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 GO TO PRESS RELEASES PUBLICATIONS
Allegro
Living With Music
Three years ago, Local 802 jazz rep Todd Bryant Weeks was given exclusive
access to Ralph Ellison's apartment in Manhattan to find a home for Ellison's
record collection. The actual records have never before been examined or
discussed, until now. "Art thou troubled? Music will not only calm, it will
ennoble thee." Of Richard Wagner, Ralph Ellison once wrote that the composer’s
symphonies were works, "which, by fulfilling themselves as works of art, by
being satisfied to deal with life in terms of their own sources of power, were
able to give me a broader sense of life and possibility." Like many artists of his generation Ellison utilized a
multidisciplinary approach and drew on music, photography and the fine arts as
sources of inspiration and cultural pride. He saw music as a key to individual expression and the
universality of experience and, in his own work, he pointed out the influence
and impact of everything from Beethoven to Bessie Smith. By examining the achievements of many jazz and blues
musicians in the context of the Western canon, he broadened the listening
audience for these performers, and contributed to their stature as artists of
real and lasting significance. In the summer of 2006, I was given exclusive access to
Ellison’s Riverside Drive apartment with the express purpose of finding a home
for his record collection. (I’m happy to say it now resides in the National
Jazz Museum in Harlem). Ellison was a known audiophile. Based on its contents, his
collection appears to have been amassed between the earliest 1930’s and the
late 1980’s. That day, I found many of the expected items, including the
music that Ellison wrote about so passionately – that of Charlie Christian,
Mahalia Jackson and cante flamenco, among others. But there were also many revelations: a truly varied range of
17th to 20th century classical, pop items, spoken word, and much more. All in all, there are about 500 individual pieces in the
collection, 125 of which are 78 r.p.m. records. Ellison, who was born in Oklahoma City, originally intended
to become a classical composer. He came up during the emergence of big band jazz, and
experienced many legendary performers first hand: King Oliver, Ida Cox, Louis
Armstrong, Walter Page’s Blue Devils, Fletcher Henderson, and Bennie Moten. Under the tutelage of Zelia N. Breaux at Frederick Douglass
High School, he studied harmony and played the trumpet in the school orchestra. As a student of William L. Dawson at the Tuskegee Institute
in Alabama, he had direct access to original Prokofiev scores. Later, he was to study with Wallingford Rieger in New York
City. All of this activity predated his career as a writer, but we
know, from an extensive body of essays and interviews, that it informed his
thinking. Ellison wrote about the emotions that music engendered in him
as a young man, recalling "certain needs for other forms of transcendence
and identification which I could only associate with classical music" –
here citing Schumann, among others. Those feelings and associations were later folded into his
writing, including what many have called the preeminent American novel,
"Invisible Man." Indeed, Louis Armstrong’s 1929 recording of the Waller-Razaf-Brooks
tune "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue" is an indelible feature
of that book’s prologue. Ellison was to champion Armstrong throughout his literary
career, even when it became unpopular to do so. Much has been written about Ellison and music, and there is
too little space here to review this fascinating subject in detail. To the extent that any person’s tastes determine his or her
actual outlook, and given that we all have "artifacts" in our homes,
sometimes arbitrarily acquired, the Ellison sound collection is a necessarily
subjective take on the man and his inner world. As a cultured member of an intellectual elite at the peak of
their influence in the 1960’s, Ellison obviously took an interest in
"deep" music. His collection sports the popular albums of Glenn Gould’s
Bach performances, and these and other selections indicate that he was
influenced by the Baroque fad that started during that decade. But his broad palette is perhaps more accurately represented
by 20th century works like Berg’s "Wozzeck," Charpentier’s
"Louise" or Duke Ellington’s "Flaming Sword." Here I found records featuring the divas Bidu Sayo, Joan
Sutherland, Leontyne Price and Kathleen Ferrier, signifying an abiding interest
in the great female singers – but Ellison seems not to have been an opera
buff. The collection does tend towards the thinking man’s
classical repertory, mostly German (Brahms played by the Berlin Philharmonic and
conducted by Furtwangler, etc). Recordings of Barber, Lutoslawski, Schoenberg, and Roy Harris
indicate an interest in more contemporary classical styles. Works by Britten (tied to Russian players like Rostropovich
and Richter) and copies of William Walton’s "Façade" and Michael
Tippett’s "Knot Garden" suggest an Anglophile streak. The flamenco recordings were there, though not as many as one
would expect, since cante flamenco was a flag that Ellison flew high. Ellison, who once referred to the dancer Escudero as being
able to "recapitulate the entire history and spirit of the Spanish dance
with a simple arabesque of his fingers," reviewed a three volume
Westminster anthology of cante flamenco recordings for the Saturday Review in
1954, in which he characterized flamenco as a "most useful and needed…gift
to the West." The Westminster LP’s, incidentally, were there, but only
volumes I and II. Then there were the jazz, blues, pop and spoken word records. A predominance of Ellington indicates a true reverence for
the maestro. Almost a quarter of all the recordings in the collection are by the
Ellington band, or some subset thereof (Johnny Hodges, Rex Stewart, et al). Original 78 recordings of several Ellington classics from the
early 1940’s were all well played, suggesting that the writer’s fascination
with Ellington may have peaked during the Blanton-Webster period of 1940 to
1942. During my visit to the Ellison apartment, I was directed to a
back bedroom, which held a box containing dozens of 78’s and several
reel-to-reel tapes. A Black Swan disc of "Kissin’ Daddy"/"Go Get
It" by the blues diva Inez Wallace with a Fletcher Henderson accompaniment
was cracked and unplayable. I also discovered an Ethel Waters’ recording of "No
Man’s Mama"/"Shake That Thing," indicating that Ellison was no
prude – these more racy blues were part of a group of novelty items that
included the black vaudevillian Bert Williams’ "Elder Eatmore"
sermons, records by Dusty Fletcher ("Open the Door Richard, Parts 1 and
2") and Johnny Temple and the Harlem Hamfats’ recording of "Hoodoo
Women"/"Give Me Some of That Yum Yum"! The Southwestern Swing which Ellison discussed at length in
his collection of essays, "Shadow and Act" (1964) was less well
represented. The commensurate Basie items were present, and there were a
few notable anthologies of groups such as Harland Leonard and his Rockets and
the great Bennie Moten Orchestra – but platters featuring the big bands of
Andy Kirk or George E. Lee were few and far between, and the solo work of Mary
Lou Williams was here in a sole Moe Asch 78 ("St Louis
Blues"/"Lullaby of the Leaves"). Ellison had an uneasy relationship with modern jazz, but bop
records included several by Bud Powell and multiple discs by Milt Jackson,
Thelonious Monk, and James Moody. Ornette Coleman’s "Free Jazz: A Collective
Improvisation" and "The Shape of Jazz to Come" were on his list.
These records were controversial in the late 1950’s – and topical. There were only about a dozen Louis Armstrong items in the
bunch, suggesting that privately, despite his public stance, the novelist’s
tastes may have begun to morph with the times; black Americans did not embrace
Armstrong in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Not surprisingly, one of the Armstrong discs was a 45 of the
1964 number one hit "Hello, Dolly." There were other, more curious things, some of a personal
nature. There were 78’s by Georgia Gibbs, the Ray-O-Vacs (a semi
obscure 1950’s R & B group) and an LP of Amalia Rodriguez, the Portuguese
queen of Fado. There were two copies of the LP "Eric Burdon and War:
The Black Man’s Burden," a record of "Fifes and Drums of
Williamsburg," and a Forum Records LP, "Guess Who’s Comin’ Home:
The Black Fighting Man Recorded Live in Vietnam." One of the reel-to-reels I found there may be a home
recording of the writer’s mother-in-law. Others reels were unlabeled, and invite further research. What do these artifacts say about Ralph Ellison? In the most general sense, I believe they contributed to his
distinctly pluralistic viewpoint, and were behind his marked insistence that,
apart from our race, we each of us must identify as Americans first and
foremost. But, to quote the collector: "…[I]n the swift change of American society in which
the meanings of one’s origin are so quickly lost, one of the chief values of
living with music lies in its power to give us an orientation in time. In doing
so, it gives significance to all those indefinable aspects of experience which
nevertheless help to make us what we are. In the swift whirl of time music is a
constant, reminding us of what we were and of that towards which we aspire. Art
thou troubled? Music will not only calm, it will ennoble thee." Todd Bryant Weeks is the jazz rep at Local 802. His 2008 book
"Luck’s In My Corner: The Life and Music of Hot Lips Page," recently
won a certificate of merit from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. Russell Platt and David Schengold contributed to this article. HIGHLIGHTS FROM ELLISON'S RECORD COLLECTION |
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