Duke Ellington

We're dancing.

We're singing to the music of Duke Ellington.

And it's a really special show.

It's been a special experience for me.

And Phyllis Hyman, I knew her because she was a recording artist doing R&B and jazz songs and all this kind of stuff.

So it was her first Broadway production.

So that was my knowledge about it, and I knew it was celebrating Duke Ellington.

But I was working, I was going out of town, so I never got to see it while it was running on Broadway.

And all you have to do is speak a name into it.

Duke Ellington.

Take the A train.

Marilyn Monroe.

Well, Duke Ellington, take the A train.

Yeah.

You could say Ren 1010.

I can't believe I won.

And, you know, I sang I'm Beginning to See the Light by Duke Ellington.

And it was so much fun to perform.

And when I heard my name, It was such an absolutely, absolutely, how to say, a surprise for me.

I'm Al Edson.

In 1946, Duke Ellington composed this piece called The Deep South Suite.

The song was partly inspired by the story of Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a black veteran who was beaten and blinded by an unknown white police officer in South Carolina.

It happened the day he was discharged from the military.

The scholar W.E.B. Du Bois came to dinner.

So did the poet Langston Hughes and the singer Paul Robeson and the bandleader Duke Ellington and the runner jessie owens her uncle leo a professor of african history at howard university brought guests from across africa to sit at the family table a small girl could sit very still at the edge of the room and listen When Lorraine was small, her father bought a three-flat on South Rhodes Avenue.

White owners in that neighborhood had signed agreements to keep black families out.

Some of the neighbors were angry.

Their home was full of visitors.

The scholar W.E.B. Du Bois came to dinner.

So did the poet Langston Hughes and the singer Paul Robeson and the bandleader Duke Ellington and the runner, Jesse Owens.

Her uncle Leo, a professor of African history at Howard University,

And this guy was like a small ensemble.

They were called, I think they might have used the word orchestra, but it was whatever, like a Duke Ellington's orchestra, like 20 pieces or something.

and they did a concert and they did workshops over the weekend in Winnipeg and I fortunately signed up for the piano workshop and it was with a guy named Stanley Cowell who who probably was a friend of Jarrett's and he was a monster capital M monster pianist from Philadelphia and I was only I don't know 14 and that was uh It was so awesome to meet a man like that.

And he talked to me and these other kids from the Verbs in Winnipeg who knew nothing, as though we were all like, you know, on the same frequency as Philadelphia hardcore jazz people, which was beautiful.