Fred Stone discusses working with Duke Ellington.

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Fred Stone discusses muisc as art versus business.

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Fred Stone discusses jazz clubs around the world.

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[On working with Duke Ellington]

Q: “How does he work? He always, it seems to me, has made his band of the individual sounds – and it sounds like a cliché but the band is his instrument.”

A: “Right. Well, he is the only leader that I know of that makes no demands on the instrumentalist. Once he has hired you, he expects you to function as your own personality completely. He only expects you to reflect his personality through the music that he gives you to play, which he figures would be an automatic process. But he never says play it a little more this way, a little more that way or sound, like Clark Terry or sound like somebody else. As a matter of fact, when the first month that I was in the band, I had very little solo work to do and it turned out that the reason was he didn't want to use any old material or anything that had been written for soloists that had been in the band previous to mine.”