“In a Mellotone” (1940) Duke Ellington with Jimmie Blanton, Cootie Williams and Johnny Hodges (two versions)

“In a Mellotone”

Composed and arranged by Duke Ellington.

Recorded by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra for Victor on September 5, 1940 in Chicago.

Edward K. “Duke” Ellington, piano, directing: Wallace Jones, first trumpet; Cootie Williams, trumpet; Rex Stewart, cornet; Lawrence Brown, first trombone; Joseph “Tricky Sam” Nanton, trombone; Juan Tizol, valve trombone; Otto Hardwick, first alto saxophone; Johnny Hodges, alto saxophone; Barney Bigard and Benjamin F. “Ben” Webster, tenor saxophones; Harry Carney, baritone saxophone; Fred Guy, guitar; Jimmie Blanton, bass; William “Sonny” Greer, drums.

The story:

To set the context for what was going on in the world of Duke Ellington when this recording was made, I will cite to an entry in the definitive Ellington chronology, The Duke – Where and When …A Chronicle of Duke Ellington’s Working Life and Travels Part 1 – 1891 to 1945. This is the work of Ellington expert Steven Lasker, with assists by David Palmquist.

“…Ellington’s new, exclusive contract with Victor Records went into effect on February 22,1940. It contained an extraordinary provision: no other black band would be recorded for issue on the prestigious, full-priced (seventy-five cents per disk) Victor label (Victor’s subsidiary label, the thirty-five-cent Bluebird, would continue to release Fats Waller, Earl Hines, and Erskine Hawkins). Victor allowed Ellington to choose his own material, thus freeing him from some of the commercial constraints he operated under with (Irving) Mills (his previous personal manager).” (1)

Clarifications by Steven Lasker:

—The contract with Victor was for two years per Tempo March 4, 1940, p 2.

—The Winnipeg Free Press (1940 11 06, p. 1, courtesy of Steven Bowie) reported that Ellington’s Victor contract “guaranteed $500 per side for every record his band makes.”

—“No other black band” should have read: “no other black big band.” Two small black pick-up bands which recorded for Victor were led by Sidney Bechet and Lionel Hampton.

—Ellington vocalist Herb Jeffries told me (Steven Lasker)  that some of the pop tunes recorded by Ellington (in the early 1940s) for Victor were selected by Leonard Joy.

—Per Dave Dexter, Jr., (who wrote the article called): “RCA Victor Has a One-Man Record Demon  ” …He’s Leonard Joy who Quit Selling Steel to Supervise Cutting Wax,” Music and Rhythm, May 1941, pp. 32-34: “Just what does this man Joy do now? He selects all tunes to be recorded for popular sides. If you are a songwriter, or a publisher, it is Joy who takes your song, decides if it is ‘worth’ recording, then assigns it to one of the bands or singers on either the Bluebird or Victor label; often, if the tune is outstanding, he puts it on both labels by different artists.”

“If you are a musician, or a leader, and you record for Victor or Bluebird, it is Joy who tells you what tunes you cut. It is Joy, also who supervises each recording session, helps balance the band (in the studio), and assists the leader with getting songs on a ‘biscuit.’….At Columbia there is a large staff of recording experts (supervisors), including Mannie Sacks, Joe Higgins, Morty Palitz, John Hammond, and others. Decca has Jack and Dave Kapp, Bob Stephens. All handle bands on dates in the recording studio. But Victor’s Leonard Joy does the whole job himself–the only man in the field to do so.”

(MZ clarification: By 1939, Steve Sholes had begun his career as an A&R/producer at Victor Records. He replaced Eli Oberstein, who had been an A&R/Producer at Victor through the 1930s. Leonard Joy and Sholes worked largely at Victor’s Manhattan studio. The talented Harry Meyerson was working as a Victor A&R/producer at Victor’s Hollywood studio.)

“Tireless and without ‘jitter-nerves’ which often creep up on a recording session, Joy works quietly. He rarely makes a leader or a high-powered singer angry. A born diplomat, he coordinates two things–what the leader wants and what will sell records. It is a difficult job. Sometimes a leader has a tune which he thinks is terrific. But Joy and everyone else know that the tune won’t sell records. It is Joy’s unenviable task to jockey the leader into changing it around enough (if Joy can use it at all) to be recorded and more important, to sell. But he succeeds. And on personality alone. Everybody who knows Leonard likes him. ….”(2)

“Leonard is now 47 years old (he was born in Claremont, N.H., and played piano in high school) but his blonde hair and ‘sharp’ dress make him look younger. As a guiding hand in the destinies of RCA-Victor, he has played a major part since the organization was a baby. There would be no joy in Camden (New Jersey – home office of Victor) if ever Leonard Joy were to leave.”(3) (Above left: Leonard Joy in Victor’s 24th Street studio in Manhattan – 1939.)

—Victor’s files indicate that Harry Meyerson, not Leonard Joy, was present at all of Ellington’s recording sessions held in Hollywood in 1940-42, with the exception of the session of December 2, 1941, at which neither Meyerson nor Joy was noted as present. Lyrics aside, all melodies recorded by Ellington at these sessions were composed or co-composed either by Duke Ellington, Mercer Ellington, Billy Strayhorn or an Ellington band member, with just one exception, “What Good Would It Do?,” a composition published by Tempo Music. It seems that Meyerson, unlike Joy, didn’t suggest pop tunes for Ellington to record.(4) Mr. Lasker’s clarification of this issue is supported in Dan Morgenstern’s liner notes for Ellington & RCA Victor,  RCA Victor CD box set 09026-63386-2, The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition, p.7

In his album notes for the Mosaic Ellington small group recordings from the 1930s, Mr. Lasker wrote: “Breaking free of (John) Hammond was doubtless a compelling reason for Ellington to quit Columbia at the expiration of his contract,(4) but not the only one. By moving to RCA Victor his music would receive greater marketing and promotion in the United States and be issued under license worldwide. Domestically, his records would again be sold at 75 cents each, which translated into increased royalty income for his compositions (but not on sales from September 1940 on, when the price of Victor’s pop singles was reduced to 50 cents). Ellington (and/or his management team) may have figured that most of the people who bought his records could afford to pay a premium price for them. According to Duke’s trumpeter Cootie Williams: ‘I used to notice that our type of music wasn’t really for black people; most of everything we played was for white. While we were on tour we were playing for white audiences. The rich, upper class of blacks would come but mostly we would be playing for whites. Yes, we did play at the Savoy Ballroom, but only for a night at a time, never for a weekly engagement. In the 1930s we played dance music for the aristocrats – waltzes and things like that – but when we broadcast it would be jazz…'” (5)

1940 was also the time when Duke Ellington began to be managed by the William Morris Agency, which also booked the Ellington band. The Morris Agency clearly extended the Irving Mills management plan to present Duke as someone who was a cut above all other bandleaders, no matter how successful they were. That agency essentially represented artists who were famous show business personalities, not bandleaders. [Bandleaders were largely represented by Music Corporation of America (MCA), and General Amusement Corporation (GAC).] Nevertheless, the Morris Agency (at least in 1940), adhered rather strictly to the practices developed and perfected by MCA and GAC that kept their bandleader clients on the road as much as possible, generating a steady stream of commissions for the agency.(5A) The Ellington band spent almost the entire first eight months of 1940 on the road. Although some theater dates where the band could sit down for several days at one location were scattered in, most of the schedule was filled with weeks on end of back-breaking one-nighters. In reviewing the itinerary of the Ellington band for this time, one finds the band in Seattle, Washington on April 1; in Emporia, Kansas on May 9; in Lawrence, Massachusetts on June 27; in Atlanta, Georgia on July 17.

The travel merry-go-round continued until the band finally reached Chicago on September 4, 1940. (They had played a one-nighter in Henderson, Kentucky on September 3.) They were to open a lengthy engagement at the Panther Room of Hotel Sherman, starting on September 6. On September 5, the Ellington band entered Victor’s Chicago studio to make the recording presented with this post, along with three other titles.

The music:

“In a Mellotone” is an original composition by Duke Ellington that he wrote in mid-1940. The piece’s chord changes are based on the 1917 standard “Rose Room,” which Ellington had recorded in 1932. In the early 1950s, a lyric was written for “In a Mellotone” by Milt Gabler, and recordings using his lyric were often titled “In a Mellow Tone.” A version with the lyric was first recorded by The Mills Brothers in 1955. The song has been recorded more than 400 times.(7)

Duke’s refashioning of “Rose Room” was done in typically Ducal fashion, meaning imaginatively. “…(I)nstead of simply supplying the old chord structure with a new melody, …Ellington came up with a two-part dialogue as the main theme. The five saxophones have a series of repeated unison riffs which receive ever-changing answers from the three trombones.” In addition, “In a Mellotone” serves as a vehicle for (soloists) Cootie Williams on plunger-muted trumpet, (listen for his allusion to Duke’s “Never No Lament’/”Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” as he ends his solo), and Johnny Hodges on alto saxophone, “…who brings the piece to a climax with his fluent double-time phrasing and commanding tonal presence.” (8)

But these observations address only what is happening on the surface of the music. Other salient aspects of this performance are the robust sound of the saxophone quintet in the first chorus, with the sounds of Harry Carney on baritone and Ben Webster on tenor prominent in the unison lines; the fleeting sixteenth-note saxophone section cascades behind Williams’s solo – led brilliantly by Otto Hardwick; and the plangent yet driving bass foundation on which all of this rests, provided by Jimmie Blanton.

Blanton was so much more than simply a bass-player. “During a tenure with Ellington that would last just two years, Blanton proved to be one of the major innovators of jazz by revolutionizing the approach to the string bass. He freed the instrument from its accepted role of staid time-keeping and harmonic simplicity. In his hands, the bass acquired greater rhythmic variety and harmonic refinement. Blanton’s fabulous taste and technique would be a tremendous influence on other bass players.” (9) In addition, he also was the very incarnation of swing, and his terrific swing carries the entire band along here on what can aptly be described as a joyous romp.

Duke was well-aware of all of this, and he made sure that Blanton’s bass was included in aspects of this performance that were quite unusual in 1940. Take for example the eight-bar introduction: it is a perfect musical conversation between Ellington’s piano and Blanton’s bass. And it sets the tempo and feel for what will be a deeply swinging performance. (At left: jazz bass pioneer and revolutionary Jimmie Blanton.)

Here is a live performance of “In a Mellotone,” taken from a radio remote broadcast from the Panther Room of Hotel Sherman in Chicago on September 7, 1940. The personnel is the same as for the Victor studio recording, which was made two days earlier.

The recordings presented with this post were digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.

Notes and links.

(1) John Edward Hasse: Beyond Category, The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington p.238 citing from Variety 1940-02-21 p.34.

(2) Although Leonard Joy did have great success in selecting tunes to be recorded that would sell, he also had a few notable misfires. He thought that the Charlie Barnet recording of “Cherokee” would be a dud. See:  https://swingandbeyond.com/2018/09/09/victors-24th-street-new-york-recording-studio-cherokee-1939-charlie-barnet/

(3) For a bit more information about Leonard W. Joy, follow this link:   https://archive.dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/article/1941/6/1/music-master

(4) Harry A. Meyerson was an A and R executive (producer) for Victor Records in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. He moved on to MGM Records in the 1950s, and then to Decca in the 1960s. Both he and Steve Sholes continued successful careers as producers into the rock-and-roll era.

(5) John Hammond wrote a number of pieces for swing era trade papers that were critical of Ellington’s music. Consequently, Duke, who could hold a grudge, was angered by this because Hammond was quite influential in the world of swing. However Ellington returned to Columbia Records in the late 1940s, when Hammond was working for another record label.

(5A) In addition to booking agencies receiving a steady stream of commissions from bands appearing on the road doing one-nighters, these gigs were less risky than theater engagements, where if anything upset the perfect balance of a band’s presentation, the engagement could be damaged in a way that was not always easy to remedy. On the road, if someone (other than the leader) was sick or otherwise incapacitated, a sub could try to cover the missing performer’s chair in the band, and usually not be noticed by the audience. Also, agencies used top-grade bands like Ellington’s to sell other less popular bands they were representing. The ploy was, if you take bands B, C, D and F for engagements, we will give you Ellington on this date or that date. That was called block-booking, and it put the risk of loss for less popular bands on the ballroom operator, not on the agency. The agency always got a guarantee.

(6) S. Lasker, album notes to the Mosaic Records box set MD7-235 Duke Ellington: The Complete 1936-1940 Variety, Vocalion And OKeh Small Group Sessions, p.20

(7) The basic information about “In a Mellotone” was extracted from the entry on Wikipedia on it.

(8) Tucker

(9) Duke Ellington …Day by Day and Film by Film, by Klaus Stratemann (1992), 160.