Music Is My Mistress by Duke Ellington. (New York: Doubleday, 1973). 538 pages.
Whenever someone asks me how to start an autobiography, I ask in return, "Do you have a lot of people to thank for making you who you are and getting you to where you are?" I ask these questions because I've read too many self-obsessed autobiographies by people who think they alone are responsible for their achievements and blameless for their failures. How could any of us gotten anywhere without the help of an endless stream of angels?
Now that I have just finished reading Duke Ellington's aptly titled Music Is My Mistress for the second time, one other time long before I started this blog, I feel I should simply ask would-be memoirists, "Have you read Music Is My Mistress?" This book is without question a masterpiece of memoir, as he describes with always with respect and often with humor hundreds of musicians, producers, friends, and family members who influenced his life. He writes with a candor and grace that reflect his legendary oratorical skills. Just listen to any of his talks on YouTube. By pointing to those who helped him, Ellington reveals so much about himself.
I consider Ellington the greatest musical composer, arranger, and bandleader ever. Yes, he had help from collaborators, most notably Billy Strayhorn, but his towering genius is evident, from his jungle sound of the 1920s to his sacred concerts of the 1960s. Scanning the nearly 50 pages at the end of the book detailing his awards and discography (and many more of both surfaced after his death in 1974), leaves one awestruck. How did he manage so much while keeping a band in business for more than a half-century?
As fot the structure of the book, it is divided by eight "acts" and further separated by great moments of his career, "journals" recounting his numerous foreign tours, and a recurring Dramatis Felidae, in which he praises jazz giants and lesser-known people who extended even the slightest courtesies to him. Ellington's stories are amusing and often hilarious, and his vocabulary uniquely and exquisitely his own. Yes, that's the way to write a memoir.
