Duke Ellington's Filmed "History of Jazz in 3 Minutes" (+Bonus)

(Paying Subscribers, at the bottom you will see the actual contracts that show how much each musician was paid.)

One of Ellington’s strangest and most innovative compositions is also one of his least known, because it is documented only in one film clip: "The History of Jazz in 3 Minutes." No audio recordings, “live” or otherwise, exist. I assume the reason there is no studio recording is that the piece includes some pantomime, so it wouldn’t work only as audio. Thanks to the amazingly detailed Ellington chronology site, we know that the band did perform it regularly in February 1950, the month before it was filmed, and for a month or so afterward. But this film is the only preserved performance. And it’s pretty amazing!

This was part of a 15-minute film, made for Universal in Hollywood, called "Salute To Duke Ellington," which featured separate performances of several numbers. Ther musicians were trumpeters Nelson Williams, Al Killian, Dave Burns, and Ray Nance(; trombonists Lawrence Brown, Quentin Jackson, and Tyree Glenn; reed players Jimmy Hamilton, Russell Procope, Johnny Hodges, Charlie Rouse, Alva McCain, and Harry Carney; Ellington, Wendell Marshall(bass) Sonny Greer (drums). (There were also singers on some of the pieces that we won’t see today.)

You will notice some interesting things about that personnel. Most notably, there are six saxes, instead of the usual five. Ben Webster had rejoined the band in October 1948 and when he left in May 1949, Duke hired two tenor saxophonists, Charlie Rouse and Jimmy Forrest. Rouse had already recorded with Tadd Dameron, Fats Navarro and others, and of course he would become best known for his tours with Thelonious Monk from about late 1958 to early 1970. Rouse left the Ellington band when it went to Europe on March 29, 1950. In 1961 he told DownBeat the reason: He couldn't find his birth certificate and therefore could not get a passport. Trombonist Tyree Glenn also stayed home when the band went abroad, for a different reason: Subscriber Steven Bowie showed me an article by fellow subscriber and researcher Bo Haufman that reports that Glenn had an affair with a French woman when he was in Europe with Don Redman in late 1946 into 1947. His wife forbad him to go again without her.

Meanwhile, Forrest left shortly before this film was made. He went on to have a big hit when his recording “Night Train,” based on an Ellington theme, was released in March 1952. He was replaced by the little-known Alva "Bo" (or “Beau”) McCain. I have some previously unpublished information about him: Born on November 8, 1919 in Marietta, Oklahoma, he later moved to Oklahoma City where he got to know Charlie Christian’s older brother Edward. He attended Lincoln University, an historically black campus six hours away in Jefferson City, Missouri. He recorded with Mercer Ellington in 1946, which could be how Duke became aware of him. In 1950 he was living at 555 West 151st Street in Harlem. His last listed jazz recording was in 1963 and I don’t yet know what he did musically for the next 47 years of his life. He later relocated to the Bronx, and then moved just north of there to Mount Vernon, where he died on October 29, 2010.

At 1:38 in the film, the camera pans across all six saxophonists. I have excerpted that moment for you here. Here are the saxophonists you will see, from left to right (I’ve also named a few of the brass players): Johnny Hodges, Alva McCain (with Tyree Glenn and trumpeter Nelson “Cadillac” Williams behind him), Rouse (then trumpeter Dave Burns, formerly with Gillespie, and later to be a respected educator on New York’s Long Island), Jimmy Hamilton on clarinet, Russell Procope, and Harry Carney:

Although trumpeter Harold “Shorty” Baker was definitely in the band at this time, and all sources list him in this film, he was in fact not present. He is not listed on the paperwork for pay (shown below for paying subscribers) and is nowhere visible. On the other hand, Billy Strayhorn is listed on piano for the soundtrack recording on March 6, 1950, but he was not present for the filming, which was done separately (two days later in this case), as was standard. Even today, music in movies is usually dubbed in, not recorded “live.” Professionals like the Ellington band members were experienced at matching their movements ot the sound, but there are moments (not in this number) where they are a bit off.

Strayhorn is not audible anywhere in the full 15-minute film, but there are two pieces where there is no piano. Therefore, it’s possible that he was at the audio session just in case he was needed, but that Duke decided to do without piano on those numbers. Or perhaps he needed Billy to play for a moment while Duke had to stand in front of the band to hear everything. But it’s also the case that Duke sometimes brought Strayhorn to recording sessions mostly so that he could be paid. (Compare my fourth essay on Such Sweet Thunder.)

I have the film in a nice crisp print from a commercial release entitled Swing - The Best of the Big Bands, a multi-volume set released on VHS tapes, laserdisc, and—beware, if you’re looking to buy the set—also as audio CDs, without the video.

But Duke’s spoken introduction is abridged on the releases. So first, here is his speech complete:

And now, the complete piece, from the MCA release. The drawing at the start is not from the original film, and as you’ll see, only the end of his introduction is given. But the composition is intact, and fascinating. A lot happens in this piece, which actually runs about 3 minutes and 45 seconds. First of all, it’s not a chronological history. It’s a kind of collage, with many short sections at different tempos that could, conceivably, be rearranged at will. It starts with a close-up of the clarinet going into a New Orleans piece—then it suddenly goes into a bebop line, followed by a tiny quote of Basie’s hit “One O’Clock Jump,” then a fast excerpt of that same number, followed by a little bit of stride piano by Duke. It’s from his own piece for Willie “The Lion” Smith, “The Second Portrait of the Lion.” At 1:50 all six saxophones play a ballad while the camera pans from left to right, as we saw above. Suddenly at 1:56 the whole band claps and sings “ah, ah, a-a-ah!” That marks the end of the first half.

The second half begins with Rouse playing, solo, a few phrases from the famous 1939 “Body and Soul” recording by Coleman Hawkins. Then the previously heard ballad continues, now featuring Glenn’s trombone. At 2:36 Duke plays some boogie-woogie, then goes into an abstract version of “Basin Street Blues” while Nance imitates Louis Armstrong with a handkerchief. But it’s a pantomime—he makes no sound! Then there’s a wild fast number, interrupted when we are suddenly taken back to the New Orleans piece that started it all—and finally, once again, “ah, ah, a-a-ah!”:

What a journey! And what does it all mean? Today we might call this “post-modern” for the way it draws freely from such a range of styles, in a seemingly random, chopped-up fashion

This film also represents a step in Duke’s long-standing interest in creating a piece about jazz history. He credited Orson Welles for having gotten him thinking about this in the early 1940s, when Welles commissioned Duke to work on a history of jazz. Welles paid Duke in advance for that project, but it never happened. Soon afterward, in 1943, Ellington premiered his major suite, Black Brown and Beige. This was not a history of jazz—Duke’s subtitle was “A Tone Parallel to the History of the Negro in America"— but one could see these projects as related, since both involve creating musical works that offer a long historical view. He returned to jazz history in 1950 with the piece you just watched. The next year, 1951, he wrote his Controversial Suite with its two chronological sections, “Before My Time,” and “Later.” Then came A Drum is A Woman, recorded ini 1956 and televised in 1957, which Ellington explicitly referred to as a history of jazz.

I hope that, like me, you found "The History of Jazz in 3 Minutes" to be fascinating and brilliant.

All the best,
Lewis

P.S. I thank Mark Cantor for research assistance and for sharing production documents (which are below for paying subscribers).