Duke Ellington And His Orchestra: The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concerts: January 1943

Duke Ellington was one of the most popular and successful jazz musicians of the first half of the 20th century and according to composer Gunther Schuller and musicologist and historian Barry Kernfeld, "the most significant composer of the genre."

Radio broadcasts from his residency at New York's Cotton Club beginning in 1927 extended Ellington's orchestra's national exposure and a parade of hit records, from "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" in 1926 to "C Jam Blues" in 1942, among many others, as well as film exposure, established Duke as one of the preeminent entertainers of his age.

But Ellington harbored ambitions beyond commercial success. He yearned to be regarded as a serious artist and to use his talent and fame to tell the story of the "Negro" in America in an extended work. Writers have words, visual artists use brushes and colors. Ellington's palette was his orchestra.

In the 1930s, Ellington began work on an opera titled Boola. "I wrote Boola because I want to rescue Negro music from its well-meaning friends... All arrangements of historic American Negro music have been made by conservatory-trained musicians who inevitably handle it with a European technique. It's time a big piece of music was written from the inside," Ellington said.

Ellington revised the theme of Boola to compose Black, Brown and Beige(Prestige Records, 1977), which he described as a "tone parallel" (similar to a 19th and early 20th century classical music tone poem). In 1905, for example, Claude Debussy conjured the feel of the ocean in his moody composition, La Mer.



Ellington aspired to create images through music that reflected African origins, slavery, emancipation and an ongoing struggle for equality in a hostile environment.

"In writing Black, Brown and Beige, Ellington endeavors to create a jazz composition as sweeping as any classical work, with the following bold statement: 'unhampered by any musical form, in which I intend to portray the experiences of the colored races in America in the syncopated idiom... I am putting all I have learned into it in the hope that I shall have achieved something really worthwhile in the literature of music, and that an authentic record of my race written by a member of it shall be placed on record.'"—Duke Ellington: The Notes the World Was Not Ready to Hear, Karen Barbera

Such an ambitious work required a larger canvas than the three minutes per side limit on 78-rpm acetate records. In addition, an industry strike between 1942 and 1944 stood in the way of any records.

In 1942, Ellington's agent, Irving Mills, alerted Duke to an opportunity that would allow him to present his long-form opus before a large and impressive audience. The occasion was a benefit at Carnegie Hall to aid Russia during World War II. "The concert is set for January 23, 1943. But in true Ellington fashion, he does not begin composing in earnest until just six weeks prior to the performance," Barbera writes. "Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't get nothing done," Ellington said.

Ellington writes the bulk of the 48-minute-long, three-part piece in less than two months—much of it on the road—just in time for a week of rehearsals at Nola Studios in New York. During a dress rehearsal/concert at nearby Rye High School auditorium the night before the Carnegie appearance, the band members performed the score uninterrupted from beginning to end for the first time.

Among those attending the Carnegie Hall concert were First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Leopold Stokowski, poet Langston Hughes, soprano Marian Anderson, Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, along with newspaper reporters on deadline and European classical music critics. The entire concert was more than two hours long and some attendees had to be seated on the stage next to the orchestra.

"Black, Brown and Beige" in Three Movements

"Black" covers the arrival of slaves to the New World and the plantation experience (Negro work songs and spirituals). "Black" is further divided into three sections: "Work Song," "Light" and "Come Sunday."

Ellington's Introduction and "Black"

Here's Duke Ellington (perhaps nervously) introducing Black, Brown and Beige at Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1943.

"Black" opens with an aggressive and ominous barrage on timpani played by drummer Sonny Greer. Joe Tricky Sam Nanton's muted trombone solo (shades of Bubber Miley) seems to suggest a human voice in distress. Ray Nance maintains the somber mood with a bittersweet violin solo. And Johnny Hodges "sings' the hymn, "Come Sunday," achingly on alto sax, perhaps suggesting slaves wistfully listening from outside to a church service they are not permitted to attend.



"Brown" focuses on the American/Caribbean slave experience, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Great Depression (blues, downheartedness, lost romantic love). Betty Roche concludes "Brown" with a haunting version of "The Blues," probably suggesting dashed hopes following emancipation.



"Beige" covers the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s—a time of great optimism (swing and big band)

A Musical Introduction to African American History

"Ellington turned the concert into a teach-in, portraying in his music the struggles, hopes and achievements of African Americans from the time of slavery to the present. ... It was a bold gambit. But the broad vision was characteristic of the man who years before had declared 'the music of my race is something which is going to live, something which posterity will honor in a higher sense than merely that of the music of the ballroom today.'" —Mark Tucker, editor of "The Ellington Reader," in a 1999 article for The New York Times.

Critical Backlash

Although the audience responded enthusiastically, the critical reaction was swift and sharp.

Classical music critic Paul Bowles for the "New York Herald-Tribune" wrote: "Presented as one number it was formless and meaningless... The whole attempt to fuse jazz as a form with art music should be discouraged. The two exist at such different distance from the listener's faculties of comprehension that he cannot get them both clearly into focus at the same time. One might say they operate on different wavelengths; it is impossible to tune them in simultaneously."—Garth Alper In an article titled "Black, Brown, and Beige: One Piece of Duke Ellington's Musical and Social Legacy."

The harshest critic might have been producer John Hammond, whom Ellington had sparred with in the past. In an article titled, "Is the Duke Deserting Jazz," Hammond wrote: "My feeling is that by becoming more complex he has robbed jazz of most of its basic virtue and lost contact with his audience."

Hammond deemed it "unfortunate that Duke saw fit to tamper with the blues form in order to produce music of greater 'significance'" than his swing tunes of the early 1930s. Ellington's interest in complex harmonies, Hammond argued, "alienated a good part of his dancing public." He concluded: "I hope that someday (Ellington) will be able to find himself once again and continue his contributions to the folk—or people's—music of our time." —Karen Barbera

"Well, I guess they just didn't dig it," Ellington said in response to the critics. Duke never again performed the Carnegie Hall version of "Black, Brown and Beige" in its entirety, although he continued to perform there.

"Missing from all of the reviews of "Black, Brown and Beige," whether negative or positive, was any mention of the effort Ellington was making to use his popularity to transform attitudes about race in his country. "That he used the event as an opportunity to discuss issues of African American history leaves little doubt that Ellington was committed to using (and risking) his popularity to improve the standing of African Americans. As a well-traveled musician, he was acutely aware of the discriminatory and demeaning treatment with which African Americans regularly coped." —Garth Alper

"Social protest and pride in the history of the Negro have been the most significant themes in what we've done," Ellington insisted. "We've been talking about what it is to be a Negro in this country for a long time."

Barbera writes: "The trouble with being a pioneer is that you have to wait for the world to catch up to you, and often it doesn't happen in your lifetime. Ellington experiences the sorry province of many innovators, of somehow being plucked from the distant future and sent back in time to enlighten the world around them."

"Ellington could have caved to the public's exclusive hunger for his familiar jazz hits, but he has a more ambitious objective," Barbera continues. "As far back as 1930, Ellington is quoted as saying: 'I am not playing Jazz. I am trying to play the natural feelings of a people. I believe that music, popular music of the day, is the real reflector of the nation's feelings.

'Some of the music which has been written will always be beautiful and immortal. Beethoven, Wagner and Bach are geniuses; no one can rob their work of the merit that is due it. But these men have not portrayed the people who are about us today, and the interpretation of these people is our future music... "—Barbera.

Ellington was also prescient about the future: "The Negro is the blues. Blues is the rage in popular music. And popular music is the good music of tomorrow."—Barbera

"Alas," adds Barbera, "anyone else hoping for a second listening of Ellington's innovative opus at Carnegie Hall will have to wait another 34 years before even a partial recording is made commercially available to the public through Prestige Records in 1977."

The Queen of Gospel Meets the Duke of Jazz

Although Ellington would never again record the entire Carnegie Hall Concert version of Black, Brown and Beige, he continued to explore its musical possibilities in a shorter form, perhaps most famously with Gospel music icon Mahalia Jackson in 1958. Jackson, who withstood considerable blowback from the spiritual community for working with Ellington, said that she did not view Duke Ellington's musicians as a jazz band, but as a sacred institution.

Christian McBride Chimes In

In a 2019 NPR interview with Audie Cornish, bassist Christian McBride discusses why he thinks Black, Brown and Beige is such an important work. Significantly, McBride said that Ellington, unlike younger artists such as Sonny Rollins ("Freedom Suite," (Riverside Jazzland, 1958) and Max Roach ("We Insist!" (Candid, 1960), "tended to use metaphor in his music."

Mahalia Jackson Sings "Come Sunday"

from "Black, Brown and Beige" (Columbia, 1958)

"Black" from Black, Brown and Beige in 1965

We'll go out with a video of Ellington's orchestra playing "Black" from "Black, Brown and Beige" in Copenhagen during a 1965 European goodwill tour ("Black, Brown and Beige" starts at 36:47, ends at 57:42)

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