Music: Mood Indigo & Beyond

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Ellington, who seems to derive inspiration from being on the move, wrote many of the tunes in a taxi on the way to the studio, or even in the studio. Sometimes he would jump out of bed in the middle of the night, grunt a tune that had just come to him and play it on the piano. It made little difference, since all new numbers had to be worked out anyhow. "You play this," Duke would say to one musician at a time, while noodling out a tune on the piano. As soon as they heard a phrase, the musicians learned it, and then toyed with it until they made it sound as if they had invented it themselves.

Even accidents were turned to advantage. One day, when only half the band arrived for a recording session, a new distribution of voices was evolved on the spot to make the few sound richer. The tune was Mood Indigo, and the broad-spaced trio at the start became one of Duke's sound trademarks. Other tunes lay fallow in the band's books until somebody set words to them and they caught on, e.g., Never No Lament (Don't Get Around Much Any More), Concerto for Cootie (Do Nothin' 'Til You Hear from Me). Ellington is accustomed to hearing his ideas unexpectedly used by other songwriters, and is resigned to it.

Counting Chicks. Duke's fertile mind continued to turn out songs, even when there were no recording deadlines to meet. The band could now play a week's worth of dances and never repeat itself or play any composer except Ellington. During the early years, Ellington found that one hit tune a year was enough to keep the band popular. What kind of music did he think he was writing? Mostly, he thinks it was folk music. In any case, he says, his songs are "all about women," and almost any one who listens receptively will agree. Duke is well qualified to discourse musically—or any other way—on the chicks, as he calls them. He has made a long and continuing study of the subject, and is himself the object of study by his subjects. As soon as he appears on a Harlem sidewalk, the street becomes crowded with chicks. The young ones merely ask for his autograph; older ones pass with glittering, sidelong glances beneath lowered lashes.

In 1939 Musician Ellington and Manager Mills agreed to go separate ways (Mills has since become a successful music publisher). One of Duke's subsequent adventures was Jump for Joy, which he wrote and produced with a group of Hollywood artists. It was a revue designed to fight Uncle Tomism in the entertainment world, and the show folded after twelve weeks of backstage wrangling. As usual, Duke had written for his own band, and the band was in the pit. "We stayed out there for a while, just barely keeping our heads above water," he says. "But there were not enough people clamoring to buy at our price. So we put the price up. We gave a concert in Carnegie Hall."