Help!: The Beatles, Duke Ellington, and the Magic of Collaboration

by Thomas Brothers

Overview

The fascinating story of how creative cooperation inspired two of the world’s most celebrated musical acts.

The Beatles and Duke Ellington’s Orchestra stand as the two greatest examples of collaboration in music history. Through his highly original examination of these two musical legends, Duke University musicologist Thomas Brothers delivers a portrait of the creative process at work, demonstrating that the cooperative method at the foundation of these two artist- groups was the primary reason for their unmatched musical success.

While clarifying the historical record of who wrote what, with whom, and how, Brothers brings the past to life with a breadth of musical knowledge that reverberates through every page, and analyses of songs from Lennon and McCartney’s Strawberry Fields Forever to Billy Strayhorn’s Chelsea Bridge. Help! describes in rich detail the music and mastery of two cultural leaders whose popularity has never dimmed.

“This is musicology with taste as well as ears.” — Wall Street Journal

“Adds significantly to our knowledge of popular music and iconic musicians of the 20th century.” — Philadelphia Inquirer

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357523
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/22/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	1,090,426
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Thomas Brothers is the author of Help! The Beatles, Duke Ellington, and the Magic of Collaboration; Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans; and Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A professor of music at Duke University, he lives with his family in Durham, North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Prelude xi

Introduction xvii

Part I The Duke Ellington Orchestra

Chapter 1 Ellington and Early Jazz 3

Chapter 2 The Miley Method and the Ellington Problem 31

Chapter 3 The 1930s: An "Accumulation of Personalities" 69

Chapter 4 Billy Strayhorn 109

Part II The Beatles

Chapter 5 Early Beatles and Rock and Roll 163

Chapter 6 Four-Headed Monster 195

Chapter 7 Retreat 237

Chapter 8 Grow a Little Taller 275

Acknowledgments 317

Notes 319

Bibliography 347

Illustration Credits 359

Index 361

Editorial Reviews

05/07/2018
Duke University musicologist Brothers (Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism) explores the collaborative nature of two massively influential 20th-century songwriting pairs in this probing study of pop-music collaboration. The first part of the book shatters jazz bandleader Duke Ellington’s image as a lone genius composer, arguing that his talents were less musical than “conceptual,” and that he picked up tunes and stylings from his sidemen and in-house composer-arranger Billy Strayhorn and assembled them into groundbreaking pieces (while hogging credit and copyrights). The second part examines the Beatles’ songwriters, rhythm-and-blues-influenced Paul McCartney and John Lennon, a supposedly egalitarian collaboration; in reality, Brothers notes, Lennon mainly contributed edgy lyrics and attitude while the great tunes and arrangements were disproportionately McCartney’s. Brothers presents detailed reconstructions of who did what, twining the making-of narratives with evocative appreciations of the resulting works, along with an erudite, engagingly written history of 20th-century pop music. His insistence on the necessity of collaboration doesn’t quite square with the stories he tells: McCartney’s genius often flourished without Lennon’s input, and Ellington’s composing chops were outclassed by those of Strayhorn. Still, Brothers’s rich analyses make for an engrossing narrative that illuminates some of pop music’s greatest creative collaborations. Photos. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Brothers’ musicology background is evident in his closely attentive and detailed responses to Ellington and Beatles compositions."

Booklist

"Wonderfully written....[Help!] is an important book. It should be read; it should be studied in detail. Anyone reading it with an open mind will come away enriched in his or her understanding of music."

Edward Green

"Richly detailed and immersive....Fascinating."

DownBeat - Willard Jenkins

"A richly detailed portrait of the delicate balance between group dynamics and individual vision, and the nexus between African American vernacular traditions and commercial imperatives, Help! adds significantly to our knowledge of popular music and iconic musicians of the 20th century."

Philadelphia Inquirer - Glenn C. Altschuler

"A historically masterly and musically literate unraveling of some of the most-admired credits in 20th-century popular music....This is musicology with taste as well as ears."

Wall Street Journal - Dominic Green

Narrator Keith Sellon-Wright makes this friendly dose of musicology even friendlier with his relaxed delivery and mellow tone. The audiobook builds upon a thesis-like setup—a comparison of Duke Ellington's decentralized, opportunistic approach to musical collaboration and the egalitarian, fraternal approach of Lennon and McCartney. The work is populated by interesting digressions: the surprising inspiration for the song "Ticket to Ride"; helpful references to other disciplines, such as the artistic collaborations of Picasso and Braque and the film collaboration behind THE WIZARD OF OZ; thought-provoking comparisons, such as Lennon's "Julia" and McCartney's "Let it Be" both being references to the death of a mother; and more. The result of this collaboration between author and narrator is a well-researched audiobook that skims the scholarly waters without sinking into lecture-hall monotony. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2019 - AudioFile

2018-06-18
A convincing case that some of the greatest music in history was not the work of one brilliant mind but rather a result of the commingling of ideas that happens when two complementary artists team up.In the first half of the book, Brothers (Music/Duke Univ.; Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism, 2014, etc.) focuses on Duke Ellington and his many collaborators, most notably the composer Billy Strayhorn. Many compositions that were the work of two or more musicians were credited solely to Ellington; according to Brothers, this has led to misunderstandings about the way much of his music was composed. The author's portrait of Ellington pulls no punches but remains sympathetic. The Beatles were another story: John Lennon and Paul McCartney were open about their creative codependency from the start, signing all compositions "Lennon/McCartney" no matter who wrote what or how much in a given song. Brothers insists that the oft-repeated saw that the Beatles rarely collaborated after the release of "Revolver" is false. Rather, he claims that some of the greatest achievements of their late period were the result of intense collaboration. Ellington embraced the myth of the solitary genius that the musical establishment saddled him with and benefited from the resulting obfuscation, while Lennon and McCartney situated themselves squarely within the ganglike nature of rock-'n'-roll groups, an egalitarian approach to music-making that had its roots in the African-American vernacular tradition from which jazz also emerged. Some of the music jargon may fly over the heads of nonmusician readers, but for the most part, Brothers frames his analysis in smooth, relatable prose that anyone familiar with the music of Ellington and the Beatles can understand. Along the way, the author provides a sweeping history of 20th-century popular music, the rich backdrop against which the incredible music of Ellington and the Beatles was composed—music that is incredible primarily because of the cooperative spirit that brought it to life.A fresh blend of scholarly musical analysis and provocative ideas about creativity and how composers create great art.

Kirkus Reviews