In un articolo apparso sul suo substack The Honest Broker, il critico musicale Ted Goia racconta la singolare storia dell’incontro tra la Regina Elisabetta e il compositore Duke Ellington avvenuto nel 1959, a seguito del quale il musicista americano compose una suite appositamente per lei, dal non immaginifico titolo di “The Queen’s Suite”.

In a historic Duke-meets-Queen encounter the previous year, Ellington served up his famous charm for the monarch. When she asked him whether this was his first visit to Britain, Duke replied that his initial trip to London was in 1933, “way before you were born.” This was out-and-out flattery, because Queen Elizabeth had been born in 1926—but she played along with the game. “She gave me a real American look,” he later recalled, “very cool man, which I thought was too much.”

[…]

According to Ellington’s son Mercer, his father began working on the music to The Queen’s Suite as soon as he got back to his hotel room. He enlisted colleague and collaborator Billy Strayhorn. In addition to royal inspiration, the work also borrowed from the natural world: the opening movement draws on birdsong heard during a Florida visit, another section was a response to an unexpected encounter with “a million lightning bugs” serenaded by a frog. The best known part of the Suite, “The Single Petal of a Rose,” was spurred by a floral display on a piano at a friend’s home.

La particolarità di quello che a prima vista parrebbe uno dei tanti “omaggi” del mondo artistico ad una personalità di rilievo sta nel fatto che Ellington incise la suite e ordinò alla sua casa discografica di stamparne…solo una copia! Per il “Duca” del Jazz, infatti, quel lavoro doveva rimanere privato e destinato alle sole orecchie dei Sua Maestà. Spedì quindi personalmente la copia a Buckingham Palace e rimborsò l’etichetta discografica Columbia di tutte le spese.

Anni dopo, la suite venne pubblicata e oggi è liberamente ascoltabile da tutti.