Ah, so... You thought of the Big Band, all dressed the same, elegantly, impeccably groomed, and full of pomade, instruments gleaming, all with white shields engraved with the band leader's initials... Style and discipline... Yeah, whatever... Well, underneath the tuxedos, there’s a bunch of musicians mostly from the worst neighborhoods of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, the folks from LA are the worst... Black guys, Germans, Italians, Central Americans, all talented, you see, we play in the best jazz orchestra in the world, the Duke's... Count Basie, you say? I don't laugh because I'm polite.
Paul the shy one, the good guy, who never argues with anyone, that’s me. Maybe I drink a bit more than the average, but in the reed section the average is already pretty high... Some are quick to get into fistfights and sort it out among themselves as they would have done in the downtowns they come from, and sometimes knives almost come out... Oh no, they did come out once... Well, just let a trumpet extend the solo a little too much and ruin the sax's entrance, it seems like no one notices but then, in the dressing rooms, the two of them beat the hell out of each other, they sort it out. The Duke, then, doles out improvisation like quinine for malaria, in drops, and not to everyone... He knows he can trust us only when we are regimented, everyone with their sheet music, sometimes, when he cares too much about a piece, he even writes the solos note by note... He oils the machine and the machine spins beautifully, splendidly programmed and perfectly functioning, shining like no other jazz orchestra...
With him you earn well, I can't complain, but some say he's an indifferent egoist, never a compliment. He doesn't trust anyone, yet he knows his soloists and knows how to bring out their best, he gives you a nice solo in the middle of "Caravan", for instance, and you feel like a god on Earth, hallelujah, doing a counterpoint with the tenor to Juan Tizol's muted trombone who wrote "Caravan", he with the Duke, they wrote it... And the Duke, at the piano, looks at you benevolently two bars before the solo, you enter and he doesn't look at you for the entire solo, then he says your name into the microphone, the audience applauds and he, two bars before, looks at the performer of the next solo.
Thinking about it, though, he trusts the little guy, Billy Strayhorn, a great pianist and exquisite composer, he wrote for the Duke, the whole "Take the A Train", need more? Music and arrangement. He's the only one the Duke considers part of his family, the only one among us who calls him Edward, his name... But the little guy doesn't play in the band, he can't handle the group's dynamics and then the Duke plays the piano, no way around it. Then he also trusts Harry Carney, always called "Youth" because he started with the Duke when he was seventeen, a great baritone player long before Gerry Mulligan came along, no doubt... He drives well and often acts as his chauffeur, the Duke drives terribly... He uses him to get his more reckless choices accepted by the band and Youth says to everyone, when the Duke isn't around: "You do this passage as he says, when he realizes it's a stupidity, he'll remove it, you'll see..." And invariably that's what happens... Old dance hall remnants that don't even look at each other when they settle in, but then the music starts, oh!
And then I arrive, in 1950, late. I came from Brockton but my folks immigrated there from Cape Verde.
I played and went to war, sergeant, I came out of it. I played again, that's what I knew how to do. The Duke and I met at Birdland, I had seven dollars in my pocket but I got in free there, of course. We talked, he knew everything about me, he knew I had played with Count Basie and with Dizzy, not bad, the Duke was from another church but he knew Dizzy, Trane, Mingus, and all the new standard-bearers of a jazz that, surprise, could be played in trios and quartets. Be-Bop, Dizzy had called it, and Be-Bop it remained. For the Duke, it wasn't his cup of tea but he never despised anything or anyone, especially the new, his ears pricked up, the old man looked at you while you played and counted your notes, he already knew everything about you. "I want you to replace Ben Webster," he said to me, and the gin went down the wrong pipe. Replace Ben Webster, me? "You."
And here I am, a soloist in the Duke Ellington Orchestra, me. Sure, it wasn't the era of the big bands anymore, all booked less and paid less, now who dances does it to the sound of sappy songs, mostly performed by whites, small melodic groups, a real shame, and if you look for jazz you find bebop, indeed, small groups of black guys playing like gods, no doubt, but stuff for a few, dissonant, I say, for a few. The old folks of the band say that the Duke often pays us out of his own pocket, covering the shortfalls due to the lack of bookings with the money made in previous years.
We get this gig in Newport RI, a place for the rich, beaches, boats. They're hosting a jazz festival and we go there. White audience, regular. A July evening, warm but not too much, better. Sammy Woodyard, the drummer, with the humid heat, his hands sweat and he sands the sticks so they don't slip and annoys everyone. Not much desire to play tonight, and the Duke, as usual, pretends not to see that four or five musicians are missing. It happens, so much for strict discipline, ten years ago he would've fired them on the spot, without the last paycheck, but today he just grumbles that we're not jugglers, we're artists, you don't behave like that. I've also lingered at the bar, two or three more drinks and I go, four, let's say, I join the second piece, stagger a bit, and then I go by memory.
We start, it's two days from the Fourth of July and we do "The Star Spangled Banner", then we expect "Take the A Train", which has been the Duke's signature since '40, no, we do "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "Tea for Two", it takes more to stir up applause, a cold audience and musicians thinking about their own stuff, a crappy evening.
We draw it out, then the intermission, the Duke stops, we exit and some unknown comes in, two or three pieces, and then us again, complete this time, those who were delayed at the hotel with a girl or at the bar with friends were located, got dressed hurriedly, and made their way onto the stage, little smiles to colleagues, Cat burps quietly, and the others elbow him, but he's Cat Anderson, even his burps are in tune, he is. And then try telling him something, he weighs 120 kilos and has a punch that would dismember you.
Let's go, the Duke starts "Take the A Train", all in unison, now it's different, it's an incredible crescendo, it's beautiful, it always seems brand new, we're all pumped by the end. But the Duke does one of his magic tricks, he introduces a new composition he's called "Festival Suite", it would have been better later, Cat whispers, too intricate and slow, but we play it well, we're warmed up, right solos and amazing breaks, we expect the applause but the audience talks among themselves, gets distracted and stays chilly... "We need a stomp, we really do..." Russell Procope whispers to me, adjusting the reed. And instead, the Duke calls Harry Carney who, with the baritone, plays "Sophisticated Lady", a classic that usually brought theaters down, but these four boors want something else, old, ours, explosive stuff. The Duke turns and thanks the few who cheer and others who applaud bored, then flashes his sixty-tooth smile and announces "a couple of blues we've been playing since '38", old bastard, you realized this isn't the European audience nor the New York one, here they want the hit, the orchestra in unison like everyone remembers it... I know that after the first, which is "Diminuendo in Blue", choral, nervous, its natural continuation will come, "Crescendo in Blue", which the Duke has recently combined with the other to allow Ben Webster, before me, to do a couple of chorus solos. He looks at me, I stand up from the sax line and take my place where the singer usually stands while the first part ends. I look at the audience, the Duke at the piano has his back to me, for a couple of choruses the stage is mine. Bass and drums are flying, but they are Jimmy Woode and Sam Woodyard, two devils, taking a slightly faster tempo than the original, the Duke hints at chords, I close my eyes, a quick lick on the lips, then the reed, I start.
Well, one, two, three choruses, beautiful, I feel good, now I hear the Duke pounding on the chords, the trumpets raising the volume as if telling me to end the solo, I think. Four, five, six, seven, am I overdoing it? But yes, I have four bourbons in, I keep going. No signals, bass and drums still keeping the time. Eyes closed, Cape Verde, my guitar I played years ago, Dizzy telling me I'm too tight, my girl dumping me for a Chicago guy, damn, eight, nine, this time the Duke is going to fire me and no, instead I hear it, his metallic voice: "Dig in, Paul, come on..." And if you say so, I continue. Ten, eleven, twelve choruses. none complicated, I play simply, all the notes have to be heard, I can't riff like Trane, we're different but we love each other, I think "Next chorus I'll do it like Trane" and mess up the first three notes, I do it on purpose and it really sounds like Trane... And I'm at the fifteenth chorus. Sixteen, each different from the other. Then I open my eyes and see a woman, a blonde bombshell in a tight black suit who stands up and starts dancing, possessed, others see her too, then a guy stands up, another one, a girl, ten, all standing, I don't stop doing solos, twenty, twenty-one... from mid hall, spectators climb onto chairs, dance in the aisles, I'm electrifying them, they clap their hands. The blonde seems electrified and moves around, those legs, damn. Now, I know you all have had rock'n'roll and the Rolling Stones, but nobody could recall anything like this, a crowd going wild, oh, damn, there are some black folks too, about time, my sax is driving them crazy, twenty-six, twenty-seven choruses of solo. Enough.
I collapse, sit down as everything spins around me, and see Cat smiling at me under his little mustache, then he licks his lips and blows like crazy on his trumpet.
The piece ends but the audience doesn't return to their seats. The Duke, wisely, knows he needs to calm them down, in case of trouble the organizers will blame him, and the cops too, so he calls up Johnny Hodges, nicknamed "Jeep" for his speed in solos, he used to kick my ass when we competed. He entrusts him with "I got it bad" and "Jeep's Blues", written with him. Later, I was told they couldn't calm the crowd and that I'd played twenty-seven solos. They told me Cat couldn't stay seated while I was playing, me, Cat. They also told me the blonde looked for me a lot backstage, but I was throwing up, drinking and vomiting. Someone must have brought her to the hotel, surely, a great example of interracial dialogue, right? Those legs, damn.
They also told me that in the end there was a drum solo and finishing off "Mood Indigo", with the audience dispersing and us and them certain that that night, in that stupid beach resort, a page of jazz history was written and that, once again, the Ellington orchestra had written it, that page. And I, naturally, was carried in triumph by the newspapers, specialized and not, by the radio, recognized on the street, me, the one from Cape Verde, with the drinking problem. For a lifetime they would ask me about that night, that solo, if I was aware I had revived the orchestra, which from then on would be demanded everywhere, all over the world.... I would shrug and pour myself another.
I had tied my life to the Duke's, after that night he used to say that he was born in Washington and reborn in Newport, and the credit was all mine and my solo with twenty-seven choruses. That big egoist wasn't so egoistic after all, at least in feelings, I know for sure he cared a lot about the little guy, Carney, Cat, Johnny, and me, Paul Gonsalves. I lived another eighteen years, I drank and was unwell, I played, mostly with him, who always pretended not to see that I joined in on the third piece. I've heard hundreds of saxophonists, all better than me, but I was at Newport with the Duke, black kids with the reed in your mouth, that's all you are. Like everyone, I eventually died, in London, alcohol and heroin had done their job well. I died nine days before him, they didn't have the courage to tell him, in the hospital, in New York, that Paul had died, the Duke wouldn't have endured it, Mercer, his son, said, crying along with my daughter Colette, he wouldn't have endured it.
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