Duke Ellington (1899-1973)

Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in 1899 in Washington, D.C. His father, James Edward Ellington, made blueprints for the United States Navy and worked part time as a White House butler. His mother, Daisy Kennedy Ellington, stayed at home to care for the family. The household was middle class, and Edward's parents taught him dignity, respect, and the importance of good manners. They gave him the nickname "Duke," and it stuck. The nickname suited his casually aristocratic bearing. Ellington described his home as "a house full of love." Both parents played piano, and at the age of seven he started to receive lessons. He showed early promise but neglected music for baseball and art. At the age of seventeen, he was offered a scholarship to study commercial art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, but he declined it. His interest in music had been reawakened by hearing the ragtime pianist Harvey Brooks while he was on vacation in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and he had later sought Brooks out in Philadelphia to learn some of his tricks and licks. "When I got home," Ellington wrote later, "I had a real yearning to play. I hadn't been able to get off the ground before, but after hearing him I said to myself, 'Man you're going to have to do it.'"

Ellington started to pick up casual gigs in clubs and cafes around Washington, D.C. He received guidance from pianists Oliver "Doc" Perry and Louis Brown, and in 1917, he formed his first band, The Duke's Serenaders. The Serenaders played at weddings and private parties as well as clubs, cafes, and bars. Ellington was his own booking agent-an early indication of his talent for organisation-and in less than three years he was able to buy his parents a new house, as well as a home of his own for himself and his wife Edna, whom he had married in 1918. In 1919 their son Mercer was born.

Ellington's first visit to New York City in 1923 was not a success. He was unable to secure regular work in the fiercely competitive musical environment of the city, and he returned home broke. Fortunately, he had caught the attention of Fats Waller (1904-1943), who had already established himself as pianist, organist, and songwriter. With Waller's encouragement he returned to New York that same year. Ellington settled into the routine of working when he could and learning what he could from such luminaries as Waller and James P. Johnson (1894-1956), the master of the muscular "stride" style of piano playing. In 1923 he secured a regular gig with Elmer Snowden's Washingtonians at a Times Square nightspot called the Kentucky Club, which lasted until 1927, by which time he had taken over the band and was ready for bigger things.

Bigger things arrived in the form of an offer to play a residency at the celebrated Cotton Club in Harlem. The Washingtonians became the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The number of players was increased to twelve. Ellington surrounded himself with superb soloists, including Barney Bigard (1906-1980) on clarinet, Johnny Hodges (1906-1970) on alto saxophone, Cootie Williams (1908-1985) and Bubber Miley (1903-1932) on trumpet, Tricky Sam Nanton (1904-1946) on trombone, and Harry Carney (1910-1974) on baritone saxophone. It was at the Cotton Club that Ellington developed his characteristic sound. His compositional style was dense, complex, and often playful. Soloists would emerge from the ensemble to improvise, while the orchestra would provide occasional bursts of encouragement, brief sound cues giving color and depth, and suggestions for changes of mood and tone.

The Cotton Club was where black Harlem met white high society. It was a club, a dance hall, and a speakeasy. Because of its distinguished patrons, it seemed immune to the prohibition on liquor, and it provided a nightly diet of sultry dancers, novelty acts, and great dance music. White customers in search of a wild night in Harlem were delighted by pieces like "Jungle Jamboree" and "Jungle Nights in Harlem," whose intricate, roaring dissonances were propelled by Sonny Greer's tom-toms. "Creole Love Call," in which Adelaide Hall's wordless voice blends with the sultry, muted tones of the ensemble, demonstrates Ellington's subtle mastery of mood and atmosphere.

Ellington's exploration into orchestral jazz composition deepened after he left the Cotton Club in 1930. The orchestra was now world famous. Ellington had by 1930 recorded more than two hundred pieces, and the orchestra was featured regularly on live radio. Ellington was now free to follow his own artistic destiny, rather than play just to please the customers. "Mood Indigo," released in 1930, made Ellington internationally famous, and gave the world notice that a major American composer was emerging. The decade from 1932 to 1942 was a period of intense creativity. Extended compositions like "Creole Rhapsody," "Reminiscing in Tempo," and "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" were daring and successful experiments into the possibilities of the new American music. Ellington increased the size of his orchestra from twelve to fourteen. It is worth noting that throughout his career, Ellington composed specifically for the musicians he had in his orchestra at any given time. He had a deep understanding of the particular gifts of each player, and the famous "Ellington Effect" owed everything to the individual style and sound of each musician. A virtuoso tenor saxophonist, Ben Webster (1909-1973), joined the group in 1940 and inspired Ellington and his musicians with a unique musical energy. "Cotton Tail," recorded in 1940, is both an Ellington creation and a vehicle for Webster's saxophone solos.

Ellington recorded prolifically during this period, and many of his best works were short. Only three minutes of music fit on ten-inch, 78-rpm disks, and Ellington made a virtue of these restraints. "Azure," "Blue Light," "Jack the Bear," "Harlem Air Shaft," "Concerto for Cootie," "Ko-Ko," "Cotton Tail," and "Main Stem" are all masterpieces of economy.

Billy Strayhorn joined Ellington in 1939 as arranger and second pianist, and made an immediate and very subtle impact on Ellington's music. He was originally hired to take some of the burden of musical arrangement from Ellington's shoulders, but very quickly the two musicians developed a symbiotic relationship so close that it was often impossible to say where one man's contribution ended and the other's began. Strayhorn assimilated Ellington's style so completely that his "Take the 'A' Train" quickly became the signature piece for the orchestra. He stayed with Ellington until his death in 1967.

In the mid-1940s Ellington's pieces became more ambitious and sometimes more grandiose. His Black, Brown and Beige, a piece in five sections that was intended to convey African American history through music, premiered in 1943 at Carnegie Hall. (Ellington's annual week-long residence at Carnegie Hall became an American institution.) Other long works followed: Harlem (1951), Such Sweet Thunder (1957), Tool Suite (1959), and Idiom '59 (1959). Night Creature (1955) was composed for a combination of jazz band and symphony orchestra.

In the early 1950s, Ellington seemed content to tour the world with his established musical creations, occasionally offering something new as critical acclaim diminished. But in 1956, a performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island revived his career. He began once again to collaborate with younger players as well as jazz revolutionaries such as John Coltrane (1926-1967), Charles Mingus (1922-1979), and pioneering bebop percussionist Max Roach (b. 1924). During the last decade of his life, his music moved into more spiritual areas, and pieces like David Danced Before the Lord gave public utterance to Ellington's deeply-held personal beliefs.

Duke Ellington's influence on music has been vast, and every new development in jazz has owed much to him. The orchestrations of Charles Mingus and Sun Ra (Herman "Sonny" Blount, 1914-1993) owe much to Ellington's Cotton Club arrangements and the dissonances of Thelonius Monk (1917-1972) echo Ellington's spare, often atonal piano melodies. His prodigious output and long career demonstrate a restless urge to explore and to create new possibilities within the music. In 1893, Antonin Dvorák (1841-1904) wrote: "The future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the African American [sic] melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States." Duke Ellington is in many ways the fulfillment of Dvorák's prediction.