Happy Hump Day POU! And a humpin there was in good ole Harlem! Today let’s talk about the antics of legendary Duke Ellington!
Duke Ellington avoided the scourge of hard drugs that left so many other jazz artists incarcerated or dead before their prime, but his extramarital affairs were the stuff of legend. Five musicians in the Ellington band married women who had previously enjoyed flings with their boss. Different mistresses fought over him, even up to his final days.
Duke married at 19, to his high-school sweetheart, Edna, who was pregnant with their son. They parted just after Edna discovered that Duke had a girlfriend, picked up a razor and slashed his left cheek, leaving a scar he carried for the rest of his life. In his entertaining new biography, which tells Ellington’s story in detail, Terry Teachout examines the evidence for several young women who might have been the girl.
Most intriguing of the candidates is Fredi Washington, a beautiful young actress who later appeared in Hollywood movies with such stars as Claudette Colbert and Paul Robeson. She appeared opposite Duke in a short film about a struggling bandleader, and not long afterwards Duke hired a young trombonist, Lawrence Brown, who married her but feared Duke would steal her back. Brown nevertheless spent a total of more than 25 years in the band until a backstage fist-fight in which Ellington knocked out his two front teeth.
Duke and Edna were never divorced, and his series of serious girlfriends – his son reckoned there were four of them – never became his wives. They were mainly left back at home in New York while Ellington and the band toured the world in a grueling schedule of concerts and dances where there were always eager new female faces waiting. Don George, who wrote songs with him, claimed: ‘Duke would check into two, three or four hotels, hand out keys to different ladies, then, later on, pick out the hotel room he wanted to go to.’
Mildred Dixon, (pictured below) had a torrid affair with Duke. She was born in Boston to parents from Africville, Nova Scotia. She became a dancer and moved to New York in the mid-1920s, where she became known as part of the dance couple, “Mildred and Henri.”
She met Ellington on December 4, 1927, the first night he and his orchestra played at the club. It became his venue for years. They worked together on numerous productions including: “It’s the blackberries,” “Springbirds” and “Pepper-pot Revue”.
They started a relationship in 1928 and, in 1930, Dixon and Ellington moved in together at 381 Edgecombe Avenue, Apt. 142, Sugar Hill, Manhattan. They lived there for 10 years, however the relationship ended after he became involved with someone else.