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Ellington, Duke: Duke Ellington
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Duke Ellington was the most important composer in the history of jazz as well as being a bandleader who held his large group together continuously for almost 50 years. The two aspects of his career were related; Ellington used his band as a musical laboratory for his new compositions and shaped his writing specifically to showcase the talents of his bandmembers, many of whom remained with him for long periods. Ellington ... wrote film scores and stage musicals, and several of his instrumental works were adapted into songs that became standards. In addition to touring year in and year out, he recorded extensively, resulting in a gigantic body of work that was still being assessed a quarter century after his death. Ellington was the son of a White House butler, James Edward Ellington, and thus grew up in comfortable surroundings. He began piano lessons at age seven and was writing music by his teens.
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This is the fifth in a series of 46 albums of broadcasts Duke Ellington did for the Treasury Department to promote the sale of War Bonds. A May 12, 1945, broadcast from Ellington's Saturday Date With Duke series, the popular series was aired each Saturday over ABC's Blue Network. The series ran from April through November of 1945. Ellington's orchestra was in its prime with performers like Johnny Hodges, Ray Nance, Rex Stewart, Harry Carney, and Cat Anderson occupying important chairs in the band. The performances are first-rate. Carney's moving solo on "Prelude to a Kiss," Ellington's unaccompanied piano on "Sophisticated Lady," and Jimmy Hamilton's clarinet on "Caravan" are examples of the outstanding work captured by these Treasury transcriptions.
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-Page 1- Duke Ellington... known as Edward Kennedy Ellington, was born on April 29, 1899 in Washington D.C., where he spent nearly one-third of his life. Daisy Kennedy Ellington, Duke's mother, was a soft-spoken woman who was born in 1879 in Washington D.C. as well. She had grown up in a middle-class family and had also completed her high school career, an accomplishment that was outstanding at that time in history. In all respects, Daisy had grown up in a reputable and well-established family, and passed on much of her own upbringing to her son, Edward. As a child, Daisy always made sure that Edward was always confident about hisself and also about his abilities by her constant encouragement. For Daisy, Edward was the light of her life and never had to want for anything.
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Duke Ellington brought a level of style and sophistication to Jazz that it hadn't seen before. Although he was a gifted piano player, his orchestra was his principal instrument. Like Jelly Roll Morton before him, he considered himself to be a composer and arranger, rather than just a musician. Duke began playing music professionally in Washington, D.C. in 1917. His piano technique was influenced by stride piano players like James P. Johnson and Willie "The Lion" Smith. He first visited New York in 1922 playing with Wilbur Sweatman, but the trip was unsuccessful.
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At the time of this live performance the Duke Ellington Orchestra was in a period of revival. After a career low in the early '50s, a period that saw the demise of many of the big bands that had ruled in the 1930s and 1940s, Ellington's band was reborn at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. There, tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves played an incredible and spontaneous 27 choruses on "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue," sending the crowd into an ecstatic epiphany not seen since the days of Benny Goodman and Chick Webb at the Palomar and Savoy ballrooms. Duke and his band became a hot propert once again, and though there would be ups and downs, Ellington would keep the band going until his death in 1974. He continued to produce new music throughout his life and sought to continue to develop as a composer.
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Duke then moved to New York where performers were in demand. There, he played in different jazz clubs, saloons and dance halls. Soon he was leading his own band, the Washingtonians at The Kentucky Club, located in Times Square. Even at this early stage, musicians and music critics were noticing that Ellington's music was different. In 1927, after getting a gig at the Cotton Club, the hottest jazz spot in Harlem, he began to produce sophisticated arrangements of his own.
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