J O H N E D W A R D B A S S E

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: n the long and storied career of Duke Ellington, who was born in 1899 and

I died in 1974, no nation save his own played as significant role as did France.I Ellington enjoyed a long and rich association with France, especially its Citya of Light, spanning forty years. He performed in Paris and twenty-six other* French cities, playing nearly one hundred concerts, as well as making radio,television, and film appearances.

During his band's three-year residency at Harlem's Cotton Club, from late1927 to early 1931, Ellington honed his compositional abilities and showmanshipand achieved international attention through recordings and radio broadcasts. InFebruary 1931, he embarked upon nearly ceaseless touring for the rest of his life.Despite the hectic pace, he nearly always found time to compose every day, evenif just a few measures on the back of an envelope. (A testament to his productivityis the trove of 100,000 pages of unpublished music that he composed for hisorchestra, now preserved at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum ofAmerican History.) By the early 1930s, he had developed a singular compositionalstyle, by creating his own harmonic rules and eliciting unusual tone colors fromthe distinctive voices of his gifted instrumentalists such as trumpeter CootieWilliams, alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, and trombonist Joe "Tricky Sam"Nanton. As a result of his originality and his players' individuality, his bandsounded unlike any other.

France had proved hospitable to jazz beginning in early 1918, when U.S. Armylieutenant James Reese Europe's band took the country by storm.' In 1918 or 1919,the American drummer Louis Mitchell took his band to Paris and remained therefor a decade; in 1922 his became the first black jazz band to record in Europe. Jazzwas, as John Szwed put it," 'the shock to the system the French had been waitingfor': modern, energetic, exotic."^ The clarinetist/saxophonist Sidney Bechet hadperformed in Europe in 1919, and lived and performed in France during the latter1920s. But visits from top-tier American jazz musicians to Europe were rare.

Ellington's first appearance in France was in 1933, during the lowest point inthe Great Depression. Ellington's manager, Irving Mills, always seeking new opportunities for his artists—Ellington, Cab Calloway, Mills's Blue Rhythm Band,the Mills Brothers—traveled to Europe in November 1932.' The result was aEuropean tour by the Ellington orchestra in the summer of 1933, sponsored by theBritish bandleader Jack Hylton. The dancer Bessie Dudley, best known for the