Based on lengthy interviews with Ellington's bandmates, family, and friends, Duke Ellington and His World offers a fresh look at this legendary composer. The first biography of the composer written by a fellow musician and African-American, the book traces Ellington's life and career in terms of the social, cultural, political, and economic realities of his times. Beginning with his birth in Washington, DC, through his first bands and work at the legendary Cotton Club, to his final great extended compositions, this book gives a thorough introduction to Ellington's music and how it was made. It also illuminates his personal life because, for Ellington, music was his life and his life was a constant inspiration for music.
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Review
"An account not only of a man, but of an era."
-Esquire
"The heart of this volume is the first-hand remembrances of the Duke, affectionate but frank, amplified by the author's scrupulous research and well-informed musical judgments. The result is an evocative and engrossing portrait of Ellington and Ellingtonia - one of the best available."
-The Economist, June 2, 2001
"It is at such moments that the reader really feels Mr Lawrence's thorough grasp of Ellington's world."
-The Economist, June 2, 2001
"Helps enlarge our understanding of the collaboration that bound Ellington and his musicians."
-The New York Times Book Review
"Of all the books on Duke Ellington, including the few that greatly illuminated his life and music, there is now the definitive biography of Duke that includes a musician's analysis of his entire musical development."
-Nat Hentoff, jazz critic and author
-Esquire
"The heart of this volume is the first-hand remembrances of the Duke, affectionate but frank, amplified by the author's scrupulous research and well-informed musical judgments. The result is an evocative and engrossing portrait of Ellington and Ellingtonia - one of the best available."
-The Economist, June 2, 2001
"It is at such moments that the reader really feels Mr Lawrence's thorough grasp of Ellington's world."
-The Economist, June 2, 2001
"Helps enlarge our understanding of the collaboration that bound Ellington and his musicians."
-The New York Times Book Review
"Of all the books on Duke Ellington, including the few that greatly illuminated his life and music, there is now the definitive biography of Duke that includes a musician's analysis of his entire musical development."
-Nat Hentoff, jazz critic and author
About the Author
A. H. Lawrence was a professional jazz trombonist from 1944-48, playing with the bands of Hot Lips Page, Benny Carter, and Luis Russell. Through Russell, he met and befriended Ellington and remained friends with him throughout his life. Lawrence served as a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution for the exhibit, Jazz in Paris 1915-40. He lives in Cambridge, MA.
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First Sentence
ELLINGTON OPENS HIS autobiography, Music Is My Mistress with the story of his own creation in the form of a fairy tale. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
ELLINGTON OPENS HIS autobiography, Music Is My Mistress with the story of his own creation in the form of a fairy tale. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Amazon.com:
1.7 out of 5 stars
6 reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Odd
5 Jan 2006
By bukhtan
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
I found this book reasonably entertaining, approaching, you might say "attacking", Duke Ellington from a psychologizing angle. Interesting. Few people ever really knew Ellington, and the ones who did didn't talk much about him, at least not in any revealing way. And the man was clearly an affable narcissist, with a tendency to be passively cruel to band members and some family members. If this personality hadn't existed, Thomas Mann would have invented him, with a little help from Freud. And of course there's nothing wrong with taking a figure so frequently deified down a couple of pegs. So the author's tack seemed, for the nonce, acceptable.
Unfortunately, I noticed quite a few oddities, in dates, attribution of composer credit, and elsewhere. I also wondered how this guy could have interviewed all these old timers, this late in the era. And I'd never heard of a trombonist of this name who played with Benny Carter, Luis Russell etc. in the Forties. And though I'm a thorough Ellington fan and personal admirer, I'm no scholar. So I had to wait till I stumbled on the "brief" by Steven Lasker, who is a scholar, to realize what a hoax this book is. Stick "depanorama stratemann lasker lawrence routledge" into the google search engine. You'll get a issue of the Duke Ellington Music Society bulletin from late 2001. Read it before you buy this book.
Routledge didn't originate the contract on this book. They bought it from some other outfit. Routledge used to be a standard issue publisher of unreadable academic jabber of the paramarxist school, parasitizing on English universities. In the last few years they've tried to break into the American popular market. Hence opportunistic stuff like this.
There's a Duke Ellington industry out there, appealing to scholars, musicologists and plain enthusiasts of good music. So there are bogus reissues on CD and preposterous books like this. The same thing happens with Mark Twain; you come to expect it. But damn Routledge for getting involved in the seamy side of it as they scramble to find a place in the dwindling high end market.
Unfortunately, I noticed quite a few oddities, in dates, attribution of composer credit, and elsewhere. I also wondered how this guy could have interviewed all these old timers, this late in the era. And I'd never heard of a trombonist of this name who played with Benny Carter, Luis Russell etc. in the Forties. And though I'm a thorough Ellington fan and personal admirer, I'm no scholar. So I had to wait till I stumbled on the "brief" by Steven Lasker, who is a scholar, to realize what a hoax this book is. Stick "depanorama stratemann lasker lawrence routledge" into the google search engine. You'll get a issue of the Duke Ellington Music Society bulletin from late 2001. Read it before you buy this book.
Routledge didn't originate the contract on this book. They bought it from some other outfit. Routledge used to be a standard issue publisher of unreadable academic jabber of the paramarxist school, parasitizing on English universities. In the last few years they've tried to break into the American popular market. Hence opportunistic stuff like this.
There's a Duke Ellington industry out there, appealing to scholars, musicologists and plain enthusiasts of good music. So there are bogus reissues on CD and preposterous books like this. The same thing happens with Mark Twain; you come to expect it. But damn Routledge for getting involved in the seamy side of it as they scramble to find a place in the dwindling high end market.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Travesty In Blue
4 May 2001
By Andrew Homzy
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
A. H. Lawrence has written a book filled with errors on almost every page. Lawrence's lack of scholarship will seriously call into question the lack of Routledge's editorial integrity if not its motives - unless the publisher decides to recall the product.
If you really want to see this book, wait until it is remaindered or piled on the "free" table - that should be soon.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Mighty subject through a very narrow lens
8 May 2004
By souldrummer
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Duke Ellington is such a towering subject that any book about him contains some items of interest. This is the first full length biography I've read on Ellington, although I did take a course with Mark Tucker, author of "The Ellington Reader" in college. This book is written by a psychologist and a musician of the 1940s, not a researcher, and the previous reviewers have criticized him for a lack of research. Lawrence relies heavily on Sonny Greer and Mercer Ellington as interview subjects and there may be the value in skimming through this biography. As a drummer, the story of how Greer got his magnificent drum kit that you see in all of the 30s and 40s footage of the Ellington brought me a smile. Stories like this lead me to believe that Lawrence would have been better served facilitating a memoir of Sonny Greer and some of his musical contacts [he admits that he was trying to do this until Hentoff's "Hear me Talkin' to Ya came out in his introduction] than writing a flawed biography of Ellington, a towering figure who deserves a thorough scholarly biography like the one that Lewis Porter did for John Coltrane.
The book has two other big flaws. First, the 50s and 60s are really quickly treated and he will go through a year of the band's life in a couple of pages. I personally was first drawn to Ellington's music through this musically rich period and while the creation of some of Ellington's key suites like the Far East Suite is mentioned, I would have liked a better sense of what life in the band was like at this time.
The biggest problem, here, however, is that Lawrence the psychologist intervenes at times and leaves the reader with a sour taste in his mouth. I do not need speculation on the psychological nature and "narcissistic" elements of Ellington's personality. I'd rather get detailed research as to what happened in his personal life from varied sources and allow me, the intelligent reader, to draw my own conclusions. The fact that the last paragraph of the book concludes with a statement of his "profound narcissism" and how Ellington just wanted "everybody in the palm of my hand", diminishes the ultimate musical and spiritual legacy that Ellington left behind.
Right now, I don't see a major full length biography of Ellington on the market that I can completely endorse. This book has some value as a quick, though flawed, overview of the band while introducing members like the great Sonny Greer.
2 stars.
--SD
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