This week David Palmquist has shared new information on The Duke Where And When (tdwaw.ca).
The first one is about the opening of Club Ebony on 11 December 1947. The club was situated at 1678 Broadway between 52nd & 53rd Street. Mercer Ellington and Buster Harding wrote the music for the show and many in the Ellington family attended together with muscians, show people and critics.
David’s second post is about an Ellington engagement at the Golden Key Club in Cleveland, Ohio from 17 December 1963 to 5 January 1964.
It was apparently a troubled engagement, there was not enough of attendance and the club could not pay Ellington his $6,000 a week fee. When the engagement ended is not clear but it seems that Ellington left for New York on 5 January.
The last post is about the pressconference when Ellington arrived in Melbourne on 5 February 1970 to start his Australian tour.
According to the reporter John Larkin it was “not the most friendly press conference in the world. It was hot and some of the questions crossed each other–and Ellington–and made him a bit mad. He sat back and watched white cats leaping around him, up and down, and sideways, with their questions, and it was suspected he’d had many games played with him, all before, and was ready for the best of them, and the worst…”
When one reporter went on about angry young black musicians, the Duke asked him who he meant. When he said Ellington hated travelling, Ellington told him not to put words in his mouth.