The Duke Rides Again

Duke Ellington was back in Manhattan last week, and jazz fans went to look him over at Cafe Society. The glad word from that echoing Greenwich Village cellar was: the Duke is riding high again. He displays a growing habit of holding earnest conversations with onlookers while playing the piano, and of even leaving the bandstand and meandering back just in time to give the final cutoff. But his band is practically reborn.

The five saxes play with savage bite or else hum in their eerie, split harmonies behind a pagan trumpet solo; the three trombones clip off their own high-swinging ensemble passages; and the four trumpets blaze away with such ferocity that the effect becomes strangely airy and bodiless. But the chief reason for all the internal excitement is the Duke's new drummer, Sam Woodyard. He sits, lean and still, behind his battery, neatly punctuating every phrase, coming as close as any man could to playing a tune on his four side drums and three cymbals (he actually squeezes pitch changes out of one drum by leaning on it with an elbow), while keeping a rhythm as solid as Gibraltar. When the band appeared bored with a number, he seemed to get under and shove--and the band came alive.

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