Celebrating Jazz
Jazz Appreciation Month - April 2007
Duke Ellington
Also known as: Edward Kennedy Ellington
Birth: April 29, 1899 in Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Death: May 24, 1974 in New York, New York, United States
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
"Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one."
Often described as America's greatest jazz composer, Duke Ellington was also a renowned bandleader, arranger, and pianist. He was born on April 29, 1899, in Washington, D.C., and died on May 24, 1974, in New York City.
During a career that spanned more than fifty years, Duke Ellington almost singlehandedly changed the way people throughout the world regarded the uniquely American form of music known as jazz. In his hands, jazz became serious art, as lyrical and as complex as any symphony. From his popular standards of the 1930s and 1940s to his sacred pieces of the 1960s, he infused all of his compositions with a distinctive sound that drew on jazz's African roots to "catch the character and mood and feeling of my people," as he once explained. Although he preferred the term Negro music to describe his works in the belief that jazz defined them too narrowly, Ellington is regarded as a jazz virtuoso by the many admirers of his vast and exciting repertoire.
Edward Kennedy Ellington enjoyed a happy, carefree youth as part of a loving and close-knit, middle-class family in Washington, D.C. From his father, James Edward Ellington, who worked days as a blueprint maker for the U.S. Navy and evenings as a caterer and waiter, he inherited a love of music and a sense of style and charm. From his mother, Daisy Kennedy Ellington, he gained inner strength through religion and pride in himself and in his race. Although baseball was his first real passion, Edward took piano lessons on and off for a few years until he was around ten, when his teacher gave up on him because he liked to experiment too much with unusual chords and sounds. But he continued to learn on his own, imitating and memorizing songs he heard others play.
By the time he was in high school, Ellington--dubbed "Duke" by a friend who thought the dapper young man with the fancy manners and flawless speech deserved an appropriate nickname--was fairly sure he wanted to be a musician. He began to put in long hours of piano practice and mastered the popular tunes of the day. He also frequented local pool halls, where many of the best Black-American jazz and ragtime pianists played informally. Before he had even finished high school, Ellington had decided to abandon his plans to study commercial art and instead went to work as a professional pianist. He then formed and managed several different bands that played regularly around the Washington area. By 1920, he had assembled a single group of superbly talented musicians who shared his serious attitude about music and performing. Unlike many bandleaders of that era, he treated them well, kept them working steadily, and paid them generously. They in turn rewarded him with exceptional loyalty and dependability. Some stayed with him for several decades.
In late 1922, Ellington and a few of his bandmates headed north to New York City's Harlem neighborhood, then in the midst of a creative period known as the Harlem Renaissance. Beginning with a few brief engagements at small clubs that catered mostly to Black-American audiences, "Duke Ellington and the Washingtonians" (as they were then billed) soon moved on to steady engagements at bigger clubs with exclusively White audiences, culminating in 1927 with an invitation to play at the Cotton Club, Harlem's premier nightspot. By the end of the decade, "Duke Ellington and His Orchestra" (as they had begun to call themselves) were a sensation not only in Harlem but across the country, thanks in part to the live radio broadcasts of their performances, which brought them recognition and acclaim from coast to coast. Their hot "jungle" sound--featuring animal-like growls and wah-wah effects produced by trumpets and trombones fitted with plungers--was a tremendous hit, as was Ellington himself, whose elegant attire and sophisticated manner of speaking seemed to epitomize Harlem's glamorous nightlife.
During this same period, Ellington launched his songwriting career in earnest. He had penned his first compositions as a teenager; now he began to write not only for his own band but also to sell to music publishers. He eventually wrote or co-wrote more than two thousand compositions of various lengths, and it is estimated that he was responsible for roughly ninety percent of the material his band recorded.
The 1930s saw Duke Ellington and His Orchestra claim the title of the most popular Black jazz band in the United States. Dropping the jungle sound to experiment with other variations on jazz, they produced music that was more complex and original yet still very appealing. The slow and dreamy "Mood Indigo" (1930) was Ellington's first big hit and typical of his new direction. He followed it with "Creole Rhapsody," a much longer and more serious work that foreshadowed many of his later compositions. But his major contributions during this era were to pop music, including such songs as "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing," "Sophisticated Lady," "Solitude," "In a Sentimental Mood," and "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart." Ellington eventually grew tired of performing these hits only at the Cotton Club, however, so beginning in 1931 he took his orchestra on the road for several successful tours of the United States and Europe. They also appeared in several short films and made frequent radio broadcasts and recordings.
The early 1940s marked the creative peak of both Ellington and his band. Their popularity soared to an all-time high both in the United States and overseas as they incorporated elements of the new "swing" style jazz into their music. (Light, fast, and very rhythmic, swing was created especially for dancing.) Their chart-topping hits during these years included "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" and the orchestra's theme song, "Take the `A' Train." Another important milestone came on January 23, 1943, when Duke Ellington and His Orchestra became the first Black jazz group to perform at Carnegie Hall, launching an annual tradition that continued into the early 1950s. Besides being huge commercial successes, the concerts forever changed the way the public viewed both Ellington and his fellow band members. With a new long composition serving as the centerpiece of each performance, Ellington came to be regarded as an innovative composer and the skillful leader of a group of serious and talented musicians.
After the highs of the first half of the decade came some lows that lasted well into the next decade. Jazz and swing declined in popularity, and even Ellington had to struggle to keep his band together through a series of unprofitable tours and sporadic club dates. By the early 1950s, both he and his orchestra seemed bored and discouraged; their performances were criticized as lackluster and uninspired, several longtime members quit, and Ellington experienced an unusual creative slump that affected the quantity as well as the quality of his compositions. By the middle of the fifties, many observers thought his best days were behind him and that his band was finished.
In the mid-1950s, however, Ellington launched an amazing comeback. He began to compose pieces that reflected a more modern approach to jazz and tailored them to the strengths of his younger musicians. His renewed sense of energy and creativity in turn sparked interest in him as a performer and a recording artist. Evidence that the Duke was definitely still a force to be reckoned with came in spectacular fashion at the Newport Jazz Festival in July, 1956. Playing a few new compositions as well as rearrangements of old ones, he and his orchestra gave one of their most explosive concerts ever, touching off frenzied dancing in the aisles and landing Ellington on the cover of Time magazine.
From then until his death in 1974, Ellington stayed at or near the top of the jazz world. His surge of songwriting creativity endured well into the 1960s as he concentrated mainly on longer works, including three sets of religious pieces he called "sacred concerts." Incorporating both jazz and classical elements, they advanced his reputation as a serious composer. At the same time, he continued to turn out shorter pieces and even scored a few films. He also toured frequently with his band, made recordings, and performed regularly at clubs and festivals. In recognition of his many achievements, Ellington was showered with awards, including a special Grammy Award in 1968, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 (presented at a White House ceremony in honor of his seventieth birthday), and the French Legion of Honor in 1973 (the first ever given to a jazz musician).
Age began to take its toll on Ellington and his orchestra at the beginning of the 1970s. A few of the oldest members died or retired, and Ellington himself was diagnosed with lung cancer in early 1973. Although the disease left him weak and tired, he refused both rest and medical care, choosing instead to keep working until he collapsed on stage in January, 1974. He died in the spring of that year while undergoing treatment for pneumonia.
Today, Duke Ellington's orchestra thrives under the leadership of his son, Mercer Ellington, and his music lives on thanks to other bands, singers, and even Broadway productions that feature his work. In taking a popular form of music and transcending it to produce serious art, he left behind what is widely acclaimed as jazz's most distinctive and impressive body of composition. Of perhaps greater significance, though, is the fact that through his music he celebrated the lives of Black Americans, "elevat[ing] a people others wanted to denigrate, utiliz[ing] a heritage many sought to discard," as Ebony magazine noted. And by his own personal example of dignity and pride, Duke Ellington quietly, yet firmly, challenged unflattering racial stereotypes and discrimination.
UPDATES
September 30, 2004: Ellington was inducted into the inaugural class of Lincoln Center's Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame. Source: "Jazz At Lincoln Center To Induct Inaugural Class of Musicians into The Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame" (Press Release), September 30, 2004.
SOURCE CITATION
Contemporary Heroes and Heroines, Book II. Edited by Deborah Gillan Straub. Gale Research, 1992.