Reader, 31).

⁴⁶This assumption is backed up by the fact that the flip-side of OKeh 8638 contains “Move Over” by “Duke Ellington and His Orchestra.” Since “Move Over” was issued for the first time on OKeh 8638, it was no competition for Columbia and could be presented under the orchestra's proper name.

⁴⁷During his stay in St. Louis, three years earlier, the guitarist won a blues singing contest. The award included an OKeh contract for a series of “race” records. Since Johnson was a recording artist of the label, the company felt entitled to borrow his name for a record, made with another artist.

⁴⁸A stipulation in the Victor contract—signed between the company and Ellington/Mills at the beginning of 1929—stated that the label had the exclusive right to advertise Ellington's records under his own name. For recordings with any other company, Ellington had to use a different name.

⁴⁹From December 1927 to February 1929, the orchestra could only be heard locally in New York over WHN and its sister station WPAP (Ken Steiner. “Cotton Club Broadcasts on NBC: September 1930–February 1931,” The International DEMS Bulletin (Duke Ellington Music Society) (December 2008–March 2009), http://www.depanorama.net/dems/083.htm (accessed 25 August 2010). Then, from 11 February to 23 September 1929, their music was relayed from coast-to-coast over the CBS network with its nationwide affiliates, every Monday and Thursday evening (from 6:30 to 7:00 pm) presumably from the WABC station itself and every Wednesday night (at 11 pm) from the Cotton Club (Lasker, Booklet of The Original Decca Recording, 46).

⁵⁰“Springbirds” (opened on 31 March) and “It's the Blackberries” (opened on 29 September).

⁵¹Eddie Lambert and Barry Kernfeld, “Tizol, Juan,” Grove Music Online, accessed on 3 July 2010.

⁵²See, for this date, Barry Kernfeld's entry “Metcalf, Louis” in the Grove Music Online, accessed on 20 July 2010. The change from Metcalf to Whetsel must have happened between 25 June and 10 July 1928. Metcalf still attended the Brunswick recording session of 25 June. The 10 July session for OKeh was however played by Whetsel. With regards to the spelling of Whetsel's name, it has often been misspelled as Whetsol.

⁵³Vail, Duke's Diary, part I, 15.

⁵⁴Miley missed the recording sessions for Brunswick, on 21 March 1928, when “Take It Easy,” “Jubilee Stomp” and “Black Beauty” were waxed, for Victor on 30 October and 10 November 1928 and for Cameo on circa 5 December 1928.

⁵⁵Vail, Duke's Diary, part I, 16.

⁵⁶In all likelihood longer and more solos were added for live performances.

⁵⁷It is likely that the complete AABA was performed in live performances, and cut here, due to the time limitations of the 78 rpm disc.

⁵⁸Ellington's and the band's first film appearance were in the short film Black and Tan, directed by Dudley Murphy, in the previous year.

⁵⁹According to Mercer Ellington, this contract came about thanks to the nationwide attention the band achieved from their regular radio broadcastings (Mercer Ellington, Duke Ellington in Person, 34).

⁶⁰Vail, Duke's Diary, part I, 38.

⁶¹Wood, Graham, “The Development of Song Forms in the Broadway and Hollywood Musicals of Richard Rodgers, 1919–1943” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2000), 79. A chorus-end-introduction contains the last four bars of the chorus.

⁶²See the NBC log books (Library of Congress). These log books, with the “Corrected Traffic Sheets,” list song titles with other details for twenty-seven programs (Steiner, “Cotton Club Broadcasts on NBC”).

⁶³Pencil short score on “A.B.C. STANDARD MUSIC PUBLICATIONS, INC. New York City” 12-staves paper, 4 pp. National Museum of American History Archives Center (NMAH), Smithsonian Institution. Duke Ellington Collection (DEC), Series 1, Box 109, Folder 9. This manuscript is one of the earliest surviving Ellington holographs in the Smithsonian Institution. Ellington may have not written down any arrangements before 1930, or the material got lost. From the 1930s on, as the band grew, there was more need for worked out arrangements. Ellington appears to have started to keep his holographs after 1930s. Many of the early manuscripts are sketchy. Ellington presumably used them to write down ideas, shape, overall structures etc., and maybe even have the parts copied out. More scholarly work, however, is required to determine the precise function of early Ellington manuscripts.

⁶⁴The key of C minor corresponds with the C minor of “East St. Louis.” Why Ellington abondened F minor and went back to the original key remains unknown. Possibly, it is related to another significant change: the performer of the lead voice. No longer does the whole trumpet section play the theme, but only Cootie Williams. According to Mercer Ellington, when Whetsel “began to lose his lip [in the 1930s], Cootie began to play both lead and solos” (Mercer Ellington, Duke Ellington in Person, 46).

⁶⁵Schuller, Early Jazz, op. cit., 334.

⁶⁶Tucker, Early Ellington, op. cit., 221. See the transcription in Tucker, Early Ellington, op. cit., 223.

⁶⁷See Ellington's holograph at the NMAH, Series 1A, Box 39, Folder 6, 1 p. Ellington also indicates “Lag” for the crotchet motive.

⁶⁸Ellington had based the harmonic progression of “Lots o' Fingers” on the one of James P. Johnson's “Charleston.” He also recorded this tune under the alternate title “Fast and Furious” on 17 May 1932 (Brunswick 6355). The earliest known recording of “Lots o' Fingers” is a transcript from a nationwide broadcasted Cotton Club show little over a year (29 January 1931) before the Victor recording (see Steiner, “Cotton Club Broadcasts on NBC,” op. cit.). All three versions are identical in duration.

⁶⁹The records in this series were pressed on a ten- or twelve-inch single-sided standard groove disc, playing at 33⅓ rpm. This early foray into the LP market turned out to be a commercial failure. The production ended in 1933, in part because potential record buyers were forced to purchase a special phonograph, equipped with an electric motor and a special chromium needle in order to properly play the microgroove records.

⁷⁰Berini and Volonté, Duke Ellington: un genio, un mito, 168.

⁷¹For a list with the shows of the twenty-second Cotton Club Parade, in which “East St. Louis” was performed, see Steiner, “Cotton Club Broadcasts on NBC: 1932–1933.”

⁷²Short score, pencil, 2 pp. (1 p. with “East St. Louis”). NMAH, Ruth Ellington Collection (REC), REC#2, Box 8:5.

Short score, 4 pp. (2 pp. with two “East St. Louis” sketches). NMAH, REC#2, Box 8:5. There is no other composition or part of any composition of the 1930s for which more than one score has survived, to the best of this author's knowledge. Apparently Ellington sought the right orchestral balance for the eight-bar opening passage.

⁷³Short score, pencil, 2 pp, NMAH, DEC#1, Box 467:1. The fragmented sketch was identified as “The New East St. Louis” by Edward Green. Only the parts for “Cooty” [Cootie Williams] and “Rex” [Stewart] have survived, DEC#1, Box 109:10.

⁷⁴Only the second chorus is notated. While Williams pauses during the last eight bars (see part), Stewart and Whetsel play this section alone.

⁷⁵Williams, Jazz Tradition, 103.

⁷⁶Williams's critique is particularly problematic, since it is printed in the Smithsonian Collection, which is still used as introductory material to the history of jazz in many universities across the United States (Martin Williams, Accompanying Booklet to Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz. Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Collection of Recordings. New York: Manufactured by CBS Records, 1987, 65).

⁷⁷Hugues Panassié, Hot Jazz: The Guide to Swing Music, translated by Lyle and Eleanor Dowling from “Le jazz hot” (New York: M. Witmark & Sons, 1936), 178f.

⁷⁸Radio broadcast from the “Ritz-Carlton Hotel,” Boston, 26 July 1939; NBC broadcast from the “Southlands Cafe,” Boston, 9 January 1940; and BBC broadcast America Dances, from the CBS radio studios, New York, 10 June 1940.

⁷⁹Carl Hällström and Ken Steiner, “Broadcasts in September and October 1940,” The International DEMS Bulletin (December 2009–March 2010), http://www.depanorama.net/dems/093.htm (accessed 25 August 2010).

⁸⁰Ibid.

⁸¹Marc Hugunin, “ASCAP, BMI and the Democratization of American Popular Music,” Popular Music and Society 7:1 (1979), 8–17, here 10.

⁸²Short score, pencil, 2 pp., NMAH, DEC#1, Box 9:9. The last two bars are notated on a separate sheet (DEC#1, Box 109:9).

⁸³The parts are for Rab [Johnny Hodges], [Al] Sears, Jimmy [Hamilton], [Harry] Carney, Scad [Shelton Hemphill], Dud [Bascomb], [Francis] Williams; [Claude] Jones, [Lawrence] Brown, Tyree [Glenn], NMAH, DEC#1, 109:10. The part for [Shorty] Baker, is in DEC#1, 453:1, the one for [Russell] Proc[ope] in DEC#C, 461:1, and the bass part in Series 1C, Box 466, Folder 1.

⁸⁴There are no parts at NMAH for neither the soloist Nance, nor Killian, who joined the orchestra shortly before the concert (on 18 December), as replacement for Dud Bascomb.

⁸⁵The penciled remark by Ellington after the last bars of the arrangement “to old sheet (A♭) / Trombones” signals that the continuation after “East St. Louis” is different than for the Carnegie Hall concert. Either Ellington has indicated that the C strain in A♭ major should be repeated by the trombone section or that “East St. Louis” may have opened another medley with another tune.

⁸⁶Short score, 4 pp. (2 pp. with “East St. Louis”), NMAH, DEC#1, 109:9.

⁸⁷Nat Hentoff, “Duke Ellington: Historically Speaking—The Duke,” Down Beat (30 May 1956), 21. Reprinted in: Vail, Duke's Diary, part II, 91.

⁸⁸All quotations of Hodeir, in Tucker, Ellington Reader, 301–2.

⁸⁹Vail, Duke's Diary, part II, 104.

⁹⁰Vail, Duke's Diary, part II, 232 and 249.

⁹¹Vail, Duke's Diary, part II, 250.

⁹²Cootie Williams rejoined the orchestra in 1962.

⁹³Vail, Duke's Diary, part II, 257.

⁹⁴Vail, Duke's Diary, part II, 367.

⁹⁵Berini and Volonté list John Lamb as the double bass player (Duke Ellington: un genio, un mito, 536).

⁹⁶Vail, Duke's Diary, part II, 419.