Duke Ellington in New York City

from Duke Ellington: Music is my Mistress, page 119:

As a drummer, Chick [Webb] had his own ideas about what he wanted to do. Some musicians are dancers, and Chick was. You can dance with a lot of things besides your feet… Chick Webb was a dance-drummer who painted pictures of dances with his drums. Way back, at the Cotton Club, we were always tailoring orchestrations to fit the dances. If you listen to the figures in some of Strayhorn's pieces, like "U.M.M.G.," those are dances--tap dances maybe--and you can't mistake what they essentially are. The reason why Chick Webb had such control, such command of his audiences at the Savoy ballroom, …   more >>
cite as

Duke Ellington, Duke Ellington: Music is my Mistress (New Jersey, 1973), p. 119. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1429301993260 accessed: 29 March, 2024

location of experience: New York City

Listeners

Duke Ellington
lyricist, performer, piantist, Composer […]
1899-1974

Listening to

hide composers
'U.M.M.G'
written by Strayhorn
dance-drumming performed by Chick Webb

Experience Information

Medium live
Listening Environment in the company of others, indoors, in public

Originally submitted by 5011Henning on Fri, 17 Apr 2015 21:19:53 +0100
Approved on Tue, 01 Sep 2015 10:26:39 +0100