The Duke Box

© Copyright ® Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected, all rights reserved.

“Even before his Cotton Club engagement, Duke Ellington had been on the radio, making his debut in 1923. The Cotton Club's national radio wire was a great boost to the band's popularity. Jazz people are so record-oriented that they tend to forget how important radio was, notably during the Depression, when record sales hit an all-time low. As the Swing Era got under way, radio helped to spread the message -think of Benny Goodman and the Let's Dance program. But by then, Duke and his men were already radio veterans.”

“We now arrive at a milestone in the history of recorded Ellingtonia. Two young jazz fans, Jack Towers and his somewhat older mentor Dick Burris, who had heard the band some 16 months before in Sioux Falls. South Dakota, knew that it was coming to the Crystal Ballroom in Fargo, North Dakota for a one-nighter on November 7, 1940. Intrepidly, they obtained permissions from Duke and from the William Morris Agency to record the band on location. They had some radio and recording experience and access to a portable disc cutter and quality microphones.

When they arrived at the ballroom, a sizable (120 by 80 feet) hall with good acoustics, some of the bandsmen were already on site. What the two young fans accomplished that night has earned them a place among the saints of Jazz.”

“The Hurricane, located in the heart of New York's Times Square, at Broadway and 49th Street, was the kind of nightclub that no longer exists. When Duke Ellington opened there on April 1,1943 for a six-week engagement with an option for an additional twelve, it featured not only his big band but also a lavish revue. Its clientele included representatives of all the branches of show business, from fellow band leaders and Broadway stars to music publishers, press and booking agents, chorus girls and boys, and just plain hustlers. And it had no less than six weekly radio spots for the band. As it turned out, the Hurricane booking would become the longest in Ellington's career, lasting a full six months and yielding him not a fortune (he estimated that the stay itself represented a loss of $18.000, but this was offset by lucrative side gigs, such as a week at the Capitol Theater, and incalculable dollars worth of publicity and exposure, raising the band's fees considerably) And, in the midst of wartime problems involving travel restrictions, housing shortages, gas rationing, and the effects of the draft on band personnel that had made life on the road even tougher than normally, the Hurricane booking was akin to finding an oasis in the desert. And an additional problem, the recording ban imposed by the Musicians' Union effective August 1.1942, was somewhat mitigated by the radio exposure, from which, needless to say, we still are beneficiaries.”

• Dan Morgenstern