Sir Duke & Dr. King

On a mild spring evening in 1966 my mother and I went to the Paramount Theater in Aurora, Illinois, to hear Duke Ellington and His Orchestra in concert.

I had yet to turn fifteen, but my aspirations for a life in music were set―although in what capacity was still to be determined. I had been studying drums and percussion since I was six years old and had begun playing professionally when I was nine―working little combo gigs at bars and restaurants, dance clubs and social halls in Chicago’s western suburbs with musicians four and five times my age. We played polkas and rumbas and swing tunes for drinkers, prom-goers and wedding guests.

The chance to hear the great Duke Ellington, whose music I had heard since infancy, was something of a dream-come-true. Ellington was, after all, the most important composer in jazz and his orchestra was unequaled in performance virtuosity.

As I remember, the concert was everything I had hoped it would be. Armed now with a memory augmented by more than 50 years of listening to Ellington’s recordings, I can still hear that “wall” of sound created by a saxophone section manned by Russell Procope, Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Hamilton, Paul Gonsalves and the great Harry Carney; the growling trumpet of Cootie Williams and the screaming high notes by Cat Anderson; the low brass foundation so deftly built by trombonists Buster Cooper, Lawrence Brown and Chuck Connors, all of it underpinned by bassist John Lamb.

My mother had somehow arranged for backstage passes. After the concert, just inside the folds of the burgundy velvet curtains that hung in the stage-right wing, I introduced my mother and myself to Mr. Ellington and without ceremony or hesitancy asked him where I might find Sam Woodyard.

The New Jersey-born Sam Woodyard was Ellington’s legendary, hard-driving drummer and I, as a drummer, wanted to meet him.

Edward Kennedy Ellington (b. 1899) was a gracious, eloquent man whose moniker had befit his elegant style since youth. He smiled at me, put his hand on my shoulder and gently turned me toward the back of the stage.

“I believe you will find Mister Woodyard right back there where he is packing his kit,” Ellington said.

I left my mother with Sir Duke and scampered off to talk “shop” with Woodyard, which we did for several minutes. I remember him as being a very nice man, soft-spoken and slight in build with a broad nose, deeply furrowed brow and pomaded hair. We talked about equipment (he was a Premier man; I, Ludwig) and cymbals (Zildjian) and their various uses, and he offered me sage advice: “keep practicing.”

Duke was still speaking with my mother when I returned to their side. I thanked him, shook his hand (he might have kissed my mother’s gloved hand as we parted; I’m not sure) and said that I hoped I would hear his band again someday.

That day came a little more than two years later at Carnegie Hall. It would be a night to remember.

In 1968, I was enrolled at the Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan and was continuing my studies in the percussive arts, preparing for what I then imagined would be a career as an orchestral player. I had applied to audition at both the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music and on spring break that year my parents took me to New York for those auditions.

We stayed at a hotel in the Lincoln Center area and while I was interviewing/auditioning at Juilliard, my mother had managed to get tickets to hear Duke Ellington in a concert of sacred music to benefit Tougaloo College, a Mississippi school founded in 1869. The school’s choir, along with the Manhattan Brass Choir, led by Mark Freeh, would join Ellington and his band in a program called “Good News For Modern Man.” The music was near and dear to Ellington as it gave artistic expression of his deep-seated beliefs and helped establish his composing skills outside the realm of jazz.

The next day happened to be my parents’ wedding anniversary and to complete the celebration, my father had made reservations at the Rainbow Room which was, at the time, the pinnacle of fine dining in New York from its perch atop the 65th floor of Rockefeller Center. It was expensive, it was elegant, and it afforded a glorious view of a city my father truly loathed. Not for the life of him could he understand why I would want to pursue my musical education there while there were perfectly good schools in Chicago―a city he truly loved. (I had no valid argument; I just was inexplicably in love with New York.)

It has been almost 50 years to the day since I had the Beef Wellington at the Rainbow Room and I can still recall its flavor and buttery texture. The classic dish had been presented simply, seated, as it were, on a platter-sized plate and adorned with buttered asparagus. There was a hint of mustard in the Madeira sauce that clung to the delicate pastry shell that encased the filet, the pâté de foie gras and duxelles. For the record, I had never had pâté de foie gras (my paternal grandmother made unbelievable chopped liver, however) and, not being able to speak French, I also did not know that duxelles were mushrooms.

A PACKED CARNEGIE HALL SAT wondering why an hour had passed since the 8:15 curtain without any stage activity. A television crew arrived, setting up its cumbersome equipment in front of the stage. With no fanfare, Duke Ellington and the Reverend John Garcia Gensel, a Lutheran cleric who ministered to New York’s jazz community, appeared on stage to announce that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been felled by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, just hours before.

There were gasps and bursts of tears and shouts of outrage and Reverend Gensel asked us to pray, which we did. And the show―profoundly moving with its balance of rehearsed music and unexpected emotion― went on until the very early hours of Friday morning. The Tougaloo College Choir led the audience hand-in-hand onto West 57th Street, where we stood dazed and emotionally helpless for a while, each perhaps seeking that elusive balance between the joy of music and the senselessness of violence.

My mother, my father and I then walked the ten blocks or so back to our hotel in silence.

About that night, the writer Stanley Dance noted that “Duke had said that a main theme of his concert was freedom, for which Dr. King had given his life.”

The promise of freedom is the good news for modern man.

HARLEM WAS ON FIRE by morning and the cab driver left my father and me off at the corner of 105th Street and Second Avenue. We sprinted half way down the block to my audition at the Manhattan School of Music, where my mind wasn’t quite focused on the snare drum, timpani or xylophone.

Two months later Robert F. Kennedy, who had for all intents and purposes secured the Democratic Party’s nomination as its presidential candidate, was assassinated in a kitchen at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

And suddenly the future of our nation seemed somehow behind us. The promise of spring was denuded and our visionaries were on pyres. Our most compassionate leaders had been felled by their enemies; our best political leaders were more memory than hope.

“The stone,” journalist Jack Newfield wrote in Robert Kennedy: A Memoir, “was at the bottom of the hill and we are all alone.”

And yet, we must believe in spring and all of its promise.

Assemblage and Photography by Courtney A. Liska