In the style of Mike Rowe’s “The Way I Heard It” and Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story” this episode of the Piano Parent Podcast brings you the backstory of a musician or song or a moment in music history. I use these musical mysteries to tell you something you might not know about someone or something that is somewhat familiar.
You may have heard the expression, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” It is attributed to the Roman philosopher, Seneca and my take on this quote is basically you make your own luck when you put in the work, the preparation, and then use what you’ve prepared when the opportunity presents itself.
I almost titled today’s show, “When preparation tells opportunity to buckle up” because the person we are going to meet today didn’t wait for opportunity to come to him; he went out looking for it. He grabbed whatever preparation he could, any way he could, and ran out to find opportunity.
Listen to the full episode here
School was finally out
School was finally out, and Eddie was completely free to spend his time the way he wanted to. He didn’t mind school, really, his parents had instilled in him the value of knowledge and honor and pride and basic “minding your manners”. His mother always told him he was blessed, so he felt obliged to live up to her expectations. In school, his personal favorite subject was art. There was just something about using all those colors to organize your thoughts and feelings and get your ideas out of your head so you could share them with the world. Art is what Eddie wanted to do when he grew up. In fact, he would receive a scholarship to art school in a few years, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Both his parents, James and Daisy, were musicians so they enrolled Eddie in piano lessons when he was only seven years old. But all that counting and trying to read dots on the page was too restrictive for young Eddie so he quit lessons after a few short years. And we can hardly blame him. I mean with a piano teacher name like Marietta Clinkscales, how interesting could his piano lessons have been?
(Now, I know we shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover so before we move on in our story, here is a quick history lesson about the name Clinkscales. Clinkscales is likely a Scottish surname, though there are more people named Clinkscales in the United States these days than anywhere else in the world. To prove my point, Dr. John G. Clinkscales (d. 1941), professor of mathematics at Wofford College, South Carolina, was of Scottish descent. According to Google, there is currently a Dr. John Clinkscales, Jr. who is a dentist in Beaumont, Texas. (I don’t know if there is a family connection between John, the professor and John, the dentist.) The original meaning might have been “an energetic tradesman or money changer.” When you’re talking about money changers, a name like Clinkscales makes perfect sense. I can even buy it for a professor of mathematics or a dentist but for a piano teacher who is supposed to be teaching me to play scales with anything other than a clinking sound on the piano??? Not so much.)
Now, where was I?
All due respect to Ms. Clinkscales, I think Eddie’s lack of interest in the piano had less to do with her name and more to do with the style of playing she tried to teach him. That predictable 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + music just didn’t mean a thing to him.
Help Wanted
So, when he found himself free for the summer of his 14th year, Eddie was eager to get out and see the sites around him. In order to fund his summer activities, Eddie decided he needed a job but what could a young kid do to earn an honest dollar? Last fall he mad e a few bucks selling peanuts at the local baseball stadium, but he was hoping for a little more from this job. He walked up and down Ida Place, the street where his mother’s parents, the Kennedys, lived and where his family sometimes stayed, looking for work. He wandered around the other streets of northwest Washington D.C. until he decided to stop in the café on Georgia Avenue.
The Poodle Dog Café was a favorite stop for lots of teens in Eddie’s neighborhood because behind the counter there was an amazing soda fountain where they could order any combination of refreshment their imagination could muster. Besides the great food, watching the soda jerks work and communicate with each other was very entertaining. Eddie could watch a customer place their order and hear the guy behind the counter call out, “Order in for a traffic light sundae!” (translation: three scoops of vanilla ice cream, each with a red, white, or green cherry on top). After the next customer ordered, the soda jerk yelled “Stretch one and paint it red!!” (translation: large cherry coke).
Eddie was trying to figure what wild concoction he would order when over in one corner of the café he noticed a tall, upright piano. The owner of the Poodle Dog hired a man to keep the place hopping with lively music during peak hours. (this was 1913, before the days of the ‘50’s jukebox). No one was playing it today and what really caught Eddie’s attention was a sign in the window and the answer to his summer financial conundrum: Help Wanted.
Even though he was barely 14, Eddie convinced the owner of the Poodle Dog that he was the right man for the job. “I’m a quick learner and I’ve got a good eye for detail.” Eddie said, recalling something his art teacher had told him last year in school. The café owner noticed the sophisticated manner of the young man, he seemed to carry himself like someone much older and more mature, so he decided to give Eddie a chance.
Every afternoon, Eddie spent his time learning the special soda jerk lingo and serving customers. As he worked, he picked up interesting rhythms in his head from the sounds the soda fountain handle made when he jerked it back to fill a glass with carbonated water and from the sounds of ice cream plopping in a coke float, a “Brown Cow”. When the piano player was there, his music added to the cacophony of sounds and rhythms.
Eddie loved listening to that piano player. Why hadn’t Ms. Clinkscales taught him how to play like that? He might not have stopped lessons! After listening to the Poodle Dog performer, Eddie would tinker on his piano at home trying to recreate the same sounds, which would often lead to new sounds of his own. That was a lot more fun than 1 + 2 + !
Frank Holiday's Poolroom
Sometimes, after work, Eddie would head to Frank Holiday’s Poolroom over on T Street next to the majestic Howard Theatre. Even though he was too young to go in, he somehow managed to sneak through the front door and sit close enough to watch all the different pianists there. There were stride pianists who used their left hand to go back and forth between low notes and chords. There were pianists who played the very syncopated rhythms of early jazz. There were even pianists who brought music to read. All the musicians, those who could read and those who played by ear, seemed to share a language all their own, similar to the lingo he had picked up at the Poodle Dog Café. These were some cool cats with the chops to jam and keep the jitterbugs swinging all night long. (translation: These were fine musicians who had the skill to play their instruments for the pleasure of their audience well into the night.)
With Eddie’s eye for detail, he was able to learn many of the jazzy sounds he heard at Frank Holiday’s. He also had a new appreciation for reading music, so he decided to get more piano lessons from some of the fellows. He took the things he learned and mixed it with some of his own ideas and eventually wrote his own music.
Live at the Poodle Dog Cafe
One night, when Eddie was working at the Poodle Dog Café, the piano player didn’t show up. The owner had heard Eddie tinkering around on that piano some during the slow hours, so he approached him and said, “My regular guy isn’t coming to play piano today but I need somebody to play and draw in more customers. Why don’t you get over there and play some tunes?” I doubt his boss even got to finish that last part before Eddie had jumped the counter and started playing his music at the Poodle Dog. In fact, he had just finished his first composition. He called it the “Soda Fountain Rag” in honor of that little café that sparked his interest in piano again.
It wasn’t long before Eddie became the main man playing the keys at the Poodle Dog. His repertoire wasn’t very big, but he had a nice little secret he had learned at Frank Holiday’s Poolroom. If he played his “Soda Fountain Rag” in a different style, like a one-step or a two-step. It sounded like three different songs. Throw in a little waltz with a tango or a foxtrot and you’ve built up an entire catalog off of one song.
Opportunity, buckle up
That is just one of the innovative ideas young Edward had as he began to transition from an aspiring artist to a budding musician. Though he was offered an art scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, he declined and even dropped out of Armstrong Manual Training High School, where he was studying commercial art, three months before graduation so he could pursue music.
To support himself while he was building a band, Edward worked as a freelance sign painter. Whenever someone hired him to paint a sign promoting a dance, he would ask if they had already secured a musical group for the event. If they hadn’t, he would recommend his group, the Serenaders. On the flipside, if someone booked the Serenaders for a gig or a dance, Edward would sell them commercial art to promote it.
Over the years, musicians came and went, the name of the band went through several iterations, settling on the “Washingtonians” a few years before the Great Depression. They were quite successful, not only booking gigs in dance halls and night clubs, but also selling records, lots of records. The maximum capacity of a record album at the time was about 3 minutes so most performers confined themselves to that limitation with one song on the A side and another song on the B side. That wouldn’t do for our bandleader. No three-minute record could limit his musical ambitions. He recorded even longer pieces with half the tune on the front and the rest of the tune on the back.
When the Great Depression hit in the late 1920’s record sales plummeted, and many bands were dropped by their agencies, no record sales, no bookings for live performances, no way to support their families. Fortunately for Edward and the unique sound of his Washingtonians, they were able to adapt to the relatively new medium of radio. Almost overnight, their restriction of being heard only by record customers or locals or travelers to their area was lifted. Suddenly they were welcomed into almost every home in America, almost every home. Unfortunately for Edward and his Washingtonians, some of the people who might have enjoyed his music when veiled behind a radio wave, could not or would not appreciate his talent once they saw the color of his skin.
Meet our mystery man
Our dear Edward, the son of James Edward and Daisy Kennedy, was of African descent. He was born in Washington D.C. His father was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina. His father was likely a slave.
Remember when I told you Eddie had an air about him that impressed the owner of the Poodle Dog Café? Eddie’s friend Edgar McEntree felt the same way. Edgar and some of their mutual friends noticed how “his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, and his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman”,[11] and began calling him Duke.”
And there you have it.
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington regarded as one of the most prominent jazz composers of our time preferred to call his music “American Music” rather than jazz.
He was a visionary, not only of musical harmonies and rhythms but of musicians, often writing music to fit the amazing talent of his bandmembers. He was an innovator, not only of musical talent but also as a businessman, reinventing himself through every phase of the rapidly changing jazz era simply by remaining true to himself. He might adapt his style just like he adapted his first composition way back at the Poodle Dog Café but he would not conform to trends and fads that came and went. He said, “Be a number one yourself. And not a number two somebody else.”
He was a thinker, choosing to view a problem as a chance to do his best. “My biggest kick in music -playing or writing- is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?”
April is Jazz Appreciation Month
So, in this month of April, which has been designated by the National Museum of American History as Jazz Appreciation Month, and which is also the month of Duke Ellington’s birth (April 29, 1899) we honor a soda jerk from Washington D.C. who forfeited his love of art to create music that has been part of the soundtrack of America for 100 years.
National Museum of American History: April, Jazz Appreciation Month
The Famous People – Duke Ellington
Biography.com “7 Things You Might Not Know About Duke Ellington”
Listen to Duke play his first composition, "Soda Fountain Rag"
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