No. 235: Thought Grooves

DUKE No. 235 by Tom Wills, February 2014

 

Duke Ellington is the only musician that I have chosen to draw twice, as I believe Ellington was a composer of such unparalleled genius. His music has tremendous scope, gives me great joy, and provokes much thought and reflection. It is its own language.

I first approached him in July 2011, putting the piano in the foreground, taking the title from one of his many records. That blog and a link to his biography are here.  http://tomwillsproductions.blogspot.com/2011/07/duke-in-foreground.html

DUKE ELLINGTON, July 2011

I did particularly like the first drawing, and it hung in my studio until June 2013, when I was invited to show 10 of my pieces at a Youngstown bookstore. I was grateful to the shop and donated Duke to hang on its wall.
But I missed him. And as my Duke collection continued to grow, his absence from my own music room grew larger, too. That summer saw my acquisition of priceless vinyls with Duke and Ella, and also an early radio broadcast transcription record.

"Why don't you just draw another one? a friend asked,
Well, no, I had never done that before, with the exception of a few portraits for friends' families.
No repeats. My own rule.
Fall became unending winter, short days and long nights.
"Well, why don't you!"

I drew the first one in the sun on the umbrella table on my deck. The second came off my drawing board in the night in the dead of early February.

Drawing Duke I

Duke returned, much like the first, as a shadow drawing. The eyes are there, though I did not have to draw pupils. The mouth and chin also are present, though not. His face is one of deep recesses -- thought grooves.
Rough skin. A pouty mouth, long ears, furrowed brow, slicked hair.  I tried to capture each characteristic in this drawing.
This pose would be about 1963, the middle of a good period for the prolific Duke -- though coming at the end of his classic run of Columbia records. Consider the period of work:

1961 Piano in the Foreground Columbia

1961 First Time! the Count Meets The Duke Columbia

1962 All American Columbia 1962 Midnight in Paris Columbia

1962 Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins Impulse

1962 Money Jungle Blue Note

1962 Duke Ellington and John Coltrane Impulse

1962 Will Big Bands Ever Come Back? Reprise

 1962 Afro-Bossa Musicraft

1962 Featuring Paul Gonsalves Original Jazz

1963 The Great Paris Concert [live] Atlantic

1963 The Symphonic Ellington Musicraft

1963 The Duke Ellington Jazz Violin Session Atlantic

1964 Hits of the Sixties: This Time by Ellington Reprise

1964 Ellington '65 Reprise

From the first Ellington blog in 2011:

Duke Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) took the time to explain things. He invited the listener inside the music.

His live recordings reveal  the spaces he made to tell the audience what’s happening behind the scenes of a song: This event inspired that tune, these musicians highlight a certain theme, this player gets a nod of recognition.

''The memory of things gone,'' Ellington once said, ''is important to a jazz musician,'' and the stories he sometimes told about his songs are the record of those things gone.

Duke Ellington called his music "American Music" rather than jazz, according to his biography. But he took it on the road: In his 50-year career, he played more than 20,000 performances in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.  He was the most creative while on the road. "It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing," "Sophisticated Lady," "Mood Indigo," “Solitude," "In a Mellotone," and "Satin Doll" are among the more than 3,000 songs that he composed.

Ellington was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1965, but was turned down. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1966 and the Presidential medal of Freedom in 1969. He led his band from 1923 until his death. Ellington died of lung cancer and pneumonia on May 24, 1974, a month after his 75th birthday. 
His last words? "Music is how I live, why I live and how I will be remembered."
 

Good enough to repeat.