Duke Ellington
From Open Encyclopedia
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 - May 24, 1974), also known as Duke, was an American jazz composer, pianist and bandleader. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 and the Legion of Honor by France in 1973. Both are the highest civilian honors of each country.
His works were always tailored to the talents of the musicians in his band, including Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams, Bubber Miley, Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton, Barney Bigard, Ben Webster, Harry Carney, Sonny Greer, Otto Hardwick, Paul Gonsalves and Wellman Braud. Many musicians stayed with him for decades.
He was one of the best known African-American celebrities, recording for most American record companies active during his lifetime and featured in motion pictures. Ellington and his Orchestra was touring the whole of the United States and Europe regularly before World War II, and from the fifties, much of the rest of the globe as well.
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Early life and career
James Ellington, Duke's grandfather, was a slave from South Carolina,but was a slave in Lincoln County , North Carolina. The family moved to Washington, D.C. during the 1880s. Ellington was born in Washington, D.C. to James Edward Ellington and Daisy Kennedy Ellington. James Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy; he also worked as a White House butler for additional income. Since both of Duke's parents played piano, Duke took piano lessons at the age of 7. Duke never really enjoyed piano at that early age and had a bigger yearning for baseball than that of the piano. Ellington snuck into Frank Holiday's Poolroom at 14 and learned to respect and love the music. After hearing one of his old mentors play the piano, his love for the instrument was ignited and he began to take playing the piano seriously. He began performing professionally at age 17. He gradually became more attracted to the arts. Instead of going to an academic-oriented high-school, he attended Armstrong Manual Training School to study commercial art. 3 months before he was to graduate he left school to take the piano more seriously.
Sensation at the Cotton Club
Throughout the 1920s and 30s, Ellington often shared composer credit with his manager Irving Mills until they had a falling out in 1937. During this period he performed to sell-out audiences at Harlem's Cotton Club...
Ellington in the 1940s
The band reached a creative peak in the early 1940s, when he wrote for an orchestra of distinctive voices and displayed tremendous creativity. Some of these musicians created a sensation in their own right. The short-lived Jimmy Blanton transformed the use of the double bass in jazz, allowing it to function as a solo rather than rhythm instrument alone. Ben Webster too, the Orchestras first regular tenor saxophonist, created a rivalry with Johnny Hodges as the Orchestras foremosr voice in the sax section. Ray Nance joined too, replacing Cootie Williams who had "defected", contemporary wags claimed, to Benny Goodman. Nance, though added violin to the instrumental colours Ellington had at his disposal.
Three minute masterpieces flowed from the minds of Ellington, Billy Strayhorn (from 1939), his son Mercer Ellington and members of the Orchestra. From this time date Cottontail, Mainstem, Harlem Airshaft, Streets of New York and dozens of others.
Ellington's long-term aim though became to extend the jazz form from the three-minute limit of the 78 rpm record side, of which he was an acknowledged master. He had composed and recorded Creole Rhapsody as early as 1931, but it was not until the 1940s that this became a regular feature of Ellington's work. In this he was helped by Strayhorn, who had enjoyed a more thorough training in the forms associated with classical music than Ellington himself. The first of these, Black, Brown and Beige (1943), was dedicated to telling the story of African Americans, the place of slavery and the church in their history. Unfortunately, starting a regular pattern, Ellington's longer works were not well received; Jump for Joy an earlier musical, closed after only six performances in 1941.
Decline of the Big Bands
In 1951 Ellington suffered a major loss of personnel, with Sonny Greer, Lawrence Brown and most significantly Johnny Hodges leaving to pursue other avenues. With the loss of his key band members, Ellington was in loss of work. Most of the "new wave" Bossa Nova Jazz began to take over all of the Jazz industry, leaving others like Duke out of work.
Revival of his career
His appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, 1956 was to return Ellington to wider prominence. The feature for saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue with Gonsalves's six-minute saxophone solo, had been in the bands book for a while, but on this occasion created a near riot. The revived attention should not have surprised anyone, Hodges had returned to the fold the previous year, and Ellington's collaboration with Strayhorn had been renewed around the same time under terms which the younger man could accept. Such Sweet Thunder (1957), based on Shakespeare's plays and characters, and The Queen's Suite the following year (dedicated to Queen Elizabeth II) were products of the renewed impetus which the Newport appearance had helped to create.
In the early 1960s, largely as the result of being between recording contracts he was able to record with musicians he was not normally associated with. In 1962 he participated in a session which produced the Money Jungle (United Artists) album with Charles Mingus and Max Roach and recorded with John Coltrane for Impulse, who also recorded Ellington and his Orchestra with Coleman Hawkins. Musicians previously associated with Ellington returned to the Orchestra as members: Lawrence Brown in 1960 and Cootie Williams two years later.
Last years
Ellington was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1965, but was turned down. His reaction: "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be famous too young." In 1966, he performed his first "Sacred Concert", an attempt at fusing Christian liturgy with jazz, which was followed by two others. This caused enormous controversy in what was already a tumultuous time in the United States. Many saw the Sacred Music suites as an attempt to reinforce commercial support for organized religion, though the Duke simply said it was "the most important thing I've done", perhaps with a touch of hyperbole.
Though his later work is overshadowed by his music of the early 1940s for some critics such as (controversially) James Lincoln Collier, Ellington continued to make vital and innovative recordings, including The Far East Suite (1966), The New Orleans Suite (1970), and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971)) until the end of his life. Increasingly this period of music is being reassessed as people realise how creative Ellington was right to the end of his life.
Duke Ellington died on May 24, 1974 and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York.
Work in films
Ellington's film work stretched back to 1929, starting with Black and Tan Fantasy, and included film shorts of the Orchestra during the 'thirties and early 'forties. In the late 'fifties his work in films took the shape of scoring for soundtracks, notably Anatomy of a Murder (1959) with James Stewart, in which he appeared as a bandleader, and Paris Blues (1961), which featured Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier as jazz musicians.
Posthumous dedications
A large memorial to Duke Ellington created by sculptor Robert Graham was dedicated in 1997 in New York's Central Park near Fifth Avenue and 110th Street, an intersection named Duke Ellington Circle. In his birthplace of Washington, D.C., there stands a school dedicated to his honor and memory: the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. The school educates talented students who are considering careers in the arts by providing intensive arts instruction and strong academic programs that will prepare students for post-secondary education and/or professional careers.
The Ellington Orchestra itself continued intermittently as a "ghost band", led by Mercer Ellington (1919-96) after his father's death.
A Partial Discography
- Ellington At Newport (1956)
- Such Sweet Thunder (1957)
- Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook (1957)
- Newport 1958 (1958)
- Anatomy of a Murder (Soundtrack album) (1959)
- Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges: Back to Back (1959)
- Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges: Side by Side (1959)
- Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (1962)
- Duke Ellington meets Coleman Hawkins (1962)
- Money Jungle (1962)
- Ella at Duke's Place (1965)
- Ella and Duke at the Cote D'Azur (1966)
- The Far East Suite (1967)
- ...And His Mother Called Him Bill (1967)
- Francis A. & Edward K. (1968)
- Latin American Suite (1968)
- 70th Birthday Concert (1969)
- New Orleans Suite (1971)
- The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971)
- Live At The Whitney (1972)
External links
- "ellingtonweb.ca" Ellington on the Web
- Official site
- Biography from Down Beat Magazine
- A Duke Ellington Panorama including detailed discography
- Duke Ellington at Basin St. East
- Radio Open Source 1-hour program entitled "Dvorak to Duke Ellington", on the history of American music
- Duke Ellington Collection, 1927-1988 - Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
- 1981 audio interview with Don George about Duke Ellington. Interview by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudioda:Duke Ellington
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Categories: Pages needing expert attention | Section stubs | 1899 births | 1974 deaths | African American musicians | African Americans | Alpha Phi Alpha brothers | American jazz musicians | Jazz bandleaders | Jazz composers | Jazz pianists | People from Washington, D.C. | Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients | Spingarn Medal winners
