In the beginning of June 1950, ten years after his famous 1939 tour, Duke Ellington and his orchestra was back in Sweden. It was thanks to the long two and a half European tour that the French promoter Jules Borkon organised for Ellington in 1950.
The Swedish tour was heavily intertwined with the tour of Denmark.
Ellington and the band arrived in Copenhagen from Hamburg in the evening of 30th May (souce Sven-Erik Baun Christen) and gave four concerts in KB-Hallen in the center of Copenhagen, two on 31st April and two on 1st May. They then went on to Sweden for a tour with four concerts from 2nd to 5th June and returned to Denmark for two concerts in Aarhus (Århus) in the peninsula of Jutland in the western part of Denmark.
None of the concerts in Denmark or Sweden were recorded but there exist recordings from the St. Thomas restaurant in Copenhagen on 31 May 1950 and the Hammerschmid’s Recording Studio in Århus on 6 June 1950.
They circulated among collectors for many years but this year Storyville issued a CD with them (see the article published on the website 7 July this year).
Ellington’s four concerts in Sweden took place in Malmö (2 June) Stockholm (3 and 4 June) and Gothenburg (Göteborg) (5 June).
The tour of Sweden was arranged by Konsertbolaget together with Nils Hellström´s jazz magazine Estrad. The concert in Malmö was arranged in collaboration with the evening newspapper Kvällsposten and the one in Gothenburg in cooperation with Göteborgstidningen, also an evening newspaper.
The printed program for the tour lists what was supposed to be played at the concerts and also the members of the orchestra.
Before the European tour a few changes had been made in the orchestra. Ernie Royal replaced Dave Burns in the trumpet section. The trombonist Ted Kelly had joined as replacement for Tyree Glenn and Butch Ballard was hired as an extra percussionist simply because of fear that the somewhat too “thirsty” Sonny Greer could not be fully entrusted with such an extensive tour. Don Byas, who lived in Paris, was replacing Charlie Rouse.
The late DESS member Rolf Dahlgren wrote a long article for the DESS Bulletin 2012-4 about Ellington’s tours of Sweden including the 1950 tour.
About it, he says among other things that “the concerts coincided with the first summer heat wave which resulted in barely half sold out concert halls. But the few who attended were very satisfied with the music”.
After Copenhagen, Ellington and the orchestra went to Malmö for the first concert in Sweden.
There were two concerts in Malmö. They took place at Stadsteatern (The Municipal Theater) which had been inaugurated just six years before.
The concerts were scheduled for 7 and 9 PM. Because of the warm summer weather, the concert hall was only half-full. From the reviews it seems that Ellington had a fairly young audience.
Both the major newspapers in Malmö – Sydsvenska Dagbladet and Arbetet had reviews.
The one in Sydsvenska Dagbladet was written by its music critic Sten Broman whose focus as a music critic was classical music. He was also a composer of avanguard classical music.
Broman’s review is worth reading in full but here we can only provide some snapshots.
“For those who know the Ellington of the 20’s and 30’s, it was particularly intereresting to study his style today, says Broman. “It is admirable that he has managed to remain at the top for so long.
This is, of course, due to his ability to both renew himself and build upon his long-standing traditions. His progressiveness partly reflects a fusion of newer styles from “hot,” “swing,” and “be-bop,” accompanied by a more modern, expressionist harmony with polytonal elements.”
Broman goes on saying: “Ellington has both finesse and vivid imagination; his thematic ideas are striking and inventive; his harmonic complexities are often very clever, and he plays the piano with delicately light, flowing passages. When he conducts, he mainly sways his body sideways, but he has the orchestra completely in his control, and he has effectively utilized the unique qualities and technical skills of all sixteen of his soloists in his compositions and new arrangements of older hits. Some of the soloists’ manners, however, are rather unappealing, like the clarinetists’ tendency to glide up to a high note with long glissandi, which is ultimately not fully reached and ends up horribly off-key.”
Broman continues: “However, these wind players were often impressively skilled. The trumpet players’ clarity reached the highest oboe pitches, and both their and the trombonists’ tone production was often so exemplary that many symphony wind players would be astonished and perhaps learn something valuable. The saxophonists occasionally overused vibrato but mostly had excellent intonation, and both trombones and trumpets employed various mutes and effects.”
Among the most skilled were clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton, trumpeters Harold Baker and Al Killian, trombonists Ted Kelly and Lawrence Brown, bassist Wendell Marshall, and drummers Sonny Greer and Butch Ballard. Billy Strayhorn proved to be a polished, elegant, and harmonically inventive pianist. Among the singers, the fair-skinned Kay Davis was a statuesque beauty, capable of executing unusually clean and resonant vocalizations, while Chubby Kemp was a lively black woman with a vibrant temperament.”
Among the best numbers yesterday were first Air Conditioned Jungle, an original composition with a refined duet for clarinet and string bass, brilliantly performed, and then Creole LoveCall, Mood Indigo, and Caroline. Here, thematic and rhythmic imagination dominated over the predictable solo patterns. It was captivating to hear these triumphs.
Broman ends by saying: “The Duke is not dead—long live the Duke!”
An excellent piece similar to what one can read in the French Jazz Hot from Ellington’s 1950 visit to Paris.
There is not much to say abou the review in the daily Arbetet, which was from the first concert.
The rewierer was not very enthusastic to say the least
“It was not a real day of sound and fury as the organisers had expected. Symptomatically, there was only one time when the applause broke loose and that was after a combined clown and dance number performed with brilliant humour and technical bravura by one of the six dark-skinned gentlemen.”
The reviewer went on: “Well, it was a circus to a large extent in other respects too. The commercialised ‘jazz’ of today, with all its offshoots, has little in common with the spirituals and blues sung in the Negro quarters of New Oirleans.”
However, Jimmy Hamilton and Wendell Marshall got some praised as did the drummer whether it was Sonny Greer or Butch Ballard.
“Otherwise it was mostly showmanship, often sophisticated, sometimes mesmerising but often with its orgies of sound downright stressful to normal sane ears.
From Malmö, the Ellington entourage went to Stockholm.
The first concert in Stockholm was on 3 June and took place at the Stockholm Concert Hall (Konserthuset) in the center of Stockholm. It is fair to presume that there were two concerts, one at 7 PM and one at 9:30 PM as there would be the next day at Royal Tennis Court (Kungliga Hallen) (see ad below). No ad for the concert in Konserthuset.
Stockholm
In its Cultur and Music section, Svenska Dagbladet published an enthusiastic review of one of the concerts on 3 June. It was written by the signatur B.B. He wrote that”one can with no doubt call Ellington’s concert in Konserthuset he musical event of the year”.
It was the only review published by the Stockholm newspapers.
If the newspapers did not give much attention to Ellington’s visit, the jazz magazines Estrad and Orkesterjournalen did much better.
As co-organiser, Estrad covered it very well in its June and July issues.
Possibly, Estrad made an announcement about the tour in its May issue but I have not got access to it yet.
In the June issue, Estrad wrote a lot about Ellington and the tour, while the July edition was focused on the tour itself. Here is one of photos that were published in the July issue.
Kay Davis, Lawrence Brown, Ray Nance
Orkesterjournalen also had a lot of photos. If the one is below is from the first or the second concert at the Stockholm Concert Hall I don’t know but one clearly see that Johnny Hodges is soloing.
There is much more to write about Ellington’s 1950 tour but the article is already too long. If our readers would like to hear more about it, please let me know.
I big thank you to Lars-Erik Nygren for having scanned his copies of Estrad 1950-6 and 1950-7 and for having harvested newspapers for me. Without him the article would not have been possible
Author: Ulf Lundin