said to be America's greatest composer, bandleader, and recording artist, was born on April 29, 1899 in Washington, D.C. Titled "Duke" as a youngster Ellington turned down a visual arts scholarship to focus his life on music. With a background in classical, popular, ragtime, and stride music, Ellington emerged as arguably the greatest single talent in the history of jazz. Duke Ellington is seen here reflected in his dressing room mirror in a picture taken by William Gottlieb for an article in the September 23, 1946 issue of Down Beat magazine. The caption read, ". . . Duke Ellington with his mirror reflecting his always present piano, his conservative ties, his 20 suits, his 15 shirts, his suede shoes and his smiling self." Ellington enjoyed being the sophisticated gentleman and would tell the band,
"Let's not pout, gentlemen. It makes bad notes."
Along with a group of musician friends, Ellington moved to New York where, between 1923 and 1927, they played a wide variety of venues and made some sixty recordings. Their first big break came after Joe "King" Oliver turned down an engagement at the Cotton Club. The gig went instead to the group which was, by then, under Ellington's leadership.
During an era of strict segregation, the Club prided itself on presenting black performers to white audiences. Paradoxically, however, it refused to seat African Americans: making exceptions for only a few famous individuals such as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson or Ethel Waters. Nevertheless, frequent live radio broadcasts from the Cotton Club, where the band played from 1927 through 1931, meant that listeners all across the nation became familiar with the Ellington sound.
Over the next forty-plus years Ellington and the band maintained an astounding schedule, at home and abroad. No venue was too small or too grand, and the band often played two shows a day for weeks running, then added in a recording session. Despite a slump during the late forties and early fifties, from which they rebounded following their appearance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, Ellington and his remarkably stable band performed at this rigorous pace into the early 1970s!
Over the years Ellington worked musically with many people who became his friends and admirers: Florenz Zigfield, Irving Berlin, Jimmy Durante, Al Jolson, Mary Lou Williams, John Coltrane, Will Marion Cook, Lena Horn, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Max Roach, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Charles Mingus, Frank Sinatra, Maurice Chevalier, and Bing Crosby among others. Billy Strayhorn, his closest collaborator, joined the band in 1939 and they composed together constantly until Strayhorn's death in 1967.
Ellington's musical versatility was atstounding and not limited to a traditional jazz format. He also wrote oratorios, suites, concertos, and even opera. He wrote for the Broadway stage, movies, television, night clubs and more. Ellington, frequently working with Strayhorn, created over 1,500 pieces of music -- nearly 6,000 if brief musical interludes are included. His shows, performance, and theater pieces include Jump for Joy, "Man with Four Sides," and "My People" (for the Century of Negro Progress Exposition in Chicago). His classical music includes "The Liberian Suite" (commissioned for the centenary of Liberia), background music for Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, and versions of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite.
Ellington also wrote for and performed in a number of films: Black and Tan Fantasy, Cabin in the Sky, and Assault on a Queen. In 1950, Ellington was featured in three film shorts: Salute to Duke Ellington; Symphony in Swing; and Date with Duke, which combined live action and animated puppets performing the Ellington/Strayhorn piece, "Perfume Suite." Ellington and Strayhorn also composed the score for the 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder.
In his seventies, Ellington continued to tackle new musical challenges. He accepted a commission from the American Ballet Theater to develop The River, a ballet choreographed by Alvin Ailey, as well as a commission from the New York Public Broadcasting station, WNET, to complete a comic opera.
Ellington recieved sixteen honorary doctorates from U.S. universities and numerous citations. His image has been portrayed on postage stamps and medals, and schools, bridges, and babies have been named in his honor. Ellington was knighted, and recieved the French Legion of Honor, the Ethiopian Emperor's Star, the Order of Lenin from the Soviet Union, the Spingarn Medal, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The best known of Ellington's later works were his three Sacred Concerts which drew on both classical European and African-American forms and styles. The first was performed in 1965 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco; the second premiered at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York; and the third in 1973 at Westminster Abbey, London. Asked why it was taking so long to write the last of his concerts Ellington said, "You can jive with secular music, but you can't jive with the Almighty." When Duke Ellington died in 1974 over 12,000 mourners said goodbye to "the piano player," as he called himself; ". . . our Shakespeare, Goethe, and Cezanne," according to Rob Gibson, the Lincoln Center's Director of Jazz.
