BOOK/MAGAZINE: Ellington Uptown: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson and the Birth of Concert Jazz

By Daniel Kassell In the first Chapter "On Tone Parallels to Harlem" John Howland states the premise that Symphonic Jazz of the 1920's influenced "a wide variety of American musical traditions" covering an awful lot of ground but stipulating it was merely "a minor footnote" in its own time. Mr. Howland writes, "Why our we to take note of it now?" Because George Gershwin's 1924 performance of "Rhapsody in Blue" with Paul Whiteman's Orchestra in New York City's Aeolian Hall was the "First Exper...

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