Monday Musicale with the Maestro – October 5, 2020 – Journey Into Jazz Part 1: Ella Fitzgerald

Journey Into Jazz
Part 1: Ella Fitzgerald

My introduction to jazz was one of the most memorable musical and personal experiences of my life. I was 14 years old and had just begun to play my first instrument, the clarinet. However, my career as a clarinetist started very badly. I had no teacher or instruction book, and I held the clarinet with the holes facing to the side instead of straight up. And I couldn’t read music. Mercifully, there are no recordings of my early attempts to play “Silent Night.”

One cold winter evening, seemingly on a whim, my father braved the damp clutter of the attic to bring down to the dining room a box of 78 rpm records. My Mom put our tiny $25 record player in the middle of the floor, and my parents, my little brother Ralph, and I sat around it. My parents explained that these were records they had first started collecting in the mid-1930s, when they were in their early twenties and dating. The first record they played (perhaps hoping I’d give up the clarinet) was by the legendary clarinet virtuoso and “King of Swing,” Benny Goodman. I was enthralled, as he seemed to be playing nine million notes a minute! Who WAS this guy? Then came a recording of the Duke Ellington Band. My father explained to me that this was the classiest of the big bands, the music being more sophisticated and original. I loved it! Then more and more records were played, and I heard new sounds and new names: Count Basie, Artie Shaw, and Ella Fitzgerald. I noticed, then, that my parents were HOLDING HANDS! They had never done that before. And they were looking into each other’s eyes as if they liked each other! WHAT?!

It wasn’t until years later that I, too, felt the nostalgia of rediscovering music from my youth and understood what my parents must have felt that night. The years suddenly vanished, replaced by glorious images—alive, palpable—of what we’d thought was lost and buried. The warm embrace of that night as I discovered jazz with my family was the most positive and loving introduction imaginable to an art form. The electrifying rhythms, the improvisatory freedom, and the life-affirming JOY of it made a deep impression on me.

Thus began my lifelong interest in jazz. In junior high school, my music teacher (Donald Ferrante) sensed that my tootlings on the clarinet were never destined to please. So he gave me a baritone saxophone and had me play that or the string bass in the school’s jazz band until I graduated from high school. As a conductor, I’ve found that this exposure to jazz during my formative years has made me much more comfortable with the idiom than I would have been otherwise.

It’s one of the unfathomable miracles of life that almost exactly eight years to the day after my parents introduced me to jazz, I found myself (age 22) conducting Benny Goodman in a world premiere of a clarinet concerto by Gordon Jenkins, one of Frank Sinatra’s greatest arrangers. (More on that experience in a future Monday Musicale.) The following year I conducted several concerts with Sarah Vaughan. And through the next 40 years, I had the privilege and pleasure of conducting many jazz luminaries: the Duke Ellington Band, Al Hirt, Marion McPartland, Pete Fountain, George Shearing, and in 1981, the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald—the greatest jazz singer of all time.

Ella Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia on April 25, 1917. Like so many Black female singers of her era who achieved fame as classical or pop artists, she learned to sing in her church choir. But her early years were exceedingly difficult. Her childhood was stable until her mother died when Ella was just 15. But that was a turning point. Her grades plummeted, and she left school. And during the dark years that followed, she was the lookout in a brothel and worked with a numbers runner for the Mafia. There is evidence that she was also being abused by her stepfather. Unable to endure life at home, Ella ran away and never returned. But she was not yet an adult, so within a few days she was apprehended by the authorities, spending several months in an orphanage and then in a series of reform schools. She escaped from the last reformatory and for a while was homeless. Her inner strength must have been granitic! Ella was determined to survive by any means necessary and supported herself by making money singing in the streets of Harlem. At only 16, she had to survive in ways that she only mentioned twice in the next half century, and only to very close friends.

How does a person from that kind of background become the “First Lady of American Song” and the “Queen of Jazz”? The same way any other musical artist does in this competitive profession: with drive, discipline, and talent—and above all, the love of performing great music. In the opening minutes of our DSO concert audio selection today, I outline Ella’s journey from abject poverty to international fame. And how Ella went from being a homeless person to a household name with the unprecedented success of one of her earliest recordings; “ A-Tisket A-Tasket.”

Over the next forty years, Ella became world-famous for her impeccable musicianship and beautiful tone, plus perfect diction and intonation. And through her deep admiration of her favorite jazz instrumentalists, including Louis Armstrong, she acquired an athletic vocal technique that was as much instrumental as vocal. This virtuosic facility made her arguably the greatest scat singer of all time. Here are some helpful guides as to what scat singing is and how she was one of its earliest proponents.

Part of Ella’s success derived from her great taste in musical material. In 1956, coaxed by the acclaimed record producer Norman Granz, she began a series of eight songbook albums, each dedicated to a single composer. These songs—by greats such as Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, and Richard Rodgers—have Ella come to be known as “the standards,” the bedrock of pops songs from 1930 to 1960.

[message_box title= color=”black”]Ella in 1981, the year I conducted her.[/message_box]

In today’s DSO audio, I also talk about my experiences conducting back-to-back performances with Ella and the Baltimore Symphony in the summer of 1981. The orchestral arrangements performed were written expressly for her by the most lauded arrangers in the business, including Nelson Riddle and Marty Paich. These “charts” were both symphonic and authentic jazz—marvelous and compelling to study. So after the first concert, I went home, and as I have often done in my career, I revisited the score to see if I could improve on my interpretations for the repeat performance. My attention fixed on a segment after Ella had finished the song, a lyrical orchestral epilogue that I realized could be interpreted much more expressively. I marked my score accordingly and decided to try that the next night. Frankly, I was a bit nervous that Ella might not like my “personal freedom” with the passage. But that evening, after we played my new take on that closing section and before the applause began, Ella looked at me with the most gloriously warm expression and said, “Honey, that’s the most beautiful thing I have ever heard!” I admittedly have chills right now as I remember this favorite compliment from my 50-year career.

In my 11-year tenure with the DSO, I’ve conducted many concerts featuring jazz composers and performers, and I have no problem placing this beautiful, complex, and uniquely American art form among “the classics.” I agree with Duke Ellington: “If it sounds good, it IS good!” Our selections today are taken from a true high point in my jazz experience with the DSO: a concert at the Hayti Heritage Center (11 February 2018) for which we formed a new group: The Durham Symphony Swing Band! This incredible group of 18 players was handpicked by the leader of two jazz orchestras in this area, Greg Gelb. Greg also played alto saxophone on this concert and was the featured soloist for our Hayti tribute to North Carolina native and jazz saxophonist John Coltrane several years ago. Joining Greg in this new DSO group was local jazz hero and trumpeter Al Strong—a DSO favorite from past concerts. Al has worked with such celebrities as Aretha Franklin and Branford Marsalis. He is also a composer and music educator.

This concert (part of our Hayti Tribute Series) was a dual salute to two African American artists: Ella Fitzgerald (whose centennial was celebrated during the 2017-18 season) and author Langston Hughes (who had passed 50 years before). Our first-class singer for the “Ella” part of this program was Yolanda Rabun. Originally from Atlanta, she has become a major part of our own arts community as a singer and actress. She’s worked with such celebrities as Jennifer Holliday and Sheila E. And she rocked the Hayti Center in 2017 in our DSO tribute to North Carolina native Nina Simone.

After considerable research, I located many of the original swing band arrangements by luminaries such as Nelson Riddle and Billy May–arrangements Ella popularized with her famous recordings. So you can imagine what a thrill it was to conduct these authentic and legendary charts by the best of the best. We hope you enjoy them also!

William Henry Curry
Music Director
Durham Symphony Orchestra

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This project was supported by the Durham Arts Council’s Annual Arts Fund, the N.C. Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural & Cultural Resources, and Triangle Community Foundation.