Duke Ellington Artistfacts

Duke Ellington song list

Duke Ellington Artistfacts

April 29, 1899 - May 24, 1974
Edward Kennedy Ellington, aka Duke Ellington, wrote over 1,000 compositions in his lifetime as a Jazz band-leader, composer and pianist, including Jazz standards, film scores and classical works. His middle name is his mother's maiden name, taken as a tribute to her memory and inherited by his only son, Mercer Kennedy Ellington.
Ellington's father worked as a butler at the White House.
Despite the fact that both of his parents were amateur pianists, Ellington preferred baseball to piano lessons when he was a child.
Ellington's first composition was "Soda Fountain Rag," written when he worked at a soda bar as a teenager.
In 1917, Ellington dropped out of high-school to pursue his music. 1917 was a significant year for Jazz, seeing the first official Jazz recording in music history. This first ever Jazz single was called "Livery Stable Blues," by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. This white group were credited for many years as the originators of the genre, something which is now known to be untrue.
Instead of using the term "jazz," Ellington preferred to call his genre Negro Music and American Music, possibly because the term Jazz was coined in the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and used in the white press. Later he was quoted saying, "By and large, Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with."
From 1927 to 1930, Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra played the infamous Cotton Club in Harlem, New York. This notorious club, owned and run from his jail cell by the gangster Owney Madden, was a great place to be seen and heard by New York's finest during the prohibition era. True to form, within the first year Ellington had his first hit record alongside the Jazz singer Adelaide Hall, called "Creole Love Call," to international acclaim.
The famous Bebop musician Miles Davis is quoted as expressing Ellington's musical importance, saying, "At least one day out of the year, all musicians should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington." When Ellington described Davis' early style of jazz, he said that "Playing 'bop' [bebop] is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing."
Duke Ellington was religious from childhood, and believed that he led a blessed life guided by some holy force to fame and fortune. In the last decade of life, his religiosity was given musical expression in the three Sacred Concerts, which he said was "the most important thing I have ever done." The music for these concerts shows a curious blend of traditional religious hymn tradition and Jazz styles.
The British composer and conductor Constant Lambert called Ellington the "first Negro composer of significance."
After quitting the Cotton Club, in order to escape the Great Depression soon to ravage the USA, Ellington and his band embarked on a world-tour with his band that would last nearly half a century.
In a strange tradition, at the end of his concerts Ellington would say to the crowd "We love you madly."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

More Songfacts:

Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)Edison Lighthouse

The love is growing in the '70s hit "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" because rosemary is the name of an herb.

Run Like HellPink Floyd

Pink Floyd's "Run Like Hell" was released as a single in America because it has a catchy beat, but the lyrics describe a reign of terror instigated by the despot Pink, the main character in the concept album The Wall.

Killer QueenQueen

The Queen song "Killer Queen," according to lead singer Freddie Mercury, is about a high-class call girl.

Careless WhisperWham!

George Michael was 17 and on a bus to his job at the cinema when he came up with the idea for "Careless Whisper" and the lyrics, "Something in your eyes calls to mind a silver screen."

Blinded By The LightBruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen wrote "Blinded By The Light," which was a #1 hit for Manfred Mann's Earth Band. The "Madman Drummers" line is a reference to Springsteen's first E-Street drummer, Vinnie "Mad dog" Lopez.

When I'm 64The Beatles

In The Beatles' "When I'm 64," Paul McCartney asks a woman if she'll still be there for him when he's 64. In 2006, he got his answer when shortly before his 64th birthday, he and Heather Mills separated.