Ellington's descriptions of the creative process often emphasized speed and efficiency. Like a reporter trained to work under deadline, he knew how to compose under pressure--usually for his orchestra's next recording date or concert appearance--and took pride in this ability. Ellington filled his memoirs, Music Is My Mistress, with anecdotes showing him swiftly, even effortlessly, turning out new pieces, often at the last minute. He claimed to have dashed off the extended work Creole Rhapsody (1931) overnight, writing much music ... that we had to cut it up and do two versions (Ellington 1976, 82). Similarly, his labors on the 1925 musical revue Chocolate Kiddies reportedly lasted a single night: sat down that evening and wrote a show. How was I to know that composers had to go up in the mountains, or to the seashore, to commune with the muses for six months in order to write a show? (71). Shorter compositions, like the popular Mood Indigo (1930) and Solitude (1934), apparently required less than thirty minutes to complete (78-79, 87). While these accounts may contain elements of exaggeration, (1) Ellington's generally swift rate of composition has been confirmed by other witnesses. His son Mercer was impressed when Duke wrote three numbers for Jump for Joy (1941) on a train between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles (Dance 1981, 40). And Jimmy Jones, the pianist and arranger who occasionally worked with the Ellington orchestra in the sixties and early seventies, once observed, amazing thing about Ellington is that he can think so on the spot and create so quickly. I watched Duke write once and it was astonishing. When he knows what he wants and has got it in his mind, he can write awfully fast (217). In recounting how he to write Black, Brown and Beige, the massive, three-movement Tone Parallel to the History of the Negro in America, Ellington once again stressed the seemingly casual and spontaneous nature of his work habits. According to Music Is My Mistress, an impromptu suggestion by Ellington's manager caused him to undertake one of the largest and most ambitious pieces of his career: One day William Morris, Jr., said, 'I want you to write a long work, and let's do it in Carnegie Hall.' So out Black, Brown and (Ellington 1976, 180-181). The actual writing, Ellington recalled, began in December 1942--the month before the piece premiered in Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1943. Ellington started composing during a theater appearance by his orchestra in Hartford, Connecticut, on a bill that included the singer Frank Sinatra and a film titled The Cat Woman. While the film was being shown, Ellington would go to the piano onstage behind the screen and compose: It sometimes got pretty scary back there in the dark (Ellington [1973] 1976, 181). Ellington revealed little else about the process of writing Black, Brown and Beige, only noting blandly that the piece came off well and its premiere was an overwhelming success (Ellington [1973] 1976, 181). In this official version of the circumstances surrounding Black, Brown and Beige, Ellington reduced the work's long and tangled early history to a simple, easily digestible account. While Ellington may have composed Black, Brown and Beige quickly--and evidence suggests he did just that--he had been conceiving a large-scale work based on themes from African-American history for more than a decade. Contrary to the story given in his memoirs, neither William Morris Jr. nor an impending Carnegie Hall debut played a role in the origins of Black, Brown and Beige. They simply provided a deadline--the one crucial part of the creative process that Ellington himself, over a period of years, had been unable to secure. During these years, however, Ellington had worked on other projects that paved the way for Black, Brown and Beige: the Paramount film short Symphony in Black (shot in 1934, released in 1935), the socially conscious, race-proud musical Jump for Joy (1941), and, most important, the opera Boola, a work often cited in the Ellington literature but long shrouded in mystery. …