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Duke Ellington 1899 - 1974

Duke Ellington was born on April 29, 1899 in District Of Columbia United States, and died at age 75 years old on May 24, 1974 in New York, NY. Duke Ellington was buried in May 1974 at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx..

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy Ellington

New York, NY

April 29, 1899

District Of Columbia, United States

May 24, 1974

New York, New York, United States

Male

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Duke Ellington Duke Ellington (1899 - 1974)

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Duke Ellington's History: 1899 - 1974

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Introduction

Duke Ellington Birth name Edward Kennedy Ellington Born April 29, 1899 Washington, D.C., U.S. Died May 24, 1974 (aged 75) New York City, New York Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and bandleader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death in a career spanning over fifty years. Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward, and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. In the 1930s, his orchestra toured in Europe. Though widely considered to have been a pivotal figure in the history of jazz, Ellington embraced the phrase "beyond category" as a liberating principle, and referred to his music as part of the more general category of American Music, rather than to a musical genre such as jazz. Some of the musicians who were members of Ellington's orchestra, such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, are considered to be among the best players in jazz. Ellington melded them into the best-known orchestral unit in the history of jazz. Some members stayed with the orchestra for several decades. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington often composed specifically to feature the style and skills of his individual musicians. Often collaborating with others, Ellington wrote more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, with many of his works having become standards. Ellington also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, for example Juan Tizol's "Caravan", and "Perdido", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. After 1941, Ellington collaborated with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed many extended compositions, or suites, as well as additional short pieces. Following an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, in July 1956, Ellington and his orchestra enjoyed a major career revival and embarked on world tours. Ellington recorded for most American record companies of his era, performed in several films, scoring several, and composed stage musicals. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and charisma, Ellington is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other more traditional musical genres. His reputation continued to rise after he died, and he was awarded a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize for music in 1999.
04/29

1899

Birthday

April 29, 1899

Birthdate

District Of Columbia United States

Birthplace

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Ethnicity & Family History

African American. Mr. Ellington was born in Washington on April 29, 1899, the son of James Edward Ellington and the former Daisy Kennedy. His father was a blueprint maker for the Navy Department, who also worked occasionally as a butler, sometimes at the White House. Mr. Ellington married Edna Thompson in 1918. Their son, Mercer was born the following year. The couple were divorced in 1930 and Mr. Ellington's second marriage, to Mildred Dixon, a dancer at the Cotton Club, also ended in divorce. Surviving besides his son, Mercer, is his widow, Bea (Evie) Ellis; a sister, Ruth, and three grandchildren.
Early Life & Education

Ellington studied piano as a child but showed no particular ability until he was enrolled in the Armstrong Manual Training School. He learned to read music, worked on his technique, and began playing at clubs and cafes.
Military Service

he was a messenger for the Navy.
Professional Career

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and bandleader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death in a career spanning over fifty years. Ellington's popular favorites included "Mood Indigo," "Solitude," "Sophisticated Lady," "In A Sentimental Mood," "Take the 'A' Train," "Satin Doll," "Black, Brown and Beige," "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," and "Come Sunday". The end of the big-band era in the 1940's took its toll on the Ellington orchestra, and as worked dried up Ellington was forced to turn to royalties from his popular songs to keep the band afloat, a situation which was later reversed. He also appeared in numerous films and was the first African-American composer to write a film score (for "Anatomy of a Murder"). When he reached his sixties, an age at which many contemplate retirement, Ellington kept up the relentless schedule of composing, performing, recording and traveling he had followed for over thirty years. During this time he received numerous awards, including the presentation of the keys to the city of Los Angeles, California in 1936, the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP in 1959, The President's Gold Medal by President Lyndon B. Johnson (1966), the Pied Piper Award (1968), the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon (1969), the Legion of Honor by the country of France (the countries highest award), a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (6535 Hollywood Blvd.) and thirteen Grammy Awards. Duke Ellington and his band remained popular until his death in New York City in 1974 at the age of 75. His funeral was held in New York's Cathedral of St. John Divine and was attended by numerous celebrities and by thousands. Since Ellington's death the U.S. Postal Service issued a Commemorative Stamp (April 29, 1986), re-named Calvert Street Bridge in Washington, D.C. after him, and the renamed Washington, DC's Western High School to The Duke Ellington School of the Arts.
Personal Life & Family

Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward, and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. In the 1930s, his orchestra toured in Europe. Though widely considered to have been a pivotal figure in the history of jazz, Ellington embraced the phrase "beyond category" as a liberating principle, and referred to his music as part of the more general category of American Music, rather than to a musical genre such as jazz. Jazz Musician, Composer, Bandleader. One of the most prolific composer of the 20th Century, he wrote thousands of songs and dozens of works in symphonic form, as well as complete scores for ballet, theater and film. Born in Washington, D.C. he was nicknamed "Duke" because of the flashy way he liked to dress. Ellington studied piano as a child but showed no particular ability until he was enrolled into the Armstrong Manual Training School. He learned to read music, worked on his technique, and began playing at clubs and cafes. In 1917, Ellington formed his first group, the "Duke's Serenaders" and in 1923, they moved to New York City, New York, renamed themselves the "Washingtonians" working off and on four years at the Kentucky Club before moving on to become the house band of Harlem's renowned Cotton Club from 1927 to 1932. From 1924, when he put his name on the band-"Duke Ellington and his Washingtonians"- produced a great quantity of music for exactly fifty years. Ellington spent much of his professional career traveling with his band from one performance to the next, composing wherever he could as he took his music to audiences across the globe. He composed many works specifically to feature the distinctive sounds of such soloists as clarinetist Barney Bigard, Saxophonists Harry Carney and Johnny Hodges and trumpeter Cottie Williams. Ellington's popular favorites included "Mood Indigo," "Solitude," "Sophisticated Lady," "In A Sentimental Mood," "Take the 'A' Train," "Satin Doll," "Black, Brown and Beige," "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," and "Come Sunday". The end of the big-band era in the 1940's took its toll on the Ellington orchestra, and as worked dried up Ellington was forced to turn to royalties from his popular songs to keep the band afloat, a situation which was later reversed. He also appeared in numerous films and was the first African-American composer to write a film score (for "Anatomy of a Murder"). When he reached his sixties, an age at which many contemplate retirement, Ellington kept up the relentless schedule of composing, performing, recording and traveling he had followed for over thirty years. During this time he received numerous awards, including the presentation of the keys to the city of Los Angeles, California in 1936, the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP in 1959, The President's Gold Medal by President Lyndon B. Johnson (1966), the Pied Piper Award (1968), the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon (1969), the Legion of Honor by the country of France (the countries highest award), a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (6535 Hollywood Blvd.) and thirteen Grammy Awards. Duke Ellington and his band remained popular until his death in New York City in 1974 at the age of 75. His funeral was held in New York's Cathedral of St. John Divine and was attended by numerous celebrities and by thousands. Since Ellington's death the U.S. Postal Service issued a Commemorative Stamp (April 29, 1986), re-named Calvert Street Bridge in Washington, D.C. after him, and the renamed Washington, DC's Western High School to The Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Bio by: Curtis Jackson Inscription "Duke" Family Members Parents James Edward Ellington 1879–1937 Daisy Kennedy Ellington 1879–1935 Spouse Edna C. Thompson Ellington 1899–1976 (m. 1918) Siblings Baby Boy Ellington 1898–1898 Ruth Dorothea Ellington Boatwright 1915–2004
05/24

1974

Death

May 24, 1974

Death date

Lung cancer.

Cause of death

New York, New York United States
Death location

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05/dd

1974

Gravesite & Burial

May 1974

Funeral date
Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
Burial location
Obituary

Duke Ellington, a Master of Music, Dies at 75 By JOHN S. WILSON MAY 25, 1974 Duke Ellington, who expanded the literature of American music with compositions and performances that drew international critical praise and brought listening and dancing pleasure to two generations, died here yesterday at the age of 75. He entered the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center's Harkness Pavilion at the end of March to treat cancer in both lungs. This condition was complicated last Wednesday when he developed pneumonia. The noted jazz critic and historian Ralph J. Gleason called Mr. Ellington “America's most important composer . the greatest composer this American society has pro. (Weed,” and summed him up as a “master musician, master psychologist, master choreographer.” “Ellington has created his musical world which has transcended every attempt to impose category upon it and has emerged as a solid body of work unequaled in American music,” Mr. Gleason wrote. “His songs have become a standard part of the cultural heritage, his longer compositions a part of the finest artists of our time, and his concerts and personal appearances among the most satisfying for an audience of those of any artist. Every music honor this country can bestow is little enough for such a musical giant as this man, In reality, he has already won them and more by his imprint on the minds of all who have heard him.” Mr. Ellington, whose innate elegance of manner won him his nickname of Duke while he was still a schoolboy in Washington, was a tall, debonair, urbane man with a vitalizing sense of the dramatic and an ironic wit that often served as a protective shield. But beneath a suave, Unruffled exterior, Mr. Ellington had a fiery appreciation of his worth and his style. When he was conducting ‘a public rehearsal of his orchestra at the University of Wisconsin in 1972, he took his musicians through a first attempt at his latest composition. As a composer and arranger, Mr. Ellington created an unusual and (as many other orchestra leaders found) inimitable style by building his works on the individualistic sounds of the brilliant instrumentalists he gathered around him—the growling trumpets of Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams and Ray Nance, the virtuoso plunger mute effects of the trombonist Tricky Sam Nanton. the rich, mellow clarinet of Barney Bigard, the exquisite alto saxophone of Johnny Hodges, the huge, sturdy drive of Harry Carney's baritone saxophone. Billy Strayhoin, Who was Mr. Ellington's musical right arm, his co‐composer and co‐arranger from 1939 until his death in 1967, explained that “Ellington plays the piano but his real instrument is his band.” The basis of the Ellington sound eluded other musicians. In the late nineteen‐twenties, When Mr. Ellington's star was beginning to rise and Paul Whiteman was the “King of Jazz,” Mr. Whiteman and his arranger, Ferde Grofe spent nights on end at the Cotton Club listening to the Ellington orchestra but, so legend has it, eventually abandoned their efforts to try to notate what the Duke's musicians were playing. More recently Andre Preyin, who is as familiar with the Classical side of music as he is amazement with jazz, shook his head in amazement as he noted that “Stan Kenton can stand in front of a thousand fiddles and a thousand brass and make a dramatic gesture and every Audio arranger can nod his head and say, ‘Oh, yes, that's ly lifts his finger, three horns done like this. But Duke makes a sound and I don't know what it is.” Although Mr. Ellington's basic working materials were almost invariably the blues and the voicelike manner in which a jazz musician plays his instrument, classically oriented Musicians often found a relationship to Debussy, Delius and Ravel in his work. Constant Lambert wrote in 1934 that there is “nothing in Ravel so dexterous in treatment as the varied solos in the middle of the ebullient ‘Hot and Bothered’ [an Ellington variation on ‘Tiger Rag] and nothing in Stravinsky more dynamic than the final section.” Mr. Ellington was a pioneer in extending jazz composition beyond the customary chorus Of 12 or 32 bars. His “Reminiscing in Tempo,” written in 1934, was a 12‐minute work. Four years later, Paul Whiteririan commissioned him to write a concert piece, “Blue Bellas of Harlem.” for the Whiteman orchestra. Mr. Ellington's first major effort an extended composition came in 1943, when he wrote “Black, Brown and Beige,” which ran for 50 minutes when it was introduced at an Ellington concert in Carnegie Hall. His extended compositions alm) included “Harlem”; “Night Creatures,” introduced by the Ellington.band and the Syn:iphony of the Air at Carnegie Hall In 1955; “Suite Thursday,’ inspired by John Steinbeck's book “Sweet Thursday” and cemmissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1960, and a Shakespeare suite, “Such Sweet Thunder,” inspired by a Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, in 1957, Mr. Ellington was born in Washington on April 29, 1899, the son of James Edward Ellington and the former Daisy Kennedy. His father was a blueprint maker for the Navy Department, who also worked occasionally as a butler, sometimes at the White House. In high school, the Duke, whose nickname was given to him by an admiring neighborhood friend when he was years old, was torn between his interests in painting and in music. He won a poster contest sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and in 1917 was offered a scholarship by the Pratt Institute of Applied Art. He turned it down, however, to devote himself to music. By the time he was 20 he was making $150 a week playing with his small band at parties and dances. In this year, 1919, Sonny Greer became Mr. Ellington's drummer and remained with him until 1950, setting a pattern of longevity that was to be followed by Ellington sidemen. many In 1930 the Ellington band appeared in its first feature-length movie, “Check and Double Check,” and in 1933 it went ‐overseas for the first time, to ‘Britain and Europe. During the thirties, the band appeared in several more films —“Murder at the Vanities,” “Belle of the Nineties” and The Hit Parade” — and made a second European tour ‘ in 1939. When the furor over swing bands rose in the late thirties, the Ellington band was overshadowed by the glare of publicity that fell on the bands of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller. But as the swing era faded, the Ellington band hit one of its peaks in 1941 and 1942, years when all the greatest of Mr. Ellington's star sidemen (except Bubber Miley) were together in the band and when Mr. Ellington himself was in an extraordinarily creative. period as a composer. By 1943, however, he was leaving the early phases of his career, behind him and turning to the extended compositions and concert presentations that would be an increasingly important part of his work. In the fifties, when Interest in big bands dropped So low that all but a handful gave up completely or worked part-time, Mr. Ellington kept his band together even when the economic basis became very shaky. “It's a matter of whether you want to play music or make money,” he said. “I like to keep a band so I can write and hear the music the next day. The only way you can do that is to pay the hand and keep it on tap. 52 weeks a year. If you want to make a real profit, you go out for four months, lay off’ for four, and come back for another four. Of course, you can't hold a band together that way and I like the cats we've got. So, by various little twists and turns, we manage to stay in business and make a musical profit. And a musical profit and put you way ahead of financial loss.” Honors were heaped on him. In 1969, at a celebration of his 70th birthday at the ‐White House, President Nixon awarded him. the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Georges Pompidou of ‘France gave ‘him the Legion of Honor in 1973. Through all this, Mr. Ellington kept up the steady pace of composing, performing, and traveling that he had maintained since the late nineteen twenties. Everywhere he went, his electric piano went with him, for there was scarcely a day in his life when he did not compose something. “You know how it is,” he said. “You go home expecting to go right to bed. But then, on the way, you go past the piano and there's a flirtation. It flirts with you. So, you sit down and try out a couple of chords and when you look up, it's 7 A.M.” Quite logically Mr. Ellihgton called his autobiography, published in 1973, “Music Is My Mistress.” “Music is my mistress,” he wrote, “and she plays second fiddle to no one.” Mr. Ellington married Edna Thompson in 1918. Their son, Mercer was born the following year. The couple were divorced in 1930 and Mr. Ellington's second marriage, to Mildred Dixon, a dancer at the Cotton Club, also ended in divorce. Surviving besides his son, Mercer, is his widow, Bea (Evie) Ellis; a sister, Ruth, and three grandchildren. Funeral services will be held on Monday at 1 P.M. at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Amsterdam Ave and 112th Street. Mr. Ellington's body went on view last night at the Walter B. Cooke funeral chapel at Third Avenue and 85th Street. Viewing hours will continue between 8 A.M. and 10 P.M. today and tomorrow.

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Duke Ellington lived 3 years longer than the average family member when died at the age of 75.

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18 Memories, Stories & Photos about Duke

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.7k+ favorites

03/07/2023

I met the Duke.

He was entertaining at a fancy shindig in 1966.
I said, "I like everything you do but I am crazy about "Sophisticated Lady."
He smiled and said, "Me too!"
He nodded to the orchestra and played a few notes, and the Duke and they played "Sophisticated Lady."
I was so happy that my eyes welled up with tears and he was touched too.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.7k+ favorites

07/15/2024

Duke Ellington

By Arthur K Miller on the Duke's birthday.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.7k+ favorites

11/27/2017

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington

A photo of Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Charles Honi Coles, Duke Ellington, and Billy Strayhorn

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.7k+ favorites

07/31/2017

Charles Honi Coles, Duke Ellington, and Billy Strayhorn

A photo of Charles "Honi" Coles with Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.7k+ favorites

07/15/2024

I told Charles "Honi" Coles that he was going to get the Tony. He bitterly said, THEY are not going to give ME the Tony." But I persisted, "I am never wrong! When you get the Tony I want you to look into the camera, and think of me." His acceptance speech is on YOU-Tube ! Be sure to see it now.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.7k+ favorites

04/29/2023

I told him I love Sophisticated Lady.

So he played it for me. I was so grateful for the experience. I was the first one who gave him a tribute here on AncientFaces.

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