Duke Madison Bio
CLARENCE ROGER “DUKE” MADISON BIOGRAPHY
Clarence Roger “Duke” Madison was Lexington’s “GRAND OLD MAN of JAZZ” during his tenure here as one of the area’s premiere saxophone players. Born in Anderson, Indiana on January 30, 1923, he learned to play the B-flat soprano saxophone owned by his father, Roger, who was a musician in his own right. His father taught him the fingering and basics of reading music. He furthered his skills by playing in church and school bands.
Madison says a lot of his skills came from “the masters” who taught him to “express musically what you would say in words.” It was his brother, Eugene, a choral director at a Chicago church, who gave him the name “Duke.” Eugene was a Bible student who discovered that in the old days all the Clarences were dukes. Madison said he knew some people who had brought fame to the name, so he used it.
The plaintive wail of the saxophone is one of the most distinctive sounds in jazz music. It is colored, shaded, and defined by the force of human breath. So the longer the relationship of a player and a horn, the more distinctive that sound becomes. Duke was one who you could tell was playing anytime you walked by a club and see him just by hearing him. His sound was heard just about any weekend in sorted lounges or restaurants in Lexington.
Madison said, “My dad and all the other musicians I learned from kept telling me to have something else to depend on — some other way of putting food on the table.” And he lived by that advice as he got a job at Good Samaritan Hospital, first as a dishwasher and finally as an assistant housekeeper. Prior to that, as a young man, Duke first played in the days when music was segregated — Black players in Black bands and White players in White bands. He also played in the Army band and shared the bandstand several times with Sonny Stitt, and spent 1 1/2 years with the Leo Hines Band. Hines was a cousin to bandleader Earl “Fatha” Hines. “I Stayed with Leo just long enough to know that it would kill me if I didn’t settle down someplace instead of staying on the road,” Madison said. “I’ve seen so many friends die trying to keep up.”
While performing in Cincinnati, OH in the 1940s, he heard that there was a good band in Richmond, KY headed by Jordan Embry. Madison joined Embry and played with the band on and off for two years at dances, schools, and at the Blue Grass Army Depot. “It was an old-time band and they used to send up to Cincinnati for some young players to spruce it up. The band suited my disposition and my wants. And all I wanted to do was play anyway — to be the star, naturally,” Duke added.
Duke married Anna Mae Gaines, a retired cytotechnologist and former Kentucky State University graduate. Between them they raised two grown children, Roger and Mary Ann, both of whom are musical, but whom neither worked as entertainers. Duke had worked at the U.S. Post Service as a mail carrier prior to moving to Lexington while in Indiana, and had returned to being a mail carrier in Lexington after quitting the job at Good Samaritan in the early 1960s. In all, he worked for 15 years as a mail carrier before retiring in 1979. “I enjoyed it, meeting people all the time,” he said.
With the times, Duke often changed the approach to his music. He performed with an amplifier on his alto sax because he said it gave him a sound that satisfies his inner self. “With that amp, I sounded like I used to hear the ‘masters play,” he said. “It gave me the incentive to go on and do bigger and better things then.”
Duke was a familiar figure to generations of area college students who sought him out for help and advice. Trumpeter Vince DiMartino, who alternated his time as a UK music professor with recording and performing gigs all over the country, sent students to Duke for schooling of a different sort. “Kids get from Duke a lot of things they can’t just get in school — a true-to-life idea of what musicians do,” he said.
Meeting and helping younger musicians was what Duke termed, “giving back.” It was important to him as anything in music. “My father was a stickler about ‘sound,’ and he wanted a solid sound from the horn…or it was like making false accusations without proof,” Duke shared.
“I’ve been passing that on to younger musicians as a basic. I don’t worry about how much they can play…it’s what they can play.”
POSITIVE MESSAGE: When talking about the secrets to success, Duke said, “The bottom line is to be dedicated and love what you are doing, and not just a passing fancy. You may not become famous, but you will be for real.”
ACHIEVEMENTS: Jazz Saxophonist for 65 + years; Retired in 1979 from the U.S. Postal Service as a mail carrier; Retired supervisor of Housekeeping at Good Samaritan Hospital; played on the stage with a host of famed musicians such as: Billy Eckstein; Hal McIntyre; Cootie Williams; Sonny Stitt; Dizzy Gillispie; Coleman Hawkins; Johnny Hodges; Clark Terry; Earl Hines; Lester Young; and with members of both Cab Calloway’s and Earl “Fatha” Hines bands and a host of others.
In 1981, Duke played at the Immanuel Baptist Church in Lexington, KY for the funeral service of state legislator William Kenton; Awarded a status of Kentucky Colonel in 1975 by Governor Julian Carroll; Congressman’s Award of Merit in 1979; Lexington Musician Association Local 554-635 Award in 1992; Helen Humes Legendary Jazz Award in 1993; Community Service Award by the Masters and Matrons Club of Lexington in 1994; Certificate of Appreciation from the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government.
NOTE: Portions of this bio taken from excerpts in the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Sunday April 2, 1989 section by Tom Carter and The Community Voice Newsjournal’s ‘Portraits of the City’ section on August 12, 1994 Volume 7, No.8 published by Don Cordray***
Bio Provided by: Bennie J. Smith, Founder & CEO, BJS Enterprises, LLC, “Entertainment for ALL Occasions” via email September, 2009.
