Remembering Don Ellis
The greatest trumpet player ever
I’ve got nothing against Satchmo, Dizzy, or Doc Severinsen, but the best jazz trumpet player ever was the great Don Ellis.
When I was growing up in the San Fernando Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles, we used to go see Don and whatever band he had together at the time at Dante’s club in Sherman Oaks. Then he had his big orchestra and we would see them at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland stage and the small stage at the end of Main Street just outside and to the left of the Sleeping Beauty castle. I think we caught him at Magic Mountain once.
Some people hate jazz because of its complexity, but Don was all about the complexity. 12 notes in a scale weren’t enough for him, so he played a quarter-tone trumpet and later a valve/slide trombone known as a superbone. 4/4 time was way too simple for Don. His compositions were in 5/4, 9/4, 10/8, 11/8, 13/8, and everything in between. Nothing made Don happier than to have a whole audience clapping along to Pussy Wiggle Stomp in 7/4 time.
This is how me and my mates discovered Don Ellis: Michael Palladino, my best friend in high school, had an uncle who was a producer at Capitol Records. Every now and then Uncle would give a carton of albums to Mike, albums Capitol had laying around unsold. In one of those cartons was an amazing double album titled Tears of Joy. We took a listen, and there was Don with his incredible energy and weird, wonderful tunes. We were all high school band nerds so were instantly hooked.
Besides Pussy Wiggle Stomp, in concert we were treated to such compositions as Bulgarian Bulge (featuring the tupan, or Bulgarian bass drum), 33 222 1 222, Indian Lady, and Strawberry Soup. Don arranged an incredible version of The Beatles Hey Jude. We were lucky enough to catch a rare performance of A Wolfgang of All Seasons, the only known duet for French horn and tuba, composed by pianist Milcho Leviev. It never appeared on any album.
I remember one number Don introduced as “The Takita” where the band chanted, “Takita-tah takita-tah taki-tah taki-tah takita-tah taki-tah.” What was this strange mumbo jumbo? It was how the brass players double-tongued their instruments to play the tune! I find no evidence on the internet that this song actually exists. Does anyone else remember witnessing it?
Don was always proud to introduce the music he composed and performed for the Academy Award winning movie, The French Connection. That score won a Grammy. The 2014 film “Whiplash” is built around a composition “Whiplash” from the Don Ellis Orchestra (written by Ellis collaborator and sax player Hank Levy).
Don was also an early experimenter with electronically augmented sound. He ran his trumpet through a ring modulator and electronic delay for a unique sound. He used a looper to accompany himself, live. He played through “the box”, using a tube to run the sound into his own mouth, where he could use his mouth to shape the sound, years before Frampton did the same in his famous “Do You Feel Like We Do?” How the hell do you even do that with a trumpet? I forget exactly how, but I definitely do remember seeing it.
Where Don found musicians who could keep up with his crazy compositions is beyond me, but he found them. And, as though playing in those weird time signatures wasn’t hard enough, Don didn’t use a set list. “I like to keep them on their toes,” he would chuckle. “They never know what’s coming next!”
After seeing seeing Don’s bands around the L.A. area regularly for some years, Don disappeared for about a year. When he returned, he had a latin-tinged sound and had switched from trumpet to that superbone. It turned out that he been diagnosed with a heart condition, and his doctor made him quit the trumpet. Don had taken some time off traveling in South America, giving his ticker a rest. Shortly after he returned with his new band, he passed, December 17, 1978, at only 44 years of age.
He is sorely missed.
It used to be fairly difficult to locate recordings of Don’s music. But now there is lot available on YouTube. Just search Don Ellis.
NOTE: These are my personal recollections. The facts may be a bit different. For example, I distinctly remember Michael’s uncle being with Capitol Records, but I guess it must have been Columbia because they handled Ellis.
