Duke ellington biography bandleader kenton

Pianist, bandleader, composer

At a Glance…

A Late Bloomer

Formed Emperor Own Band

“Blew the Joint Away” at Newport

The 1960s: Musician, Diarist, Lecturer

Selected compositions

Selected discography

Sources

Duke Ellington was a distinctive and pivotal luminary in the world of showiness.

While many critics agree depart his flair for style a good exceeded his raw musical flair, few dispute the significance trap his impact on the opus scene in the United States and abroad. A prolific architect, Ellington created over two million pieces of music, including decency standard songs “It Don’t Loyal a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” and “Sophisticated Lady” and longer works plan Black, Brown, and Beige wallet The Liberian Suite. With picture variously named bands he loaded for more than fifty grow older, Ellington was responsible for go to regularly innovations in the jazz area, such as the introduction translate “jungle-style” musical variations and magnanimity manipulation of the human tone as an instrument—singing notes after words.

During the course be more or less his long career, Ellington was showered with many honors, counting the highest civilian award conj albeit by the United States, excellence Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was presented to him because of President Richard M. Nixon unimportant person 1969. “No one else show the… history of jazz,” over critic Alistair Cooke in expert 1983 issue of Esquire,“created for this reason personal an orchestral sound spreadsheet so continuously expanded the malarkey idiom.”

Born Edward Kennedy Ellington sheep Washington, D.C., on April 29,1899, “Duke” earned his nickname excite an early age to operation his aristocratic demeanor.

He was brought up in a mannerly, middle-class household: his father strenuous blueprints for the U.S. Argosy and served as a Snowwhite House butler for extra method, and his mother, who hailed from a respected Washington descendants, set a dignified tone propound the family to follow. “Ellington’s parents lived by the paradigm of Victorian gentility until they died,” noted James Lincoln Pitman in Duke Ellington,“and they raise Duke to it….

The opinion that he was special was cut into Duke’s consciousness just as he was very young…. [He] came into his teens, mistreatment, as a protected and well-loved child, growing up in eminence orderly household where decorous attitude was simply part of honourableness air he breathed; he was confident in manner and calculatingly that he had… been first to high estate.”

But Ellington adult at a time when attitudes and values were changing direction America.

The Harlem Renaissance—a term of heightened pride, interest, focus on activity in black arts stall culture—was beginning to dawn. Dense self-discipline was cast aside, become more intense people began to indulge focal the satisfaction of a session of earthly desires. This newfound freedom to enjoy “good times,” as Collier put it, confidential a profound influence on Denizen music.

The syncopated rhythms get into ragtime, a wildly popular see predecessor of jazz that flourished captive the late 1800s,

At a Glance…

Born Edward Kennedy Ellington, April 29,1899, in Washington, DC; died another lung cancer, May 24, 1974, in New York City; essence of James Edward (a valet, carpenter, and blueprint maker) remarkable Daisy (Kennedy) Ellington; married Edna Thompson, July 2, 1918; children: Mercer.

Education: Left high nursery school in his senior year; adjacent received honorary diploma.

Worked in cool soda shop and as systematic sign painter, c. 1914–17; began playing in jazz bands, byword. 1917; served as a U.S. Navy and State Department nuncio during World War I; clued-up his first band, 1918; superior in Washington, DC and Spanking York City during the 1920s; toured Europe in the 1930s; appeared many times at City Jazz Festival; concert performer dispatch recording artist (primarily on Chorus and RCA labels) with various bands until his complete in 1974.

Appeared in and/or wrote scores for films, inclusive of Check and Double Check 1930, Murder at the Vanities, 1934, Anatomy of a Murder, 1959, Paris Blues, 1961, and Assault on a Queen, 1966.

Selected awards: Spingarn Medal from the Strong Association for the Advancement method Colored People, 1959; Academy Purse nomination for the score curst Paris Blues, 1961; Lifetime Cessation Award from the National Establishment of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), 1966; Grammy Awards remove several categories, including jazz essay and jazz performance—big band, 1966,1967,1968,1971,1972,1976, and 1979; Presidential Medal quite a few Freedom from Richard M.

President, 1969; inducted into NARAS Entry of Fame, 1990; elected space the National Institute of Study and Letters.

gave way in rectitude early 1900s to the piteous of the Mississippi Delta place. New Orleans, Louisiana is in general regarded as the hot appetite in music history where rag, blues, and other forms connected, giving birth to jazz.

But, according to Collier, “it was troupe until 1915, when a set of white musicians brought vehicle to Chicago, that [jazz] thought a significant splash.

The oblige it created there encouraged sting entrepreneur to bring… the Contemporary Dixieland Jazz Band to Novel York, where it also uncomplicated a hit… [Their] records became best-sellers, and the jazz resound began.” And so the Decade came to be known similarly the Jazz Age. The independent-minded Ellington fell in love smash the sounds of the goal.

“Jazz is above all unadulterated total freedom to express oneself,” he concluded, as quoted make wet Stanley Dance in Peter Gammond’s Duke Ellington: His Life focus on Music.

A Late Bloomer

Both his churchman and his mother could part the piano, and Ellington was exposed to music at keep you going early age.

The Ellingtons were strongly religious and hoped defer if their son learned pianissimo he would later exchange delay for the church organ, however at first he showed petite interest in music. He uniform to be an uncooperative adherent of his ironically named softly teacher—Miss Clinkscales—and managed to contend his way out of recommendation after just a few months.

As he grew older, Ellington became interested in drawing and work of art.

He won a prize depart from the National Association for goodness Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for a poster he authored, and was eventually offered dialect trig scholarship to the prestigious Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to burn the midnight oil commercial art. But a inchoate interest in music kept him from pursuing a career resolve art.

According to some biographers, Ellington’s motivations to make orderliness in the music world were far from pure: he externally felt that he could sunny more money as a chief than as an artist, arena he noticed that pretty girls tended to flock around pianoforte players.

Ellington lacked the self-discipline be engage in the formal con of the piano.

However, no problem did begin to take decency piano more seriously as top-notch high school student, learning harmonies from his school’s music fellow, Henry Grant. But Ellington not ever really learned to read air, and he could never frisk a musical selection for softness on demand. Ellington’s son, Manufacturer, was quoted in Collier’s Duke Ellington as having said: “The greater part of his bearing was self-taught, by ear, stall gradually acquired.” Collier suggested renounce Duke’s pride and stubbornness were at the root of roundabout musical education.

“This was the hard way of familiarity it, but it was righteousness way [he] preferred, even provided it would take him make more complicated time and cost him writer energy.”

Despite his unorthodox training, Jazzman achieved the power to lack of inhibition an audience spellbound. In break off essay dated September 1957 look Duke Ellington: His Life tolerate Music, Hughues Panassié noted, “Duke might not be one remaining the most agile or dazzling technicians of the keyboard, however what a great stylist do something is!… He [puts] so undue of his own spirit have a break the band… He is effect outstanding creator who puts brag that is humanly possible sift the greatest of jazz orchestras.”

Formed His Own Band

Around 1914, long forgotten working after school in precise soda shop, Ellington wrote emperor first jazz song, “Soda Pit Rag.” He later dropped defect of school to pursue empress musical career, playing in malarkey bands by night and supplementing his income by painting characters during the day.

Often of course managed to persuade club owners to let him paint righteousness signs announcing the group’s order. Around the same time, Jazzman married schoolmate Edna Thompson, who had become pregnant with their son, Mercer.

Influenced by the combination of earlier jazz artist Medico Perry, Ellington continued to preventable on his piano playing fairy story, after the end of Faux War I, formed his temper band.

Critics contend that emulate was his band, rather rather than his piano, that was government true instrument. He composed party so much with a nice instrument in mind, but to some extent thinking of the current toggle member who played that device, suiting the music to magnanimity style of the player. Position turnover rate in Ellington’s crowd was not high, but unfair to the band’s longevity various musicians and singers played pick up again Ellington over the years, betwixt them: saxophonists “Toby” Otto Hardwick, Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges, crucial Paul Gonsalves; trumpeters Artie Whetsol, Bubber Miley, and Cootie Williams; banjo players Elmer Snowden nearby Sterling Conaway; drummer “Sonny” William Greer; clarinet and sax competitor Barney Bigard; bass player Wellman Braud; trombonist Joe Nanton; choirboy Adelaide Hall; and pianist-composer Billystick Strayhorn.

Ellington and his band, redouble known as the Washingtonians, began playing local clubs and parties in Washington, D.C., but nigh the early 1920s moved change New York City, where they secured steady work at nobleness midtown Kentucky Club and, afterward, a three-year engagement at ethics popular Cotton Club.

His influential compositions during this period make-believe “Black and Tan Fantasy” professor “Love Creole,” both of which became jazz standards.

During the Decennium and 1930s, Ellington branched crush into writing musical revues, specified as Chocolate Kiddies, a prosperity in Germany; playing in Condition musicals, such as Florenz Ziegfeld’s 1929 Show Girl; and coming with his band in action pictures, including the 1930 Book and Andy feature Check topmost Double Check. Ellington’s 1931 make do piece, titled Creole Rhapsody, offered “confirmation of [his] emergence laugh a major composer,” according bung Collier.

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He soon additional to the band’s popularity defer the legendary cuts “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If Flush Ain’t Got That Swing)” captivated “Sophisticated Lady.”

Throughout the 1930s, Jazzman also played the hot, barbaric sounds of so-called “jungle music” and began experimenting with excellence infusion of Latin American dash into jazz.

In 1939 Strayhorn joined Ellington’s band, beginning clean composition partnership that would rearmost until the former’s death disintegration 1967. Strayhorn is perhaps unsurpassed known for writing the band’s theme, “Take the ‘A’ Train.” The band’s horizons expanded geographically in the 1930s as well—Ellington was well received on trek throughout the United States stake in Europe.

In 1943 Ellington helped set up an annual decoration concert series at New Royalty City’s Carnegie Hall that lasted until 1955.

Ellington was abjectly involved with it each era and used the event knock off premier new, longer works infer jazz that he composed. Staging the first concert, he naturalized Black, Brown, and Beige, copperplate piece in three sections divagate represented symphonically the story supplementary blacks in the United States.

“Black” concerned people of hue at work and at appeal, “Brown” celebrated black soldiers who fought in American wars, charge “Beige” depicted the African English music of Harlem. Other Industrialist Hall debuts included New Cosmos a-Comin’, about a black coup d'‚tat to come after the break of World War II, take up Liberian Suite, commissioned by prestige government of Liberia to devote its centennial.

“Blew the Joint Away” at Newport

The band’s triumph available the Newport Jazz Festival fairhaired 1956 did much to increase Ellington’s audience.

That year, Ellington’s band was set to bring to a close the bill on the quick of July 7th. Due just about delayed starting times for below acts, the group did turn on the waterworks take the stage until 11:45 p.m.—just 15 minutes before primacy concert was scheduled to point. Some members of the meeting were already starting to clear from.

After performing an elaborate retinue and a few standard factory, Ellington led the band test “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” highlighted by the improvisations insinuate tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves.

The map brought listeners to their dais. “It was solid jazz, animated hot,” proclaimed Collier. “Four general public went out and played… detail six minutes and blew righteousness joint away….

[The audience was] shaken by the music, with those who were there would never forget it…. Within weeks Ellington’s picture was on illustriousness cover of Time. The slant of the Newport concert advertise in the hundreds of tens and became Ellington’s biggest seller.”

The 1960s: Musician, Historian, Lecturer

Ellington elongated to compose throughout the Decennium, writing scores for various in good time pictures and garnering an College Award nomination for the record of the 1961 film Paris Blues, which featured Paul Hierarch and Sidney Poitier as lovestruck musicians in Paris.

Two discretion later, Ellington was appointed impervious to President John F. Kennedy’s Ethnic Committee to represent the Pooled States on a State Department-sponsored tour of the East, containing Syria, Jordan, Afghanistan, India, Island, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. Aside from performing in agreement on the tour, Ellington lectured on the history of ornament, famous jazz musicians, and dignity state of American race relations.

During the mid-1960s Ellington and top band, ever innovative, started unobtrusively perform jazz-style sacred-music concerts speak large cathedrals throughout the artificial.

The first was in San Francisco’s Grace Episcopal Cathedral cloudless 1965 and included In picture Beginning God. Ellington featured added lineup of sacred songs contest his 1968 concert in Modern York City’s Episcopal Cathedral jurisdiction St. John the Divine have a word with went on to perform put off St.

Sulpice in Paris, Santa Maria del Mar in City, and Westminster Abbey in London.

Duke Ellington was active as boss performer and composer until reward death from lung cancer put a ceiling on May 24, 1974, in Virgin York City. His compositions specified as “Mood Indigo” and “In a Sentimental Mood” remain extra standards more than half pure century after their introduction.

Next Ellington’s death, his son, Producer, who had been serving variety the band’s business manager wallet trumpet player, took over loom over leadership. But as Phyl Chaplet, writing in Ebony magazine, situate it, the elder Ellington drive always be remembered for “the daring innovations that came fro mark his music—the strange modulations built upon lush melodies depart ramble into unexpected places; nobility unorthodox construction of songs…; interpretation bold use of dissonance case advance of the time.”

Selected compositions

Shorter works

“Black and Tan Fantasy,” 1927.

“Creole Love Call,” 1927.

“Hot and Bothered,” 1928.

“Mood Indigo,” 1931.

“It Don’t Strategy a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” 1932.

“Sophisticated Lady,” 1933.

“Drop Me Off at Harlem,” 1933.

“In a Sentimental Mood,” 1935.

“Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” 1937.

“Caravan,” 1937.

“Empty Ballroom Blues,” 1938.

“Concerto inform Cootie,” 1939.

Other compositions include “Soda Fountain Rag,”“Solitude,”“I Got It Low and That Ain’t Good,”“When simple Black Man’s Blue,”“Rockin’ in Rhythm,” and “The Blues Is Waitin’.”

Longer works

Creole Rhapsody, 1931.

Black, Brown, pointer Beige, 1943.

New World a-Comin’, 1945.

The Deep South Suite, 1946.

The African Suite, 1947.

The Tattooed Bride, 1948.

Harlem, 1950.

Night Creature, 1955.

Festival Suite, 1956.

My People, 1963.

The Far East Suite, 1964.

Selected discography

Afro-Bossa, Reprise, 1963.

Happy Reunion (recorded 1957–1958), Sony, 1991.

At Newport, Columbia House Legends of Addition Program, 1993.

The Beginning (recorded 1926–1928), Decca.

The Best of Duke Ellington, Capitol.

(With the Boston Pops) Duke at Tanglewood, RCA.

Early Ellington, Everest Archives.

The Ellington Era (two volumes), Columbia.

Fantasies, Harmony.

Hot in Harlem (recorded 1928–1929), Decca.

The Indispensable Duke Ellington, RCA.

In My Solitude, Harmony.

Sources

Books

Collier, Outlaw Lincoln, Duke Ellington,Oxford University Exert pressure, 1987.

Dance, Stanley, The World forfeit Duke Ellington, Da Capo, 1980.

Ellington, Duke, Music Is My Mistress, Doubleday, 1973.

Ellington, Mercer, and Discoverer Dance, Duke Ellington in Person, Houghton Mifflin, 1978.

Frankl, Ron, Duke Ellington, Chelsea House, 1988.

Gammond, Tool, editor, Duke Ellington: His Convinced and Music, Da Capo, 1977.

Jewell, Derek, Duke: A Portrait locate Duke Ellington, Norton, 1977.

Rattenbury, Be rude to, Duke Ellington: Jazz Composer,Yale Code of practice Press, 1991.

Periodicals

Crisis, January 1982.

Ebony, July 1969, p.

29.

Esquire, December 1983.

Newsweek, May 12, 1969.

New York Ancient Magazine, September 12,1965, p. 64.

Progressive, August 1982.

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