Donald Johnson Ellis (July 25, 1934 – December 17, 1978) was an American jazz trumpeter, drummer, composer, and bandleader. He is best known for his extensive musical experimentation, particularly in the area of time signatures. Later in his life he worked as a film composer, contributing a score to 1971's The French Connection and 1973's The Seven-Ups.
Ellis was born in Los Angeles, California, on July 25, 1934. His father was a Methodist minister and his mother a church organist. He attended West High School in Minneapolis, MN. After attending a Tommy Dorsey Big Band concert, he first became interested in jazz. Other early inspirations were Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie. He graduated from Boston University in 1956 with a music composition degree.
Ellis's first job was with the late Glenn Miller's band, then directed by Ray McKinley. He stayed with the band until September 1956, when he joined the U.S. Army's Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra and the Soldiers' Show Company. Ellis was transferred to Frankfurt, Germany for duty. In the Army band, Ellis met pianist Cedar Walton, and saxophonists Eddie Harris and Don Menza. While in that band Ellis had his first opportunity to compose and arrange for a big band.
After two years, Don Ellis left the Army band and moved to Greenwich Village in New York City. He was able to get some work, but mainly with dance bands and other local work. He toured briefly with bandleader Charlie Barnet and joined the Maynard Ferguson band in spring of 1959. He remained with Ferguson for nine months.
Shortly thereafter, Ellis became involved in the New York City avant-garde jazz scene. He appeared on albums by Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, and George Russell, working in that sextet for two years. Under his own name, Ellis led several sessions with small groups between 1960 and 1962, which featured, among others, Jaki Byard, Paul Bley, Gary Peacock, Ron Carter, Charlie Persip, and Steve Swallow. The last one, Essence, was recorded in mid-July 1962.
On 3 June 1962, Ellis performed the jazz liturgy Evensong, composed by Edgar Summerlin. The performance took place at the First International Jazz Festival in Washington, D.C., and was broadcast on Look Up and Live on 12 August 1962. Ellis performed alongside Lou Gluckin on trumpet, J. R. Monterose on tenor saxophone, Eric Dolphy on flute, Slide Hampton on trombone, Dick Lieb on bass trombone, Barry Galbraith on guitar, Ron Carter on bass, and Charlie Persip on drums.
In October 1962, Ellis traveled to Poland to take part in the 1962 Jazz Jamboree in Warsaw; his quartet performance was partially documented on a Polish-only 10-inch (250 mm) EP. Ellis chronicled his experience in an article called Warsaw Diary, which was printed in the January 3rd, 1963 issue of DownBeat magazine. In December, Ellis participated in the NDR Jazz Workshop in Hamburg, Germany, and in early 1963, traveled to Stockholm, Sweden. While there, he became somewhat well known for his experimentation with happenings, similar to those used by members of the Fluxus art movement.
Back in New York, Ellis formed the Improvisational Workshop Orchestra, which gave its debut performance on February 10, 1963 at the Five Spot. (Another tape of the same group is listed in the Don Ellis Collection as being recorded on Feb. 9th, but it may be a rehearsal tape.) The performance had a quality similar to those Ellis gave in Sweden: unusual artistic devices were employed, such as performers using cards to determine event orders, and musicians using their instruments to interpret a painter's work. Some uncommon musical elements were employed, such as the use of Arabian rhythms and scales, and foot shuffling.
New rhythms and the Third Stream
In 1964, Ellis began graduate studies in ethnomusicology at UCLA where he studied with Indian musician Harihar Rao. Greatly inspired by Rao, Ellis sought to implement odd meters in a Western improvised context and (with Rao) co-authored the 1965 article "An Introduction to Indian Music for the Jazz Musician". Ellis briefly formed the first version of his big band at this time but disbanded it when he received a Rockefeller Grant to work at SUNY Buffalo for a year.
While in New York, Ellis was involved with several Third Stream projects. A live performance from February 8, 1964, at the Lincoln Center was filmed for Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts series. He performed with other jazz musicians alongside the New York Philharmonic on Larry Austin's "Improvisations for Orchestra and Jazz Soloists" (1961) and Gunther Schuller's "Journey Into Jazz" (1962). A later recording of Austin's piece, featuring Ellis, bassist Barre Phillips, drummer Joe Cocuzzo, and the New York Philharmonic (directed by Bernstein) was released on an album entitled Leonard Bernstein Conducts Music Of Our Time (1965).
In November 1967, Ellis's first symphony, "Contrasts for Two Orchestras and Trumpet", was debuted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta.
Returning to the West Coast, Ellis formed The Hindustani Jazz Sextet, which explored some of the concepts he had learned at UCLA. The Sextet is generally considered to be the first band of its kind in America. The Sextet centered on Ellis and his mentor Harihar Rao, who played sitar and tabla, but also featured vibraphonist Emil Richards, drummer Steve Bohannon, bassists Chuck Domanico and Ray Neapolitan, and pianist Dave Mackay. At least one performance also featured saxophonist Gabe Baltazar. The band performed mainly original compositions which had titles like "Sweet Nineteen", "Turks Works", and "Bombay Bossa Nova".
The Sextet became somewhat well known around Los Angeles, despite having no recordings commercially available. Perhaps the greatest exposure the group had was "Synthesis", a composition by Ellis in which the Sextet performed alongside Stan Kenton's Neophonic Orchestra. The concert took place in February 1966 at the Los Angeles Music Center.
On July 14 of that year, the Sextet performed at Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium, opening for the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company.
In addition to working with the Hindustani Jazz Sextet, Ellis continued writing arrangements for and rehearsing what would grow into the Don Ellis Orchestra. This rehearsal/workshop band played every Monday night for almost a year, first at a venue called Club Havana (club) and later relocating to a club called Bonesville in Hollywood, where they began to gain a significant following. The group started making money by charging a small admission fee to the rehearsals, and began a letter-writing campaign to get the band a spot at the 1966 Monterey Jazz Festival. The campaign eventually succeeded, and the band was scheduled to perform that September.
The Don Ellis Orchestra was different from most other big bands in several ways; most obviously in its instrumentation (discussed below), but also in Ellis's incorporation of Indian musical elements into modern big-band writing. Drawing from his compositional and arranging experience, as well as from his studies of Indian music, Ellis began to write jazz-based music with the time signatures he had studied with Rao. These included not only5⁄4,7⁄8, and9⁄4, but also more complex rhythmic cycles like 19⁄8 and 27⁄16. In the future, Ellis would use many more complex meters, as well as complex subdivisions of more standard meters. Many of these more complex cycles were inspired by Ellis's later interest in Eastern European folk music, such as that of Greece and Bulgaria.
Ellis also had a customized trumpet made for him by the Holton company, which he received in September 1965. Its additional (fourth) valve enabled it to produce quarter tones. Some claim that this might have been inspired by his studies of Indian music, as it contains bent pitches that some ethnomusicologists refer to as "microtones". However, it was probably more the result of Ellis's previous involvement with avant-garde classical music, in which many composers were experimenting with Western tonality and intervals, especially Harry Partch, with whom Ellis is known to have met and discussed ideas.