‘A New Reason for Living’: Duke Ellington in France

Abstract

In the long and storied career of Duke Ellington, who was born in 1899 and died in 1974, no nation save his own played as significant role as did France. Ellington enjoyed a long and rich association with France, especially its City of Light, that spanned 40 years of appearances. He performed in 26 French cities and in Paris, over the decades, gave 48 concerts. His first appearance in France was in 1933 during the lowest point in the Great Depression. Ellington's manager, Irving Mills, always seeking new opportunities for his artists Ellington, Calloway, Mills' Blue Rhythm Band, the Mills Brothers traveled to Europe in November 1932.1 The result was a European tour by the Ellington orchestra in the summer of1933, sponsored by the British bandleader Jack Hylton. The dancer Bessie Dudley, best known for the shake, was part of the act. The Ellingtonians left N ew York on the S.S. Olympic on June 2, arrived in Southampton on June 9, and embarked upon a 55-day tour of Great Britain, Holland, and France. After a triumphant tour of England, the band left Britain on July 24, 1933, for a short tour of the continent. Ellington had been scheduled to playa week at the Rex, a deluxe movie theater in Paris, but when management resisted and then refused to pay the $6,000 fee that Mills asked, the engagement fell through. Nevertheless, Ellington's orchestra triumphed in three concerts in Paris at the huge Salle Pleyel on July 27 and 29 and August 1, 1933. 'It was perhaps the most riotous scene of joy ever witnessed within the four walls of this building,' raved the African-American writer J.A. Rogers in the New York City newspaper the Amsterdam News. 2 Rogers asserted that 'apart from the waltz and tango, the European orchestras cannot play good dance music that is, the jazzy, peppy kind. They simply haven't got the feeling for it. The Duke Ellington concerts ... have shown that the European public is ... eager for properly played jazz.'3 By some accounts, the orchestra also presented a special concert at the Casino de Deauville in the famous seaside resort.4