Conversations with Mercedes Ellington

you [Music] welcome to the NYU Steinhardt jazz interview series and tonight I'd like to welcome a special guest Mercedes Ellington thank you very much well thanks for joining us tonight it's a rare privilege as a jazz historian to talk to it an actual Ellington well so there you can I touch ones hello I'm a dancing Ellington so it's nice for me to sit down to do something yeah okay sitting down is nice well we we don't have an agenda here we just want to have a conversation and and hear your stories okay because it's a it's a great opportunity to just to talk to people okay so your your father was Mercer Ellington yes my father was Mercer Ellington and it's a sometimes discussed us too how I got my name because a lot of people say well I was my mother told me that I was I was named after Mercedes McCambridge the actress who maybe none of this generation knows about but then it was maybe I was named after the car but there was also an elephant in the circus at that time and her name was Mercedes so I'd like to go with that one did you see that elephant live no I was too young I was just going to year that they were and then I'm because when my father an extension of his name Mercer so so where did he get his name from I have no idea I don't know it just came because there was the the Edward and the Kennedy part of the names of my father's family have stuck through generations as so much so that people have rumored that somehow somewhere along the way that we may have been related to the Kennedys people like to do that well it's a good dynasty identities and the Ellington's no so now okay so your father was mercer and your grandfather yeah was with Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington and how did he get the name do I think it came from the type of outfits and dress that he wore he was from Washington DC in 1899 and it was it was the way of a community that you get treated by the way you're dressing and that your dress and his father happened to be Butler in the White House and so he was privy to lots of stylish clothing that he'd seen with visitors to the White House as well as the way that the White House staff was required to dress and my my great my great-grandmother was no slouch either she was a beautiful woman and in the way of I can remember seeing pictures of her with her hair hairdo and the clothing that she wore was very very akin to the high society in those days so I think that he his his want of I guess a better word his proclivity to dressing in a in high fashion was due to both his attachment to the mother of his mother and his father and just to the way that musicians of the era were either respected or not respected from their look and the presentation that they made it was part of the presentation and indeed I think that that was a very great influence on the way that he presented his band from the time he had the small band until the big band mm-hmm because there's there's a a number of musicians had these royalty type names Oh Phase II companies but then you'd have the King of Swing and the king of jazz and all this yeah what what what what do you think was the earliest that that your grandfather was called do I they I think in the neighborhood when he was a kid they called him Duke because of the way he was dressing and I think it also is a way of musicians attempting to get some respect because they are actually musicians are a very strange group of people my father gave me a description actually of each of the sections of the band he told me that the saxophone players unless they play another reed instrument because if the saxophone is the easiest instrument to play if they if they do play another reed instrument that that's fine because but there if not they're not very bright this is what he told me I don't say this to many people but he said that trombone players are usually very slippery you can't pin them down you know trumpet players are very and they're like lyric opera singers they're very astute they have a certain posture of course they have to support themselves and they have snappy dressers they're very snappy dressers bass players are the salt of the earth the drummers are fine after their first nervous breakdown and he said nothing about the piano nothing about the piano players what about the bandleader well I don't know he didn't say it'd have to involved some kind of an instrument that reflect the personality of the person playing it you know so so I'm assuming you you had long conversations with Duke I had some conversations with him I'm sporadic conversations I most of the time we disagree but when after I graduated from Juilliard I just wanted to go out and audition for Broadway shows and dance companies and things like that because a dancers life is very short an athlete's life is very short and they thought that I should but they they were the ones who pushed me to go to Juilliard in the first place because I didn't want to go but my grandfather sent Billy Strayhorn to Juilliard he sent Quincy to Julliard II sent Luther Henderson to Julliard every time he never went himself but he said all these people that's because his arrangers he needed these arranges to be specific about what he wanted them to do and so I think that he got when he found out that I wanted to be a dancer he suggested that I go to Europe because for people of color in those days things were not that easy even here in New York you couldn't just go out and get you know audition and get a job or even hope to get anywhere in the theatrical business most of the people that I know that's how Alvin Ailey got started he made his own own dance company because I mean there was no work for a dancer he was from California so when he came here he attempted to go the route and went unless there was something like Flower Drum Song or those kinds of musicals there was no real work and so my grandfather told me to to go to Europe because his friend Josephine Baker would have found great success there he he'd give me I mean I I can remember anything he ever said to me I didn't do you know was I don't know it wasn't it wasn't specific defiance or anything like that it's just that I felt that it should be the other way and I do think that he was in that much touch with the times and the area that I was one attempting to get into well what else did he tell you do that you ignored oh my first job after getting out of Juilliard was West Side Story in Australia for six seven months and I grabbed my suitcase impact because the reason I got the job was I had auditioned for the West Side Story movie and I didn't get it but evidently they put me on a list so they called me up when they were getting this company together and I went immediately because that this was a great job and the choreography was great and everything so after that the show was over in Australia that they offered me another part in another presentation of another musical American musical and I said no I gotta go home and he disagreed with that he said no you home is where the work is that was his thing you know and then my father who was a musical director for Della Reese at the time he called me up and he said I'm in Hawaii with dela stop by say hello on your way over and so I did I spent some time with them was that by boat at the time was no no no I flew yeah but but it was like this you know yeah did you ever meet Leonard Bernstein I never met Bernstein I met console Eric console and of course Keith Lockhart I knew them though from another job that I was doing when I choreographed the the Yuletide celebrations in Indianapolis so and console was a great friend of my grandfather so they you know we know Duke Ellington is this iconic figure everybody here plays his music everybody knows his story it's like you've lived this your whole life and yeah but I I didn't you know when I was a kid the first time I really knew who this man was my grandmother my grandma my mother's mother raised me and she took me to the Apollo and I saw his name and the marquee and everything which was I said my name is on the marquee and she took me backstage and the orchestra members wives took care of me and she would leave me with them and then she would go home and so at that time the the format at the Apollo was a movie in a show and a movie in a show and a movie in the show and I thought that was like I was in heaven because I loved movies and I loved the show you know so they would sit me in the orchestra and the and the wives would sit around and we see all these things and they would get tired after a while and go backstage and then they check on me and then we'd go backstage and at the end of all of this first of all they would bring food so everybody had food backstage a Pearl Bailey would bring food Louis Louie Bellson was the drummer at the time and we we called him squeegee Weegee why well I don't yeah I don't even know but they he was squeezy Ouija and uh he was the nicest guy and always in a great mood and and pearl would come to see him and lots of people stopped by just to say hello a backstage and so there's this great social thing and the orchestra members wives used to bring food which was fabulous because they used to bring fried chicken and all kind of potato salad things that I'd never get with my grandmother because all I ate at my grandmother's and we were trying to watch pennies and she was cooking fish heads and ox tails you know so Fried Chicken was like a big jump and so then after all of that eating all day after the show day and night after the shows we go to Frank steak house so one of those steak houses on 125th Street and have a big table where all of the orchestra members and the wives and we'd all sit and have a big steaks so the first time you you heard the band at the Apollo what year would that have been then Louie Bellson or divan in the early 50s yeah yeah yeah so and you got to know all the band members yep yeah so what's all right what can to talk about oh the band members yeah so I mean we had it we've had a conversation in the past and you were telling me about Harry Carney Harry yes Harry Harry Carney taught me circular breathing and everybody know what circular breathing yeah was that useful for you I'm doing that now yeah it's not a what a dad's not very attractive and it's not something that a dancer can use you know but it's it's interesting to know that the body can function function like that because Harry was known for holding those notes and he would be like this you know watching to see and he very effortlessly and he was also a great driver so whenever my grandfather had to drive somewhere Harry would drive them and they were very good friends I guess he was partial to the saxophone section because nothing a very good friend of his was they have somebody he had to look out for was Paul Gonsalves Paul dissolve as was seated next to the piano I don't know the format of how big bands are now I guess everybody has their own thing but the front row is the saxophone section but Paul was next to the piano because he had a way of not being able to how I say this sit up straight because of his libations and so he had to tilt and the piano kept him from falling off the floor oh is that close you know I there was a time probably when it was lucrative lucrative enough to do this is when the band took trains and they had their own Pullman cars that kind of circumvented some of those racial issues maybe yeah they may may have I remember a train that I was on when I was doing the Jackie Gleason show my first year's June Taylor dancer was the year that Kennedy was assassinated and Gleason decided he had a love of golf and he wanted to move to Miami Beach and they were going to be building this auditorium for him and so we all made this big big move from the beautiful old Penn Station which they tore down to Miami Beach on the great Gleason Express mm-hmm and there were banners outside the car and we're chugging along and they decided that they were going to make a pit stop for supplies Steve Lawrence was on the train they had a Dixieland ban on the train Jilly's catered the train I mean it was unbelievable and we stopped off somewhere and I'm not sure whether it was Alabama Georgia or whatever and they asked everybody there weren't that many dancers they asked everybody to come out on the platform from this photo-op and I vowed that once I got on the train I was not getting off the train until we got to Miami Beach because I kept you know strange fruit hanging from the trees and you know Billie Holiday and I said that's that's gonna be my my thing I'll just stay right here and I'll be fine and they said no you know you've got to come out come on on the platform because there's lots of cameras and Gleason wants as many dancers that are here there weren't that many to be out everybody from New York and I have these big sunglasses and a big hat you know and I got and I was lurking in the back towards the train exit entrance just in case something happened and somebody from the back of the crowd yells out what's that colored girl doing up there and I was getting ready to make my hasty retreat back in the train and Gleason reached out and pulled me under his armpit and he said you stay right here mmm and it was like you know I yeah you have no idea how that just you know people who think that way all this excitement all this music all this stuff and then and they have to yell something like that you know yeah and so after that I think he kind of kept an eye out on me the second year I was in Miami I was looking for an apartment with some friends who lived there and we were looking at this certain section of one after one of the causeways and the landlady of this place that I was interested in she was from she was Filipino and she asked what race was I what looked you know and my friends they said they said to Ross she's Hawaiian but you know it just was any answer will do I got the place Wow you didn't have to wear a grass skirt I was thinking of doing it you know who life I tried to you know well now did you have conversations with the Dukes band about the same issues that they had traveling through the country well you know uh when they travel through the country if they went by bus each guys but seat was his apartment so you if you a newbie came on the but you don't see it sit in the seat that was already designated for a certain player and then the back of the bus was the poker area then it was the poker game area where everybody went and so but for longer trips that were not on the bus they they would fly and I remember they flew down there was a special Gleason show that was a big band show and all the big bands came base he came everybody and I went to meet my father at the airport and all of these instruments were on the turntable they and they were trying to run and see who whose was who you know and trying to get and all these guys it was it was really amazing to just to see that the combination of people who were there I mean I didn t really know who you know so it's not an aficionado of these of these bands but it was I had heard that on Duke's bus these musicians who had worked with the band for like 40 years they did a lung capacity test because everybody was smoking and they had lost like 40 percent of their lung capacity yeah I could believe it it's amazing that anybody could blow you know I mean it's cootie was another favorite I went to Russia with them in 1972 mmm and it was a State Department tour we followed Alvin Ailey and it was a five-week State Department tour went to Moscow what was then Leningrad Kiev must rostov-on-don Minsk and Minsk yeah five five cities yeah I just went for two big two weeks because I was doing a show on Broadway called no no Nanette mmm so they only let me out for two weeks and that but going over there first of all that tour was nobody says anything about this but Ellington always used to have a glass of coca-cola on the piano and he would put sugar in it and I guess that was his version of vitamin B or something but my friend of mine Phoebe Jacobs she made arrangements and she called up coca-cola to see if they would send cases of coca-cola to Russia with us and they didn't answer so Joel Crawford was a great fan and he was Pepsi Cola so she did answer and she said the Pepsi Cola and Phoebe said just don't show him the cam yeah just pour it in there and in the glass and don't show well that was the first American soft drink in Russia and in turn we brought back Stolichnaya first Russian vodka in the US but Duke didn't drink that no he just drank the coca-cola now I there's a there's a documentary called on the road with Duke Ellington yeah from the early sixties oh yeah and it shows him in his room every morning he would have steak and hot water yes for breakfast hot water oh I have no idea why I just very peculiar eating habits and they're all for good reasons and I guess it you know agreed with him well what he said in the documentary was that he called the steak his foundation meal because for years he never knew when his next meal would be this is true so and then the hot water was cleansing yeah so I also think that he didn't like to eat in public because he he didn't like germs and everybody would want to shake his hands yes yeah yeah I mean you try to go in a restaurant a regular restaurant or something unless you're in the hidden area or something they're gonna people want to go autograph or wanting to say hello and and it's hard to just concentrate on just eating you know well I'm sure he liked to be you like the accolades but did he like being recognized and walking around on the street well he thought it was part of the job you know that was all part of the gig you you have the responsibility I mean there were all kinds of things that he would remind my father and myself that if you're in a certain position of doing things you you don't let that all you know come to you there's something that you have to as well and you owe it to your audience to do what they you know he was also he he performed a lot for the audience I mean a lot of his compositions like dances and love required audience participation and one of his introductions to satin doll was and involved an audience member and he would go to he pick up somebody and he wouldn't look at the person exactly but he would say this next number is dedicated to the most beautiful woman in the room we don't want to say who she is because we don't want her to be self-conscious about it but we know she is and she knows that we know that she knows that do we know that she knows who she is and everybody in the audience would think that they would have won Wow so what did do think of the lyrics to satin doll cigarette-holder which wakes me over the shoulder she gives me yeah kind of an odd well it yeah but but we did it in where we did sophisticated ladies we adhered to exactly what the the direction of the lyrics and I think it was with Terry Klausner Terry Klausner and BJ PJ Benjamin did that number and using a cigarette holder and which was all of those accoutrement were very you know Erte kinds of mm-hmm decor were you around in the in the 50s for the the scene where music and dance we were talking about dance earlier or in and there was a nightclub circuit in New York City you'd have the Village Vanguard in the Blue Angel and Cafe Society and there's a door in love and bird land and no Copacabana yeah places like this this is where people would go to be entertained before television yes so you can imagine like when Ed Sullivan came and on all the dancers and and the comedians would medium to tell their jokes yes they couldn't tell him the next night because everybody heard it on TV so this was kind of a rarified time in New York probably other metropolitan areas yeah I think but did you ever go team that you ever go to the Stork Club I didn't go to the store called that there was maybe I think the cup of the Copa I went to I went to the Rainbow Room he played there a lot when he was in town as I said the Apollo and and a couple of the other clubs that used to be on 52nd Street all those jazz clubs he used to be on 52nd and so whenever he came to town the whole family would gather and go to see him because we never knew when we were gonna see him next and any time that we saw him it was like the holidays so if he was not in town for Christmas or anything like that he had presents for everybody and the band members also they had presents and cameras because whenever they went to Japan they would get cameras and they came back you know what Tamara's equipment okay I think they they had every new Nikon or and every new Canon that existed and so they were known for that kind of buying you know and and getting presents for their families because before you knew what they were off again and nobody knew when they were gonna be in town the schedule the schedule pretty much was an annual thing but it it didn't happen when they got it they didn't come to New York that often well how did all those musicians have family lives yeah well now you're getting into an area where musicians will do what musicians will do and some had multiple families and some of them were like Paul Paul Gonsalves was so I I'm I can't say that he was unhappy but I think that he was a driven kind of guy and and frustrated in some ways but he was always an only happy plane and on the stage and a lot of the guys were like that whether the guys were just that was what made them the music music healed them music was their outlet it was where they they were able to speak their minds through their instruments and it was it was a great part of their lives it was sometimes it was the only thing in their lives did you notice if the musicians practiced or they had big place so much that it was just show up to the gig and play well some of them I would go off and practice and some of them would like jam together in the green room rehearsal room just to get some energy get their energies up and some of them would fight and that would be also getting their energies up I mean because like there's some people in the there the constant argument between Kat Anderson and Couty and that it was just amazing and these two great trumpeter they were cat was like the high high pitched and reach yes and cootie was the growler you know and but they would get at each other so much so that I think one of the reasons that my grandfather put my father in the band was to clear the air between the two of us sit between us keep them apart and keep them you know but but then Cooney was always this kind of Joker guy when we went to Russia we were on a tour bus and they were giving us a tour around went to that permit Armitage and everything while we're on the tour they they gave us to in tourist guides to be with us two ladies and they were explaining everything to us as we went through the city and coolly decided to get one of them he was trying to I think this is a way of flirting and he started talking about Catherine the Great and the animals in the barn and her history with her sexual history with their animals in the barn so um he was getting very explicit and one of the interest guys she could see her welling up and and she didn't say anything finally she started to cry and she shot up out of her seat and she said there's more to Russian history than Katherine look great you know and so Kody got what he wanted you know he just you know annoyed her until and then they started getting being friendlier and you know she understood what he was doing and she now I have a couple specific questions hoody Williams yeah did Duke write his solo for take the A train no I mean this came out of them jamming because I what I understand is he played the same solo every night once he perfected it on the record yeah but it was now that that that brings up my second comment is like you know it said in that Duke Road wrote a lot of songs based on what he heard from the band jamming yeah and did that did that cause any riffs with the band well I think that when people asked him a question where are some interviewers and once asked him the question how do you keep the same guys in the band and his answer was I pay them and so you know he would also look out for their families and I know that my great aunt you know she would be like the purse strings and if anybody needed an operation or need to pay a doctor bill or something like that she would she would be the one to pay it and it was it was like a big family mm-hmm I mean they and they risked off of each other and and some of those riffs became permanent arrangement you know can't be involved in in the original or accepted arrangements they became part of the song like a train right now a train is Billy Strayhorn but what Ellington contributed as far as the instrumental arrangements then that become came a shared effort so is it true that the lyrics to a train were Dukes directions to Strayhorn when he got to New York take the a train yeah yeah Wow really coming from let me the a train didn't stop in Pittsburgh which is where Billy is from but once he got to New York you take the a train in quickest way to get to Harlem so let's talk about Duke is a composer now he was constantly writing was he obsessive I think so I think I think it was his safety it was it meant everything to him no matter what the conditions of the variables it was hauling back to home base and home base was also always the music which that makes sense when you figure he'll he wrote was like Papa hidin Ellington wrote close to 3,000 compositions or his you know and he when I was visited him in the hospital towards the end and he had a piano at the foot of his bed and so I brought him music paper like that I didn't know what to bring I you know plants what but I brought him music paper and and pencils and he because he was continuing to write he had cards from people like Frank Sinatra and Lena and and just you know so many people and there were also these superstitions you know nobody wanted to come to the hospital and his clothing that he wore to the hospital people stole it look under his clothes it's it's amazing fame has its up-and-down sides you know so every time I'd see a video of Duke composing he was always sitting at the piano yeah I did he would if you gave him a paper-and-pencil in the hospital would he just pick things out of his brain and write it down he would and and even traveling I've got a picture of him on a plane with my father and he's writing on shirtsleeves his shirtsleeve and they have those shirt sleeves at the Smithsonian I know what's his connection with the Queen of England ah the Queen sweet the Queen sweet that was a very special occasion for him because it was an honor to to meet someone on that level who personally it didn't send enough somebody to represent themselves but actually themselves received him you know with for a performance and his thanks when he was invited by any country to play his thanks to that country was to compose a suite and so he composed the Queen suite to thank her single petal of a rose and and things like that they were all dedicated to her afro-eurasian Eclipse was another thing that was because of that tour I was curious because I looked at all of these countries that he went to and he never went to Cuba he never made it to Cuba mmm and I was I got on a resolve what I'm I feel responsible that I have to take him I have to take him there well back to the Queen suite for a minute it's my understanding that he wrote it in for Columbia Records and they only made four copies one for Duke one for the Queen yes one for the president of Columbia and one for the producer tio massero and nobody had a copy until I think Duke passed away and I think Mercer yes sold it to Pablo records yeah so which is good because that's one of my favorite reporting yeah well yeah my father did a lot of cleaning up which I think to see because my father was the MD for though for a while and my grandfather said I need you and he you know no longer could be that that person that a singular person so he joined the band and he will trusted him because people were stealing from him in every whichaway so my father cleaned up a lot of things financially socially every every time turned around and he was an organizer and my father was an engineer really he wanted to be an engineer and he had that kind of mathematicians brain so he would clear up social things and and financial things yeah two of my favorite songs of your father are thinking what these to be and blue serge oh yeah so uh was he's proud of those songs those were yeah big hits yeah yeah and they're they're used a lot especially things a is used a lot for closing out a session mm-hmm which is where it's perfect how did what it do think about the success of those tins by his son well he commandeered it he said though that that's good enough to be written by me so I included in my and what's the relationship between Duke and Billy Strayhorn Billy Strayhorn was like his right arm ma that's what he is quoted as saying because they finished each other's thoughts if you can imagine I mean I guess the Gershwins and there are some other musical collaborators who did those kinds of things together but there was a conversation a spiritual conversation happening between the two of them that they were able to finish each other's musical sentences if somebody started one of them started out with a phrase or maybe four bars of something and the continuance then picked up another two bars or something the other one would pick up and they go through the whole composition like that and it was like a puzzle for them that they figured out and they all came out on the same page and they enjoyed that so much you can't hide the value of collaboration is very much a lot of people are in in in search of the individual you know popularity but to collaborate like that with another person and exchange ideas is such a rewarding experience and that's one of the things that my grandfather missed they have to Billy went he didn't have that person anymore and had to it make adjustments his mental adjustments his writing his technique everything you know did he find another collaborator after that not really I think his his collaborations or he relied mainly on his his improvisational effort the improvisational efforts of it of the band itself I actually interviewed gerald Wilson years ago and he said that Duke would call him up like it 2:00 in the morning oh yeah he didn't know about time yeah and say I need these tunes arranged by 2:00 o'clock the next day no yeah it was the same thing I mean he he was the same way Gleason was the same way Jackie Gleason would read three four books a night books a night and you know didn't require any kind of sleep behind it or whatever Ellington got carried away with writing and also reading and but writing so much that he didn't know what time it was and did Matt did Duke know Jackie yeah they were supposed to write an opera together Wow yeah what would that have sounded like you have to understand Gleason wrote melancholy 7/8 uh so and he didn't know how to write music so Sammy wrote for him but alright what movie did Jackie Gleason play a bass player I don't know he was a bass player okay somebody was asking me about the Gleason movies right now the winner is a pool player oh yeah well I think he was I think it was a movie called the orchestra wives oh oh maybe yeah but I think could be maybe I just want to hit you what's your perception of these people before we run out of time and just give me like okay to Johnny Hodges Hodges was his own God as your Hodges had the personality of a trumpet player because he was very you know no-nonsense kind of guy you didn't cross him it was very you know did you get along with him yes from a distance okay Ben Webster I didn't really know Ben hmm cootie was cool well we talked about cooling but also air Aaron Aaron Bell and Bell Joe Benjamin I knew Joe Benjamin like I said they were really quiet kind of guys what about cat was he quiet no cat was not quiet yeah cat was well he kind of you know who reminds me of cat Wycliffe Gordon hmm and I mean they played different instruments but that kind of a presence you know Wycliffe and Wyclef's you know he's he wears these wide pinstriped suits and he he acts like a trumpet player but um even his cat did you know want is all one no that's another another Creole you know that's a I didn't really know if you ever hear the story between him and Mingus and the band no my god they didn't get a log I'm sure one of them pulled a knife on oh nice and that was the end well do you have because I mean everybody's talking about guns and things these days and come to control and it was not guns that you got close up and personal knives that was a that was the deal with West Side Story that was the deal with musicians you you carry a knife so are you saying that guys send the Ellington's man carried knives I would think yes I'm not you know I'm not saying definitely yes or whatever but that was the weapon of the day did you know Lawrence Brown I knew Lawrence yes Quinton Jackson quit did not I don't I think not knowing russell Procope Russell Falco yeah no daughter lives up used to live near me 1992 2nd Street yeah yeah did you tour with it were you on tour when they did the Middle East to her no I only toured with them when they went to Russia so most of the other times I though eyes either in school too young or whatever mmm you know last week I interviewed musician we were talking about Zoot Sims when Zoot played with Benny Goodman and they said what's it like playing with Benny Goodman and Russia he said every gigs like playing with Benny Goodman and Russia I mean if you seen when when our plane landed in Russia in Moscow and we're taxiing to the terminal people broke away from the the police line and were running alongside the plane and this is a dangerous thing but they were running alongside the plane hordes of people and you look out the window of either side and they were just dying to see him and and everybody said well how did they even know about ticket was Radio Free Voice of America yep yeah well it's gone over and there was this this fight you know they would block the wattage and then they would up the wattage and block the water it's you know it's stupid game so who was who was the the president of was it Khrushchev the premier live with no wouldn't remain Khrushchev in the seventies yeah maybe Brezhnev yeah yeah somebody did they come to the gate encountered a no no and after this how many other hours trip and we landed they threw our bags in the hotel and took us all to the full joy to watch for acts of Swan Lake I mean that was great for me but um everybody's like this with ticks try to keep your eyes open and when we came we said they sat us in a box and there was the some of our in a beautiful big thing and they had waited they held a curtain for us to get there so we went there got in a box and the orchestra members were already seated and as soon as my grandfather sat there they all turned up and just look they didn't say anything or they didn't make any any gesture or anything because they were you know told that they but they all turned and looked at him and smiled you know wow did you ever meet Sonny Greer no Sonny was before I only I only see him out at his gravesite down at Woodlawn Woodlawn Cemetery I got a story about Woodlawn there's at the Ellington plot at Woodlawn and across the lane is Myles Myles Davis Miles Davis has a beautiful big black marble slab and Myles had a beautiful tree on his at his gravesite and the Ellington thing had the crosses and trees and things and Myles killed the tree so they took that tree away and it was just withered and it was in the state of I didn't look like Halloween and then they planted another tree there and that one died as well and they could have figured it out so then they had bushes then they said well we'll tried the bushes and the bushes kind of faded away I think is this last time I went out there because my stepmother passed away and we went out there for the funeral that now there's moss Wow yeah they've been relegated to moss and you got stuff growing on Dukes ID oh yeah three easy things yeah so I want to go back to June Taylor dancers in your career and I mean I was if anybody my age we would watch the reruns of the Jackie Gleason show yes was was Gleason anything like Ralph Kramden well he pulled out all of those characters I think from his experiences Joe the bartender Ralph Kramden Reggie the rich you know guy and for instance the the the hobo was the one who hosts the his Christmas show that he does and he goes through all of these fairy tales and children's stories and that was one of my favorite store my favorite shows it's gonna be released soon along with the DVDs of those those years of the Gleason show and hee hee that was a performance that he had you know because he himself was a very low-key kind of guy and unless he was riled you know unless you pushed his buttons but he had to he knew what he wanted and how he wanted things to be done and that's the way you know I mean when we were dancing the opening shot of that and now from Miami Beach and it was the director and his music and then the the shot of the airplane coming over the water and bam and there we were the June Taylor dancers flying tempo tempo of the dunes the Rockettes should be so lucky well we had dancing our and we had every every week we had a new dance we had a new learn a new number we danced precision dancers with 16 dancers we we danced when Wayne Newton was on we did a number with banjos when we did with a toy pianos when Liberace was on we danced with ukuleles and another point we've danced with xylophones at one point and at one point we did a precision number with 16 dancers on 10 speed bikes showbiz I tell you yeah all right what's what was crazy Guggenheim's real name crazy attest crazy Guggenheim ride this initials R FF Frankie Fontaine okay good alright you passed the test I'd like to thank you for joining us I could I could sit there for you and just talk to you for hours here there you're fantastic well great conversation well thanks for coming today thank you that's the allerton way [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: NYU Steinhardt Jazz Studies

Views: 3,108

Rating: 4.9333334 out of 5

Keywords: NYU, NYU Jazz Interview Series, Mercedes Ellington, Ellington, Duke Ellington, Duke Ellington Society, David Schroeder, New York, Jazz, dance, dancer, coreographer, history

Id: u6TttUD-N_E

Length: 50min 20sec (3020 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 30 2018