Duke Ellington: Music is my Mistress

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

137-138

text excerpt

On May 11, 1970, I was thinking about how I could persuade [Johnny Hodges] to get his soprano saxophone out once more to play on "A Portrait of Sidney Bechet" in The New Orleans Suite. The telephone rang and I was told that he had just died at his dentist's office…

[He had] a tone so beautiful it sometimes brought tears to the eyes--this was Johnny Hodges. This is Johnny Hodges…

Johnny Hodges sometimes sounded beautiful, sometimes romantic, and sometimes people spoke of his tone as being sensuous. I've heard women say his tone was so compelling.

He played numbers like "Jeep's Blues," "Things Ain't What They Used to Be," "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart," "All of Me," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," Billy Strayhorn's "Passion Flower" and "Day Dream," and many more.

With the exception of a year or so, almost his entire career was with us. Many came and left, sometimes to return. So far as our wonderful listening audience was concerned, there was a great feeling of expectancy when they looked up and saw Johnny Hodges sitting in the middle of the sax section, in the front row.

excerpt from 'Duke Ellington: Music is my Mistress' pp. 137-138 (197 words)

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