“Playing” with the band / Composer

While he was an excellent pianist, Ellington "played" his orchestra. He attracted, recruited and retained the best musicians, who stayed with the band because it offered more freedom than anywhere else.

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Ellington's music was so tailored to his musicians that their names frequently appeared in his scores, in place of generic notations for specific instrumental parts.

Smaller groups within the whole
The challenge for Duke Ellington was to create a workable balance between his ceaseless artistic exploration and the popular requirements of that era. In collaboration with his players, Ellington worked out a series of solo voices that arose out of the orchestra and functioned like regular characters on a situation comedy.

Ellington employed two innovations:

> He made recordings for smaller groups (sextets, octets, and nonets) drawn from his then 15-man orchestra.

> He composed pieces that were concerto-like and focused on a specific instrumentalist, as with Jeep's Blues for Johnny Hodges and Yearning for Love with Lawrence Brown.

Different types of voices
Ellington used a technique called vocalizing, having instruments sound as close to the human voice as possible, and voices sound as close to instruments.

He often composed specifically for the style and skills of these individuals, such as Jeep’s Blues for Johnny Hodges, Concerto for Cootie for Cootie Williams, The Mooche for Tricky Sam Nanton. In turn, he also recorded songs written by his bandsmen.

He studied and emphasized the players and their personalities, and was able to “play” them where they worked best in the music. Nurtured his musicians, often working to bring out performances they didn't even know they could do.

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Paul Gonsalves

He cultivated the "Ellington Effect" with his trombone section, which achieved but one of the band's many distinctive timbres – the full "Ellington Effect" combined his orchestra’s tone coloring from the unique sound qualities of the group’s individual players.

At the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, Ellington told tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves to blow as long as he wanted during Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue. In what has since become jazz folklore, Gonsalves almost created a riot as he played a solo for 27 choruses that stirred the crowd into a frenzy.

Use the comment section below to respond: Gonsalves' solo enthralled the Newport crowd because it was unexpected and had no natural ending – would he ever stop? Why do you think music has the ability to move people emotionally?

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