Extractos de Pasaporte a París
Vernon Duke
Editor’s Note: Russian-born, naturalized American
Vernon Duke (1903–1969) is best remembered for
popular songs such as “April in Paris” (a sort of
theme song and big instrumental hit for the Count
Basie “Second Testament” band), “I Can’t Get Start –
ed,” and “Autumn in New York.” But he might not
have been happy that his legacy turned out this
way, for he was also a proli½c composer of “seri-
ous” or “classical” music. Half of who Duke was as
a musician never made the impact he hoped for;
and the half that did reach the public was not
always recognizable as a Duke creation.
Those Duke gems of the Great American Song-
book and of the repertoire of a generation of Amer-
ican jazz musicians (an irony as Duke never much
liked “real” jazz) are often attributed to some other
songwriter. Most casual listeners assume that these
songs were composed by Harry Warren, Irving Ber –
lin, or Duke’s good friend, George Gershwin. Hipper
listeners might mention Zelda Fitzgerald’s favorite
composer, Vincent Youmans (of “Tea for Two”
fame), or Harold Arlen (“Blues in the Night” and the
songs from the 1939 ½lm The Wizard of Oz), or Burton
carril (“Old Devil Moon,” “How are Things in Glocca
Mora,” and “On a Clear Day”).
But as his witty and insightful autobiography,
Passport to Paris (1955), makes clear, Duke was a hard –
working, ambitious composer not initially interested
in writing popular music. He may never have pur-
sued that course had he not been so enamored of
Gershwin, or had there been greater commercial in –
terest in his “serious” music. Yet there was some-
© 2013 por la Academia Americana de las Artes & Ciencias
doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00247
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Vernon
Duke
sires to be a serious composer; the wildly
engaging, sometimes bizarre, highly ego-
tistical and sycophantic cast of Russian and
French musicians, dancers, and artists with
whom he travels; his narrow escape from
the ½res of the Russian Revolution; su
efforts to get his noncommercial compo-
sitions performed; his struggles perform-
ing in various bands at coffee shops and
ersatz ethnic nightclubs (ethnicity was for
sale long before diversity came along);
and the encouragement he receives from
Gershwin, who dubbed him “Duke,” to
write popular songs.
I hope that Passport to Paris will be re –
printed one day. In the meantime, I have
chosen two short excerpts from the book
to reprint here. The ½rst involves Duke’s
effort to keep himself and his family fed
by taking a job in a “salon trio” in Con-
stantinople, one of several stops after
fleeing Russia. Paid three liras a night, él
eventually ditches this job for employ-
ment playing piano accompaniments to
silent ½lms, as well as jobs playing pop
tunes for British soldiers and seemingly
unrehearsed recitals at the British em –
bassy in Turkey. The second excerpt con-
cerns his meeting Gershwin, as well as
his internal struggle with being pulled
toward writing popular music while also
trying to make a career of serious compo-
posición. (Duke’s career as a popular song-
writer took off in the 1930s.)
I am grateful to Duke’s widow, kay
Duke Ingalls, for giving us permission to
publish these excerpts.
–Gerald Early
thing about his divided self, or rather his
self-awareness of his divided self, that also
tended to work against his presence as a
composer in either popular or art music.
Duke perceived such a stark division be –
tween his popular tunesmith self and his
serious composer self that he constructed
two distinct professional personas. Él
opens Passport to Paris by explaining to
readers how crucial this division was to his
public reception and to his self-under-
standing as an artist:
According to Who’s Who, I have spent my
“entire career” (come, come, I’m still spend-
ing it) writing two kinds of music: the serious
or unrewarding kind as Vladimir Dukelsky
and the unserious but lucrative variety as
Vernon Duke. Almost every interview I’ve
ever had has brought some tired references
to “the Jekyll and Hyde of Music,” “the Two-
Headed Janus of Music,” etc. There have
been quite a few cases of composers who
successfully managed to write in both the
alto- and low-brow genre, but I am entirely
unique in one respect. Gershwin always re –
mained Gershwin whether he wrote Porgy
or “I Got Rhythm”; Weill was easily recog-
nizable as Weill whether he tackled Maha –
gonny or One Touch of Venus; and even Lennie
Bernstein is his ingratiating self whether he
tears into Jeremiah or On the Town; pero
Dukelsky in no way resembles Duke.
There isn’t a note of jazz in my serious mu –
sic, and there are no symphonic overtones
to my musical-comedy output. I don’t think
that’s anything to be proud of. . . . My versa-
tility, far from being a boon, has in reality
been infuriating to most musical people.
There is an uneasy humor about Duke’s
inability to bring together his warring
creative halves, a lack of integration that
he believed may have made him a weaker
artist. In any case, Passport to Paris is a won –
derfully evocative autobiography about a
young, aristocratic Russian boy who de –
142 (4) Caer 2013
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Excerpts
de
“Passport
to Paris”
A [sic] English colonel visited the
restaurant where I held forth with my
violin and cello partners, and engaged me
on the spot for a concert in his barracks.
The pay was good but I had no notion of
what was expected of me. On arriving, I
found masses of enlisted men, roaring
drunk on Turkish beer, who greeted my
entrance with hoarse shouts and demands
for songs like “K-K-K-Katy,” “Tipperary”
and “For Me and My Gal,” which I knew
by heart; after a successful start, I was
urged to play various English folk ballads
totally unknown to me. Here I was seated
at the rickety piano, bewildered by the
singing, shouting Tommies, who de –
manded encore after encore. God alone
knows what I played and how the Tom-
mies were able to follow me, or I them,
but at the end of the evening, the tall cock –
ney sergeant shook his head and handed
me ½ve liras, agregando, “’Ere’s yer money,
chum, even if you ain’t much good as a
pianoforte player.”
I always had the enviable ability to talk
about a flop as though it were a hit (él
proved most helpful in later years), y
told awed friends of having conquered
the British. A young Greek decided that I
was ripe for the British Embassy and
arranged for a recital there with a portly
Russian baritone. For this I was to collect
ten liras, and of course we joyously ac –
cepted; on the day of the concert it was
pointed out to me that we were to dress,
meaning white tie. I don’t think I owned
a necktie in 1920, white or colored, and as
for tails, they were associated in my mind
with the Russian Imperial Court or the
½lms. The possibility of my getting into
one of those things never entered my
mente. Yet here it was–tails or no ten
liras. In despair, I ran to the kind little
Griego, who was short and somewhat
crippled and produced a morning coat
and striped trousers from his own ward –
robe. His tails were at the tailor’s, pero el
morning coat was certainly formal as hell,
so no one could say I was not “correct.”
I played my accompaniments looking
as if my clothes had been shrunk in a
rainstorm, and at the end of the concert,
after warmly congratulating the baritone,
the ambassador dismissed me with a cool
nod. I did get the ten liras, for which I
would happily have dressed in a barrel.
That ½rst winter out of Russia I began
to function (unof½cially and unpro½tably)
as Dukelsky and Duke. I disliked popular
songs, owing, no doubt, to such expo-
nents as Nyegin, and I loathed the “arty”
sex-serenades of the industrious Vertin-
sky, who was always popping up unex-
pectedly. One afternoon after lunch, I
saw the original Moscow Pierrot lolling
dandiacally in the Mayak salon, all the
“well-born” waitresses (ex-gentlewomen,
naturally) worshipping at his impeccably
shod feet. The master was at his most
affable and was reciting his latest sexotic,
as Walter Winchell would have it, roun –
delay. He then distributed engraved cards
bearing the legend The Black Rose, Cabaret
Artistique. The Moscow Pierrot had found
himself some well-heeled Armenian Har-
lequins, and they had provided him with
his own boîte. I was too young and too
poor to frequent such dens, but I heard a
few months later that the authorities
staged a raid in the place and unearthed
quantities of cocaine and 100 per cent
syphilis among the lady servants and
entertainers. No more Black Rose.
But the Rose of Jazz, healthy and bloom –
En g, was by now ½rmly planted on the
European shore of the Bosphorus. Mayak
patrons began to request “Hindustan,"
“Tell Me” and “Till We Meet Again.” I
promptly purchased all three, also Irving
Berlin’s earlier successes and a thing
mysteriously entitled “Swanee” by a man
improbably styled Geo. Gershwin. El
Berlins were good in their way, but the
Gershwin sent me into ecstacies. El
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bold sweep of the tune, its rhythmic
freshness and, especially, its syncopated
gait, hit me hard and I became an “early-
jazz” ½end. That’s not quite what I mean,
porque (shudder, ye New Orleans pur –
istas!) the “real” New Orleans jazz and the
true-blue blues impressed me consider-
ably less. “What can you expect from a
long hair” did I hear you say? Perhaps I
can explain it best by admitting my admi-
ration for the “musicality” and a compos-
er’s inventiveness in young Gershwin,
which was (and is) missing from the “real”
thing, largely a collectively produced
mood, anonymous and crude.
[. . .]
Madame Gautier mastered my songs–
even provided English translations–and
sang them at the next Guild concert. El
audience reception was indicative of
other such receptions traditionally ac –
corded new, but not too new, music–the
sort of reception where the hopeful com-
poser asks his best friend, “Well, how did
it go?” and gets this answer: “Pretty well,
I thought, how did you think it went?"
The critics said nothing much and nobody
“hailed” me–except a swarthy young
man named George Gershwin, whom I
½rst knew as Geo. Gershwin, the creator of
“Swanee,” the copy of which was by now
gathering dust on the big piano in the
Russian Mayak in far-off Constantinople.
Gershwin impressed me as a superbly
equipped and highly skilled composer–
not just a concocter of commercial jingles.
His extraordinary left hand performed
miracles in counter-rhythms, shrewd
canonic devices, and unexpected har-
monic shifts. “Where did you study?” I
asked, after listening to him play. Jorge
laughed, a cigar stuck between his white
teeth. "Oh, I didn’t study much–some
piano and harmony with a man called
Charlie Hambitzer, some lessons from
Rubin Goldmark–but on the whole I
guess I’m just a natural-born composer.”
When I informed him of my years with
Reinhold Glière, the dif½culty I had had
mastering counterpoint and orchestra-
tion at ½fteen, he was vaguely impressed.
“Gee, it must be great to know so much,"
he said, eyeing me with curiosity. “But now
that you’ve learned it all–what are you
doing with it?” By way of reply I played an
extremely cerebral piano sonata. Gersh-
win listened, rather impatiently, Pensé,
and then shook his head. “There’s no
money in that kind of stuff,” he said, “no
heart in it, either. Try to write some real
popular tunes–and don’t be scared about
going lowbrow. They will open you up!"
This rather startling remark of George’s
–“they will open you up”–stayed with
me through all the years that we were
amigos. Too many people have climbed
on the bandwagon of George’s posthu-
mous glory. Todavía, together with two or three
otros, I was as close to him as a friend
can be. This friendship lasted until his last
trip to Hollywood, which brought about
his tragic and untimely death at the age of
thirty-eight.
I doubt that Gershwin, then just begin-
ning to “hit it,” liked the strange little
songs I wrote. As he expressed it to me
más tarde, he was surprised by the fact that so
young a man (I was ½ve years his junior)
should write such dry and intellectual
stuff. Eva Gautier sang three of George’s
songs at her own recital (composer at the
piano) and the audience literally shouted
the place down with approval. A few
months later, Marguerite d’Alvarez, entonces
at the height of her fame, “stopped the
show” with more composer-accompanied
Gershwin. Odd that some of our present-
day recitalists don’t hire Duke Ellington
(or the other Duke–Vernon–for that
asunto) to inject a little much-needed life
into their Town Hall appearances.
Vernon
Duke
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142 (4) Caer 2013
143
Excerpts
de
“Passport
to Paris”
I was now branching out in all direc-
ciones. Greta Torpadie, the Norwegian,
sang three more songs of mine. Marie
Kiekhoefer, then an executive of the
Wolfsohn Musical Bureau, took me in
hand following the Guild initiation and
suggested I write an orchestral piece. I
had always wanted to write an overture
to the Russian acmeist-poet Gumilev’s
“Gondla”–a high-flown post-romantic
tale of Iceland in beautiful marblelike
verso. I went to work happily and com-
pleted the job in little over a week. El
overture, which I orchestrated hesitantly,
was shown to Dirk Foch (the father of
½lm actress Nina Foch), the colorful Dutch
musician who had just formed the short-
lived New York City Symphony, y eso
courageous man accepted it for perfor –
mance. This was quite a jump from the
intermezzo of my short-pants debut, y
I sat in a blissful haze through the two
rehearsals, and bowed from a box after
the Carnegie Hall performance just be –
fore the more than meager applause died
abajo. h. mi. Krehbiel, the then all-powerful
New York Tribune critic, called my “Gondla”
a “farrago of atrocious noises,” and most of
the others dismissed it facetiously, pero
was a start, and playing the misunderstood
genius at so early an age was good fun.
The Foch, Gautier and Torpadie “breaks”
gave me my ½rst taste of the contemporary
composer’s plight; he gets a performance
–then, tal vez, another performance–
then a seemingly interminable lull. Thirty
years ago most of us had the same trouble
–performances led to nothing because the
new-music market, as today, was ex –
tremely limited and there was far too
much supply and far too little demand.
I remember sitting idly on a Central
Park bench after the ½rst and last per-
formance of “Gondla,” pondering my fate.
There wasn’t much pondering to do, really.
It all amounted to the same thing: I must
make music pay–but how? The pudgy
little man with a glistening checkbook
who runs up to you after a brilliant pre-
mière, wrings your hand and shouts,
“Great! You’ve got what it takes–I’ll give
you ten thousand a year and here’s ½ve on
cuenta; just sit tight and write music,"
doesn’t pop up these days, and I suspect
he wasn’t accessible in the days gone by–
not unless his name was Ludwig of Bavaria
and yours Wagner. So, back to synthetic
gypsies I went, as accompanist to one of
the tribe in a pseudo-Russian midtown
night spot.
The ½rst clash between the embryo
Duke, the wage earner, and Dukelsky,
would-be composer, occurred there and
entonces: one evening when I was about to
charge into the obnoxious “Otchi Tchor –
nya,” who should walk in but the impec-
cably clad Karol Szymanovski, a half-
dozen composers in tow. Este, as I pres –
ently learned, was to be a banquet ten-
dered the Pole by his admiring colleagues
–Alfredo Casella, Emerson Whithorne,
Aaron Baron, Lazare Saminsky and sev-
eral others. Words cannot describe my
despair and morti½cation. Here were my
senior contemporaries, proudly practic-
ing their craft–nay, my craft!–and here
was I, a young fellow composer, about to
prostitute myself publicly. I closed my
ojos, raced through the hateful “Otchi”
at breakneck speed, causing the gypsy
diva intense discomfort and annoyance,
then excused myself and buttonholed
Saminsky. “I’m so sorry,” I stammered
miserably. “Try and understand why I’m
doing this.” Saminsky shrugged his shoul –
ders philosophically. “Don’t worry, I under –
stand perfectly. One must eat, mustn’t
uno?” Nothing was more obvious than this
truth, but Oh! how it hurt at the time.
The next morning, I had a long talk
with Mother. I told her that the hellish
humiliation of my lower-than-lowbrow
jobs was not justi½able in view of the pit-
tances I received for them, that I would
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Vernon
Duke
y, by breaking up the argument, I hastily
slid onto the piano stool.
“O.K., Dukie, let’s have it,” said George,
baring his teeth and lighting a pipe. El
Brothers Gershwin called me Dukie long
before George baptized me Duke. El
½rst two tunes were shrugged off politely,
but on hearing the third, George’s atti-
tude changed. He took the pipe out of his
mouth and ordered me to repeat the cho-
rus. “That’s a funny chord you got in the
second bar,” George said reflectively. “It’s
bien, aunque. It’s so good that I’ll tell you
what I’ll do–take you to Max Dreyfus.”
Max Dreyfus, as most everybody knew,
was the musical-comedy potentate pub-
lisher. This was the real article at last.
–From Vernon Duke, Passport to Paris (Bostón:
Pequeño, Marrón, 1955), 76–77, 90–93; reprinted
with permission from Kay Duke Ingalls.
seek and obtain something more remu-
nerative and that I would forever re –
nounce the mètier of an eatery piano player.
Dear Mother agreed completely, as she
always did when my music and my musi-
cal progress were at stake. The “Otchi
Tchornya” interlude proved to be an epi-
logue, and never again did I have to don a
red silk blouse and black dress trousers
(part of a dinner suit, purchased on Eighth
Avenue for seven dollars) to entertain
hiccuping customers. I called up Gersh-
win and asked him whether he would lis-
ten to some freshly written tunes of
mío. George said he sure would and I
was off to West 103rd Street, a new hope
in my heart.
When not playing ping-pong on the
ground floor with brothers Ira or Arthur,
George could be found at his piano, play-
ing tirelessly for hours, never practicing
in the Czerny sense, just racing through
new tunes, adding new tricks, harmonies,
“½rst and second endings” and changing
keys after each chorus. He was a born
improvisatore yet never changed tempo,
nor played rubato, the relentless 4/4 beat
carrying him along–it was physically
dif½cult for him to stop. This was just
what he was doing when I walked in and
sat down to listen. George’s sister, Frankie,
a chubby chestnut-haired flapper, ran in,
and after singing a chorus in a husky little
voice, with “gestures,” ran out again.
George then switched to a blues, closed
his eyes and, pushing out his lips in an
oddly Negroid manner, began intoning
Ira’s lyrics. There was the “feel” of an
incantation in George’s “vocals,” and no
subsequent performer of his songs has
ever invested them with such arresting
fervor. Chorus No. 3 became a duet with
mild, bespectacled Ira, who sang “har-
mony” to George’s lead and provoked his
brother’s ire by screwing up an especially
juicy passage. The music stopped, a heated
argument ensued; this was my chance
142 (4) Caer 2013
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