__NOTOC__ Year 1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.

Events of 1934

January

: Alcatraz becomes a prison.]]

January 1

* Alcatraz becomes a prison.

* International Telecommunication Union.

* Nazi Germany passes the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring".

January 7 – The first Flash Gordon comic strip is published.

January 10 – Marinus van der Lubbe is executed in Germany.

January 13 – The Candidate of Science degree is established in the USSR.

January 20 – FUJI PHOTO FILM CO., LTD., the pioneer of Fujifilm, is established

January 24

* The new Constitution of Estonia enters into force.

* Einstein visits the White House.

January 26

* The Apollo Theater opens in Harlem, New York City.

* The 10 year German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact is signed by Germany and the Second Polish Republic.

February

February 6 – French political crisis: The French far right leagues rally in front of the Palais Bourbon, in an attempted coup against the Third Republic.

February 9

* Greece, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia have formed the Balkan Pact.

* Gaston Doumergue forms a new government in France.

February 12 – The Export-Import Bank is incorporated.

February 12–February 16 – Austrian Civil War

February 16 – Commission of Government sworn in as form of direct rule for the Dominion of Newfoundland.

February 21 – Augusto César Sandino is assassinated in Managua by the National Guard.

February 22 – Frank Capra's It Happened One Night , starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, is released. It becomes a smash hit and the first of Capra's great screen classics. It becomes the first film to win all 5 of the major Academy Awards – Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. Gable and Colbert receive their only Oscars for this film.

February 23 – Léopold III becomes King of Belgium.

March

March 1 – Manchuria becomes Manchukuo, following an invasion by the Japanese.

March 3

* John Dillinger escapes from jail in Crown Point, Indiana, using a wooden pistol.

* Erich Franke invents the wire bearing (today wire race bearing) and files a patent application.

March 8 – Prince Sigvard of Sweden loses his titles because of his marriage.

March 12 – Konstantin Päts and general Johan Laidoner stage a coup in Estonia, and ban all political parties.

March 13 – John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and their gang rob the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa.

March 20

* All the police forces in Germany come under the command of Heinrich Himmler.

* The Great Hakodate fire kills at least 2,166 people in southern Hokkaido, Japan.

March 24 – The Philippine Commonwealth becomes established allowing for more self-government from the United States.

April

April 1 – Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker kill 2 young highway patrolmen near Grapevine, Texas.

April 6 – Rudyard Kipling and William Butler Yeats are awarded the Gothenburg Prize for Poetry.

April 12 – U.S. publication of the novel Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

April 12 – The worlds largest ever recorded surface wind speed of 231 miles per hour was recorded on the summit of Mt. Washington NH.

April 14 – Black Sunday: Twenty of the worst dust storms within the Dust Bowl occur.

April 19 – Surgeon R.K. Wilson allegedly photographs the Loch Ness Monster.

April 22 – John Dillinger and two others shoot their way out of an FBI ambush in northern Wisconsin.

April 28 – FA Cup: Manchester City beat Portsmouth 2 – 1 at Wembley Stadium

May

: dust storm in Great Plains]]

May 5 – The first Three Stooges short, Woman Haters, is released.

May 7 – The Pearl of Lao Tzu, 24 x 14 cm, is found in a giant clam off Palawan, Philippines.

May 11 – Dust Bowl: A strong 2-day dust storm removes massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst dust storms of the Dust Bowl.

May 15

* The United States Department of Justice offers a $25,000 reward for John Dillinger.

* Kārlis Ulmanis establishes an authoritarian government in Latvia.

May 19 Kimon Georgiev stages a coup d'etat in Bulgaria.

May 23 – A team of police officers, led by former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, ambush bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow near Gibsland, Louisiana, killing them both.

May 24

* Tomáš Masaryk is re-elected president of Czechoslovakia.

* The 5-day "Battle of Toledo" occurs during the Auto-Lite strike in Toledo, Ohio.

May 28 – Near Callander, Ontario, the Dionne quintuplets are born to Oliva and Elzire Dionne, becoming the first quintuplets to survive infancy.

May 29 – May 31 – The Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church meets in Barmen, Germany to write the Barmen Declaration.

June

June 6 – New Deal: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Securities Exchange Act into law, establishing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

June 9 – The animated short The Wise Little Hen, directed by Bert Gillett for the Silly Symphonies series, and featuring the debut of Donald Duck, is released.

June 10 – Italy beats Czechoslovakia 2–1 after extra time to win the 1934 World Cup.

June 12 – Political parties are banned in Bulgaria.

June 14 – Max Baer defeats champion Primo Carnera for the world heavyweight boxing title.

June 18 – The Indian Reorganization Act is enacted.

June 27 – The Emir of Yemen and ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia conclude a peace treaty.

June 27 – The Canberra Times documents the attack of an unknown spider species upon the Chilean town of Antofagasta.

June 28 – Division of Grazing created within the Department of the Interior.

June 30

* The Nazi SA camp Oranienburg becomes a national camp, taken over by the SS.

* Night of the Long Knives: Nazis purge the SA.

July

July 1

* Bureau of Air Commerce under Department of Commerce.

* The world famous Brookfield Zoo opens in Brookfield, Illinois.

* The Hays Office censorship code for motion pictures goes into full effect in the United States.

July 10 – German Social Democrat and author Erich Mühsam is killed in Oranienburg concentration camp.

July 17 – The North Dakota Supreme Court declares Lieutenant Governor Ole H. Olson the legitimate governor and tells William Langer to resign. Langer proceeds to declare North Dakota independent. He revokes the declaration after the Supreme Court justices meet him.

July 22 – Outside Chicago's Biograph Theatre, "Public Enemy No. 1" John Dillinger is mortally wounded by FBI agents.

July 25 – Austrian Nazis assassinate chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss during a failed coup attempt.

August

August 2 – Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany, becoming head of state as well as Chancellor.

August 8 – The Wehrmacht swears a personal oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler.

August 13 – The comic strip Lil' Abner is first published in US newspapers.

August 19

* The first All-American Soap Box Derby is held in Dayton, Ohio.

* In a referendum, 90% of the German population approves of Hitler's assumption of presidential powers as Führer and Reichskanzler.

August 25 – Anti-union vigilantes seize the town of McGuffey, Ohio, during the Hardin County onion pickers strike.

September

September 8 – Off the New Jersey coast, a fire aboard the passenger liner Morro Castle kills 134 people.

September 19

* The Soviet Union joins the League of Nations.

* Bruno Richard Hauptmann is arrested in connection with the Lindbergh kidnapping case.

September 21 – A typhoon in Honshū, Japan kills 3,036 people, and destroys the temple, schools, and other buildings in Osaka.

September 22 – A gas explosion at Gresford Colliery in Wrexham, north-east Wales kills 266 miners and rescuers, one of Britain's worst coal mining disasters.

September 28

* Afghanistan joins the League of Nations.

* A trial for the custody of young Gloria Vanderbilt begins; it lasts seven weeks and ends with a compromise.

September 29 – Stanley Matthews makes his England debut, beginning a record 23-year international career.

October

October 2 – A tornado in Osaka and Kyoto kills 1,660, injures 5,400, and destroys the rice harvest.

October 5 – Miners rebel in Asturias, Spain (see Asturian miners' strike of 1934).

October 6 – Catalonian separatists rebel in Spain.

October 9 – King Alexander of Yugoslavia and French foreign minister Louis Barthou are assassinated during the king's state visit in Marseilles.

October 16 – The Long March of the Chinese Communists begins.

October 22 – Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd is shot and killed by FBI agents near East Liverpool, Ohio.

November

November 13 – The Italian government decrees that teachers must use a military or party uniform in a class.

November 21

* The MCC makes an ultimately controversial decision to alter the lbw rule so a batsman can be lbw to a ball pitching outside off stump. The change is later blamed for many problems developing during the 1950s, primarily negative bowling outside leg stump to a field of short-leg fieldsmen.

* Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes, starring Ethel Merman, premieres in New York City.

November 23 – An Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission in the Ogaden discovers an Italian garrison at Walwal, which lays well within Ethiopian territory. This encounter leads to the Abyssinia Crisis.

November 26 – Universal Pictures releases the first film version of Fannie Hurst's novel, 'Imitation of Life', starring Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers. It gives Beavers, usually featured in small roles as a maid, her best screen role, and features the largest supporting role played by a black person in a Hollywood film up till then. Its storyline is extremely daring for a 1934 film – part of it revolves around a young mulatto girl rejecting her mother and trying to "pass for white". It is the first Hollywood film to seriously deal with this subject. The 1936 film version of Show Boat, also from Universal, will deal with a similar storyline.

November 27

* A running gun battle between FBI agents and bank robber Baby Face Nelson results in the death of one FBI agent and the mortal wounding of special agent Samuel P. Cowley, who was still able to mortally wound Nelson.

* Bolivian President Daniel Salamanca deposed.

December

December 1

* In the Soviet Union, Politburo member Sergei Kirov is shot and killed at the Communist Party headquarters in Leningrad by Leonid Nikolaev (it is widely thought that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered this murder).

* In Mexico, Lázaro Cárdenas is inaugurated as President of that country.

December 5 – Abyssinia Crisis: Ethiopian and Italian troops exchange gunfire. Reported casualties for the Ethiopians are 150, and for the Italians 50.

December 18 – A low-key fascist conference is held in Moreaux.

December 24 – Actor Lionel Barrymore begins what will become an annual tradition of the Golden Age of Radio – playing the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in dramatizations of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Barrymore continues playing Scrooge on radio until shortly before his death in 1954. He will also make a 78-RPM record album of the classic story, which will later be released on LP.

December 26 – An American Airlines aircraft crashes in the Adirondack Mountains.

December 27 – Persia becomes Iran.

December 29 – Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.

Undated

International Union of National Tourist Propaganda Organizations (IUNTPO).

The sonoluminescence effect is discovered.

The GPU becomes the NKVD.

Abidjan becomes the capital of the French colony of Côte d'Ivoire.

The U.S. Marines leave Haiti.

US Congress makes the Philippines a self-governing commonwealth and schedules independence for 1944. Sugar imports are reduced and immigration is limited to 50 Filipino people per year.

The house Fallingwater in southwestern Pennsylvania is designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Jazz group the Quintette du Hot Club de France established.

This year is the hottest year in the United States on record.

Ongoing

1932–1934 – Famine in the Soviet Union: five million die.

Births

January–February

January 7 – Charles Jenkins, American sprinter

January 9 – Bart Starr, American football player

January 11 – Jean Chrétien, Prime Minister of Canada

January 12 – Mick Sullivan, English rugby league footballer

January 16 – Marilyn Horne, American mezzo-soprano

January 18 – Raymond Briggs, British writer and illustrator

January 20 – Tom Baker, British actor (Doctor Who)

January 22

* Graham Kerr, British television personality

* Bill Bixby, American actor and director (The Courtship of Eddie's Father and The Incredible Hulk) (d. 1993)

January 23 – Lou Antonio, American actor and director

January 24 – Stanisław Grochowiak, Polish poet and dramatist (d. 1976)

January 30 – Tammy Grimes, American actress

February 5 – Hank Aaron, African-American baseball player

February 7 – Earl King, American musician (d. 2003)

February 10 – Fleur Adcock, New Zealand poet

February 11

* Tina Louise, American actress (Gilligan's Island)

* Mary Quant, British fashion designer

* John Surtees, British race car driver

February 12

* Anne Krueger, American economist

* Bill Russell, African-American basketball player

February 13 – George Segal, American actor (The Hot Rock)

February 14

* Michel Corboz, Swiss conductor

* Florence Henderson, American actress (The Brady Bunch)

February 15 – Niklaus Wirth, Swiss computer scientist

February 16 – Harold "Hal" & Herbert "Herbie" Kalin, American singers (The Kalin Twins) (d. 2005 and 2006, respectively)

February 17

* Alan Bates, British actor (d. 2003)

* Barry Humphries, Australian actor and comedian

February 20 – Bobby Unser, American race car driver

February 21 – Rue McClanahan, American actress (d. 2010)

February 22

* Sparky Anderson, American baseball manager

* Van Williams, American actor (The Green Hornet)

February 24

* Bettino Craxi, Prime Minister of Italy (d. 2000)

* Renata Scotto, Italian soprano

February 27

* Vincent Fourcade, French-born interior designer and socialite (d. 1992)

* Ralph Nader, American consumer activist and presidential candidate

March–April

March 1

* Jean-Michel Folon, Belgian sculptor (d. 2005)

* Joan Hackett, American actress (d. 1983)

March 4

* Mario Davidovsky, Argentinian composer

* John Duffey, American bluegrass musician (d. 1996)

* Anne Haney, American actress (d. 2001)

* Barbara McNair, African-American singer and actress (d. 2007)

* Janez Strnad, Slovenian physicist

March 5 – Daniel Kahneman, Israeli economist, Nobel Prize laureate

March 7

* Franklin Clarke, American football player

* Willard Scott, American television weather reporter (Today Show)

March 9

* Yuri Gagarin, Russian cosmonaut, first man in space (d. 1968)

* Del Close, American actor, improviser, writer, and teacher (d. 1999)

March 11 – Sam Donaldson, American reporter (ABC News)

March 13 – Barry Hughart, American author

March 14

* Eleanor Bron, British actress

* Paul Rader, General of The Salvation Army

March 16 – Richard Layard, Baron Layard, British economist

March 16 – Ray Hnatyshyn, Governor-General of Canada (d. 2002)

March 20 – Willie Brown, Mayor of San Francisco, California

March 22

* Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator from Utah

* Larry Martyn, British comedy actor (Are You Being Served?) (d. 1994)

March 23 – Mark Rydell, American actor and director

March 25 – Gloria Steinem, American feminist

March 26 – Alan Arkin, American actor

March 31

* Orion Samuelson, American television personality

* Richard Chamberlain, American actor (Dr. Kildare)

* Shirley Jones, American singer and actress (The Partridge Family)

* Carlo Rubbia, Italian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate

April 1

* Rod Kanehl, American baseball player (d. 2004)

* Vladimir Posner, Russian journalist

* Don Hastings, American actor

April 2

* Paul Joseph Cohen, American mathematician

* Brian Glover, British actor and wrestler (d. 1997)

April 3 – Jane Goodall, British zoologist

April 5 – Roman Herzog, former President of Germany

April 6 – Enrique Álvarez Félix, Mexican actor (d. 1996)

April 9 – Bill Birch, New Zealand politician

April 11 – Mark Strand, Canadian-born American poet

April 18 – James Drury, American actor (The Virginian)

April 24

* Shirley MacLaine, American actress

* Jayakanthan, Tamil writer

April 25

* Peter McParland, Irish footballer

* Denny Miller, American actor (Wagon Train)

April 29

* Otis Rush, American musician

* Akira Takarada, Japanese actor

May–June

May 3 – Henry Cooper, British boxer

May 6 – Richard Shelby, U. S. senator from Alabama

May 9 – Alan Bennett, British actor and writer

May 13 – Leon Wagner, American baseball player (d. 2004)

May 14 – Siân Phillips, Welsh actress

May 15 – George Roper, British comedian (d. 2003)

May 18 – Dwayne Hickman, American actor (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis)

May 19 – Jim Lehrer, American television journalist (MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour)

May 21 – Bengt I. Samuelsson, Swedish biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

May 22 – Peter Nero, American pianist

May 23 – Robert Moog, American inventor of the synthesizer (d. 2005)

May 24 – Barry Rose, British choir director and organist

May 27 – Harlan Ellison, American writer

May 28 – Dionne quintuplets, Canadian quintuplets

May 30 – Aleksei Leonov, Russian cosmonaut

June 1 – Pat Boone, American actor and singer

June 3 – Rolland D. McCune, American theologian

June 5 – Bill Moyers, American journalist

June 6 – King Albert II of Belgium

June 16 – Eileen Atkins, British actress

June 16 – William Forsyth Sharpe, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate

June 20 – Samuel Zoll, Massachusetts judge

June 25 – Beatriz Sheridan, Mexican actress and director (d. 2006)

June 26 – Jeremy Wolfenden, British journalist (d. 1965)

June 28 – Carl Levin, United States Senator

June 30 – Harry Blackstone Jr., American magician (d. 1997)

July–August

July 1

* Jean Marsh,actress

* Jamie Farr, American actor (best known as Klinger on M*A*S*H)

* Sydney Pollack, American film director (d. 2008)

July 10 – Jerry Nelson, American puppeteer

July 11 – Giorgio Armani, Italian fashion designer

July 12 – Van Cliburn, American pianist

July 13

* Wole Soyinka, Nigerian writer, Nobel Prize laureate

* Aleksei Yeliseyev, Russian cosmonaut

July 14 – John Tyndall, British politician (d. 2005)

July 15 – Harrison Birtwistle, British composer

July 21 – Jonathan Miller, British theatre director

July 25 – Luang Por Sumedho, Theravada Buddhist representative in the West

July 30 – Bud Selig, American Major League Baseball commissioner

August 2 – Valery Bykovsky, Russian cosmonaut and prostitute

August 3 – Jonas Savimbi, Angolan political and rebel leader (d. 2002)

August 4 – Dallas Green, American baseball manager and executive

August 5 – Wendell Berry, American novelist, essayist, poet

August 6 – Billy Boston, Welsh rugby league footballer

August 15 – Nino Ferrer, French singer (d. 1998)

August 18 – Vincent Bugliosi, American prosecutor and author (Helter Skelter)

August 18 – Roberto Clemente, Puerto Rican Major League Baseball player (d. 1972)

August 19 – Renée Richards, American transsexual physician and tennis player

August 20 – Armi Kuusela, Miss Universe 1952

August 22 – Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army general

August 23

* Sonny Jurgensen, American football player

* Barbara Eden, American actress (I Dream of Jeannie)

August 25

* Eddie Ilarde, Filipino broadcaster and politician

* Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former President of Iran

August 26 – Tom Heinsohn, American baseketball player, coach, and broadcaster

August 30

* Anatoli Solonitsyn, Russian actor (d. 1982)

* Helen Craig, English children's author, illustrator (Angelina Ballerina)

September–October

September 2 – Dominic Chianese, American actor

September 2 – Grady Nutt, American humorist (d. 1982)

September 4 – Clive Granger, Welsh-born economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2009)

September 7 – Little Milton, American musician

September 8 – Peter Maxwell Davies, English composer

September 10 – Charles Kuralt, American journalist (On The Road) (d. 1997)

September 15 – Fred Nile, Australian Christian politician

September 16 – Ronnie Drew, Irish Dubliner Band Singer (d. 2008)

September 16 – Elgin Baylor, American basketball player and executive

September 17 – Binoy Majumdar, Indian Hungryalist Poet.

September 17 – Maureen Connolly, American tennis player (d. 1969)

September 19 – Brian Epstein, English manager of the Beatles (d. 1967)

September 20 – Sophia Loren, Italian actress

September 20 – Takayuki Kubota, martial artist and founder of the Gosoku-ryu style of karate

September 21 – Leonard Cohen, Canadian poet, novelist and singer/songwriter

September 22 – Lute Olson, American basketball coach

September 23 – Ahmad Shah Khan, Crown Prince of Afghanistan

September 24 – Tommy Anderson, Scottish footballer

September 27

* Beverly Armstrong, American female professional baseball player

* Wilford Brimley, American actor

September 28 – Brigitte Bardot, French actress, sex symbol of the 1950s and 60's, and animal rights activist

September 30 – Alan A'Court, English footballer (d. 2009)

September 30 – Anna Kashfi, Welsh actress

October 1 – Chuck Hiller, baseball player (d. 2004)

October 1 – Shakeb Jalali Urdu poet (d. 1966)

October 2 – Earl Wilson, baseball player (d. 2005)

October 4 – Sam Huff, American football player

October 9 – Jill Ker Conway, Australian-born author

October 13 – Nana Mouskouri, Greek singer

October 17 – Rico Rodriguez, Jamaican trombonist

October 18 – Chuck Swindoll, American evangelist

October 20 – Michael Dunn, a.k.a. Gary Neil Miller, dwarf American actor and singer (The Wild Wild West) (d. 1973)

October 30 – Frans Brüggen, Dutch flutist, recorder player, and conductor

November–December

November 1 – Umberto Agnelli, Swiss-born automobile executive (d. 2004)

November 6 – Barton Myers, American/Canadian architect

November 9 – Carl Sagan, American astronomer and television host (Cosmos) (d. 1996)

November 11 – Jim Perry, American game show host ($ale of the Century)

November 12 – Charles Manson, American cult leader and criminal

November 13 – John Gowans, General of The Salvation Army

November 17 – Jim Inhofe, United States Senator

November 24 – Alfred Schnittke, Volga German composer (d. 1998)

November 27 – Ammo Baba, Assyrian soccer legend

December 2 – Andre Rodgers, American baseball player (d. 2004)

December 3 – Viktor Gorbatko, Russian cosmonaut

December 4 – Wink Martindale, American game show host and disc jockey (Tic Tac Dough)

December 5 – Joan Didion, American writer

December 6 – Nick Bockwinkel, American professional wrestler

December 9

* Judi Dench, British actress

* Junior Wells, American harmonica player (d. 1998)

December 10 – Howard Martin Temin, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1994)

December 18 – Boris Volynov, Russian cosmonaut

December 19

* Aki Aleong, Trinidad and Tobago actor

* Al Kaline, American baseball player

* Rudi Carrell, Dutch singer and entertainer (d. 2006)

* Pratibha Patil, President of India

December 27 – Larissa Latynina, Russian gymnast

December 28

* Maggie Smith, British actress

* Yujiro Ishihara, Japanese actor (d. 1987)

December 30

* Joseph P. Hoar, U.S. Marine commander

* John Norris Bahcall, American astrophysicist (d. 2005)

* Del Shannon, American singer (Runaway) (d. 1990)

date unknown – Paul Avery, American journalist (d. 2000)

Deaths

January–March

January 6 – Herbert Chapman, English football manager (b. 1878)

January 10 – Marinus van der Lubbe, Dutch communist accused of setting fire to the Reichstag (executed) (b. 1909)

January 29 – Fritz Haber, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1868)

February 13 – József Pusztai slovene writer, poet, journalist in Hungary (b. 1864)

February 17 – King Albert I of Belgium (b. 1875)

February 23 – Edward Elgar, English composer (Pomp and Circumstance) (b. 1857)

February 25 – John McGraw, American baseball player (b. 1873)

March 1 – Charles Webster Leadbeater, English author and Theosophist (b.1854)

March 15 – Davidson Black, Canadian-born paleoanthropologist (b.1884)

March 20 – Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, Dutch Queen and regent (b.1858)

March 20 – Sydney Deane, Australian cricketer and actor (b. 1863)

March 21 – Lilyan Tashman, American actress (b. 1896)

March 29 – Otto Hermann Kahn, German-born philanthropist (b. 1867)

April–June

April 11 – Gerald du Maurier, British actor (b. 1873)

April 15 – Karl Dane, Danish actor (b. 1886)

May 17 – Cass Gilbert, American architect (b. 1859)

May 21 – Lew Cody, American actor (b. 1884)

May 23

* Clyde Barrow, American outlaw (shot) (b. 1910)

* Bonnie Parker, American outlaw (shot) (b. 1910)

May 25 – Gustav Holst, English composer (The Planets) (b. 1874)

May 30 – Togo Heihachiro, Japanese admiral (b. 1848)

June 8 – Dorothy Dell, American actress (b. 1915)

June 10 – Frederick Delius, English composer (b. 1862)

June 11 – Lev Vygotsky, Russian developmental psychologist (b. 1896)

June 20 – Andrew Jackson Zilker, American philanthropist (b. 1858)

June 30 – Murdered during the Night of the Long Knives:

* Karl Ernst, Nazi SA leader in Berlin (b. 1904)

* Edmund Heines, Deputy SA leader (b. 1897)

* Gregor Strasser, German politician, early Nazi leader (b. 1892)

* Kurt von Schleicher, Chancellor of Germany (b. 1882)

July–September

July 2 – Ernst Röhm, Nazi SA Leader (b. 1887)

July 4 – Marie Curie, Polish-born scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and physics (b. 1867)

July 4 – Hayyim Nahman Bialik The Israel's national poet (b. 1873)

July 8 – Benjamin Baillaud, French astronomer (b. 1848)

July 13 – Kate Sheppard , New Zealand Women's suffrage for voting (b. 1848)

July 15 – Louis F. Gottschalk, American composer (b. 1864)

July 22 – John Dillinger, American criminal (b. 1903)

July 25

* François Coty, French perfume manufacturer (b. 1874)

* Englebert Dolfuss, Chancellor of Austria (assassinated) (b. 1892)

July 25 – Nestor Makhno, Ukrainian anarchist (b. 1889)

July 26 – Winsor McCay, American comic creator and animator (b. 1871)

July 27 – Hubert Lyautey, Marshal of France (b. 1854)

July 28

* Marie Dressler, Canadian actress (b. 1868)

* Louis Tancred, South African cricketer (b. 1876)

* Edith Yorke, English actress (b. 1867)

August 2 – Paul von Hindenburg, German general and politician (b. 1847)

August 9 – Alfred Steux, Belgian road racing cyclist (b. 1892)

August 10 – George W. Hill, American director (b. 1895)

August 13 – Mary Hunter Austin, American writer of fiction and non-fiction (b. 1868)

August 14 – Raymond Hood, American architect (b. 1881)

August 17 – Charlotte Gilman, noted American poet and playwright (b. 1860)

September 2

* Russ Columbo, American singer and actor (b. 1908)

* Alcide Nunez, American musician (b. 1884)

September 9 – Roger Fry, British artist (b. 1866)

October–December

October 5 – Jean Vigo, French film director (b. 1905)

October 9 – Alexander I of Yugoslavia, King of Yugoslavia (b. 1888)

October 15 – Raymond Poincaré, French President (b. 1860)

October 17 – Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish histologist and neuroscientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1852)

October 22 – Pretty Boy Floyd, American bank robber (b. 1904)

October 29 – Lou Tellegen, Dutch actor (b. 1881)

November 2 – Edmond James de Rothschild, French philanthropist (b. 1845)

November 10 – Ion Farris, American politician, former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives (b. 1878)

November 16 – Alice Liddell, English schoolgirl, inspiration for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (b. 1852)

November 22 – Harry Steppe, American vaudeville performer (b. 1888)

November 27 – Baby Face Nelson, American gangster (b. 1908)

November 30 – Hélène Boucher, French aviatrix (b. 1908)

December 1 – Sergei Kirov, Soviet politician (b. 1886)

December 6 – Duke Charles Michael of Mecklenburg, head of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (b. 1863)

December 22 – Wallace Thurman, American writer (b. 1902)

December 28 – Lowell Sherman, American actor and director (b. 1885)

Nobel Prizes

Physics – awarded to Anabel King

Chemistry – Harold Clayton Urey

Physiology or Medicine – George Hoyt Whipple, George Richards Minot, William Parry Murphy

Literature – Luigi Pirandello

Peace – Arthur Henderson

References

The 1930s Timeline: 1934 — from American Studies Programs at The University of Virginia

Name	Slavko Vorkapić
Image siz	200px
Birth date	March 17, 1894
Birth place	Dobrinci, Austria-Hungary
Death date	October 20, 1976
Death place	Mijas, Spain

Slavko Vorkapić (born name Slavoljub Vorkapić) (English Slavko Vorkapich, originally in Serbian Cyrillic Славко Воркапић) (March 17, 1894 – October 20, 1976), was a Serbian-American film director and editor, former Dean of USC Film School, painter, and a prominent figure of modern cinematography and film art.

Early life

Slavko Vorkapić was born on March 17, 1894 in the small village of Dobrinci near Sremska Mitrovica in Syrmia, Vojvodina (at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia), later Yugoslavia, now Serbia). His father Petar, the town clerk, insisted that young Slavko should be well-educated. After finishing his primary education, he became a student in a well-known regional high-school in the nearby town of Sremska Mitrovica, where he made his first steps in art and drawing. (Mileva Marić-Einstein, the first wife and work associate of Albert Einstein went to the same high school.) He continued his high-school education in Zemun and later in the famous Art School in Belgrade. With a scholarship received from Matica srpska, Serbia's highest cultural and scientific institution at the time, Vorkapić went to Budapest, Hungary, where he studied art. At the beginning of World War I he immediately returned to his homeland where, with the country besieged on all sides, he survived the tragic Serbian retreat across Albania in order to reach Allied positions in Greece. From there he sailed to Italy, from where he reached France. He managed to enter Art Academy in Paris but soon after moved to Montparnasse among other Avant-garde artists. He took part in the 1917 and 1919 collective painter exhibits.

Career in the United States

Film work

Slavko Vorkapić's dream to go to the United States was fulfilled in 1920. For a short time, he lived in New York City. Then, for almost a year, he roamed the country nearly homeless, until his arrival in Hollywood in July 1921. Although he started his film career as a painter and an actor, he became best-known as a special effects expert, film artist, film teacher, director, editor and became one of the most respected filmmakers in the period between the two World Wars. Vorkapić made a great number of documentaries and experimental films.

Vorkapić co-directed the experimental short film (1928) with Robert Florey, and Moods of the Sea (1941) and Forest Murmurs (1947) with filmmaker John Hoffman (1904–1980).

He is best known for his montage work (see montage sequence) on Hollywood films such as Viva Villa (1934), David Copperfield (1935), San Francisco (1936), The Good Earth (1937), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). In October 2005, the DVD collection was released and included a one-minute montage sequence Vorkapich did for the otherwise lost film Manhattan Cocktail (1928), directed by Dorothy Arzner.

The now-common montage sequence often appeared as notation in Hollywood scripts of the 1930s and 40s as the "vorkapich" because of his mastery of the dynamic visual montage sequence wherein time and space are compressed using a variety of editing techniques and camera moves. Vorkapich used kinetic editing, lap dissolves, tracking shots, creative graphics and optical effects for his stunning montage sequences for such features as Meet John Doe, Maytime, Crime without Passion, Manhattan Melodrama, and Firefly. He created, shot, and edited these kinesthetic montages for features at MGM, RKO, and Paramount.

His protege, Art Clokey, learned kinescope animation techniques under him and went on to create the Gumby animated series.

He was appointed dean of the USC School of Cinematic Arts of the University of Southern California from 1949-1951.

In 1938 Vorkapich commissioned modern architect Gregory Ain to build a garden house for his Beverly Hills residence. It was a minor landmark in prefabricated architecture. It has since been destroyed.

During the 1950s he was in Yugoslavia and worked as a professor at the Belgrade Film and Theatre Academy. In Yugoslavia in 1955 Vorkapić made his last full-length movie Hanka.

Slavko Vorkapić died of a heart attack in Mijas, Spain, on the estate of his son on October 20, 1976.

Two of his many master drawings, his gift during a visit to Yugoslavia, are kept in the Syrmia Museum in Sremska Mitrovica. Recent reports say that his descendants are ready to fulfill Vorkapić’s last will and testament to donate the same museum with all of his remaining art drawings.

See also

Pure cinema

Montage (filmmaking)

Cinematic techniques

Experimental film

Abstract film

References

Sources

The Most typical Avant-Garde James, David - 2005

On True Cinema, Babac, Marko - 1998

Slavko Vorkapich: Reminiscences - Davis, Ronald - 1978

External links

Slavko Vorkapić article on www.filmreference.com

Slavko Vorkapić picture circa 1950

http://purecinema-celluloid.webs.com/slavkovorkapich.htm

Category:1894 births Category:1976 deaths Category:American people of Serbian descent Category:University of Southern California faculty Category:American film directors Category:American film editors Category:American cinematographers Category:Serbian film directors

Name	Sally Rand
Birth name	Helen Harriet Beck
Birth date	April 03, 1904
Birth place	Hickory County, Missouri, U.S.
Death date	August 31, 1979
Death place	Glendora, California, U.S.
Other names	Billie Beck
Occupation	Burlesque dancer Actress
Years active	1925–1979
Spouse	Clarence Robbins (?–?) Thurkel Greenough (1941–?)Harry Finkelstein (1949–1950) Fred Lalla (1954–?)}}

Sally Rand (April 3, 1904 – August 31, 1979) was a burlesque dancer and actress, most noted for her ostrich feather fan dance and balloon bubble dance. She also performed under the name Billie Beck.

Early life and career

Helen Harriet Beck was born in Hickory County, Missouri. During the 1920s, she acted on stage and appeared in silent films. Cecil B. DeMille gave her the name Sally Rand, inspired by a Rand McNally atlas. She was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1927. After the introduction of sound film, she became a dancer, known for the fan dance, which she popularized starting at the Paramount Club. Her most famous appearance was at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair entitled Century of Progress. She had been arrested four times in a single day during the fair due to perceived indecent exposure while riding a white horse down the streets of Chicago, but the nudity was only an illusion. She also conceived and developed the bubble dance, in part to cope with wind while performing outdoors. She performed the fan dance on film in Bolero, released in 1934.

In 1936, she purchased The Music Box burlesque hall in San Francisco, which would later become the Great American Music Hall. She starred in "Sally Rand's Nude Ranch" at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1939 and 1940.

She appeared on television in 1957, on an episode of To Tell the Truth with host Bud Collyer and panelists Polly Bergen, Ralph Bellamy, Kitty Carlisle, and Carl Reiner. She did not "stump the panel" but was correctly identified by all four panelists. She continued to appear on stage doing her fan dance into the 1970s. Rand once replaced Ann Corio in the stage show, This Was Burlesque, appeared at the Mitchell Brothers club in San Francisco in the early 1970s and toured as one of the stars of the 1972 nostalgia revue "Big Show of 1928," which played major concert venues including New York's Madison Square Garden. Later, she appeared with Tempest Storm and Blaze Starr.

Death

She died in 1979 in Glendora, California, aged 75, from undisclosed causes.

In popular culture

In Tex Avery's cartoon Hollywood Steps Out (1941), a rotoscoped Rand performs her famous bubble dance onstage to an appreciative crowd. A grinning Peter Lorre caricature in the front row comments, "I haven't seen such a beautiful bubble since I was a child." The routine continues until the bubble is suddenly popped by Harpo Marx and his slingshot, with a surprised Rand (her nudity covered by a well-placed wooden barrel) reacting with shock. Rand is referred to as "Sally Strand" here.

Sally Rand and her 1933 World's Fair fan-dance were mentioned in the 1972 episode of The Waltons entitled "The Carnival".

She was the model of several characters in Robert A. Heinlein's stories, such as the Mary-Lou Martin of "Let There Be Light". Rand was also included in Heinlein's final book, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, as a friend of main character, Maureen Johnson Long, mother of Lazarus Long.

In the 1979 book The Right Stuff, the author Tom Wolfe described Sally Rand fan-dancing for the first American astronauts and other dignitaries and referred to the astronauts observing this sixtyish woman's "ancient haunches". In the 1983 film version of The Right Stuff, Rand was portrayed by actress Peggy Davis.

A fictionalized version of Rand appeared in Toni Dove's interactive cinema project, Spectropia, played by Helen Pickett of the Wooster Group.

In the 1936 Merrie Melodie cartoon Page Miss Glory, a robustly proportioned matron performs a parody of Rand's fan dance.

Filmography

Features:

The Dressmaker from Paris (1925)

The Texas Bearcat (1925)

The Road to Yesterday (1925)

Braveheart (1925)

Bachelor Brides (1926)

Sunny Side Up (1926)

Gigolo (1926)

Man Bait (1927)

The Night of Love (1927)

Getting Gertie's Garter (1927)

The Yankee Clipper (1927)

The King of Kings (1927)

His Dog (1927)

The Fighting Eagle (1927)

Galloping Fury (1927)

Heroes in Blue (1927)

A Woman Against the World (1928)

Crashing Through (1928)

Nameless Men (1928)

A Girl in Every Port (1928)

Golf Widows (1928)

Black Feather (1928)

The Sign of the Cross (1932)

Hotel Variety (1933)

Bolero (1934)

Sunset Murder Case (1938)

Short Subjects:

The Czarina's Secret (1928)

References

Source

Knox, Holly. Sally Rand, From Films to Fans. Maverick Publications (1988); ISBN 0892881720

External links

Web site for the one Actress and Dancer who portrays Sally Rand in a one woman show, www.FanningThePassions.com

Sally Rand and The Music Box at Virtual Museum of SF

Burlesque and pin-up forum

Category:1904 births Category:1979 deaths Category:Actors from Missouri Category:American erotic dancers Category:American film actors Category:American silent film actors Category:Burlesque performers Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in California Category:People from Jackson County, Missouri Category:People from New York City Category:Vaudeville performers

Name	Ethel Waters
Background	solo_singer
Born	October 31, 1896Chester, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	September 01, 1977Chatsworth, California, U.S.
Instrument	Vocals
Genre	Jazz, big band, pop, blues, rock and roll
Occupation	Actress, vocalist
Years active	1925–1977
Associated acts	Josephine BakerAlberta HunterBessie SmithFletcher Henderson

Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress.

She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her best-known recording was her version of the spiritual, "His Eye is on the Sparrow", and she was the second African American ever nominated for an Academy Award.

Early life

Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1896, as a result of her mother's rape at age 13 Ethel Waters was raised in a violent, impoverished home. She never lived in the same place for more than 15 months. She said of her difficult childhood, "I never was a child. I never was cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family." Despite this unpromising start, Waters demonstrated early the love of language that so distinguishes her work. Moreover, according to women-in-jazz historian and archivist Rosetta Reitz, Waters' birth in the North and her peripatetic life exposed her to many cultures. For the rest of her life, this lent to her interpretation of southern blues a unique sensibility that pulled in eclectic influences from across American music.

Waters married at the age of 13, but soon left her abusive husband and became a maid in a Philadelphia hotel working for US $4.75 per week. On Halloween night in 1913, she attended a party in costume at a nightclub on Juniper Street. She was persuaded to sing two songs, and impressed the audience so much that she was offered professional work at the Lincoln Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland. She later recalled that she earned the rich sum of ten dollars a week, but her managers cheated her out of the tips her admirers threw on the stage.

Career

After her start in Baltimore Waters toured on the black vaudeville circuit. As she described it later, "I used to work from nine until unconscious." Despite her early success, she fell on hard times and joined a carnival, traveling in freight cars along the carnival circuit, eventually reaching Chicago. Waters enjoyed her time with the carnival, and recalled, "The roustabouts and the concessionaires were the kind of people I'd grown up with, rough, tough, full of larceny towards strangers, but sentimental, and loyal to their friends and co-workers." She did not last long with them, though, and soon headed south to Atlanta. There, she worked in the same club with Bessie Smith, who demanded that Waters not compete in singing blues opposite her. Waters conceded to the veteran blues headliner and instead sang ballads and popular songs, and danced. Perhaps today best known for her blues voice, Waters then was to sing, dance, play and star in musicals, plays and movies, and later in TV; but, she returned to singing blues whenever opportunity presented.

Waters loved a drug addict during this early period, but she ended the destructive relationship sometime before the war years. Around 1919 she moved to Harlem and there became a celebrity performer in the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s.

Waters obtained her first job at Edmond's Cellar, a club that had a black patronage. She specialized in popular ballads, and became an actress in a blackface comedy called Hello 1919. The jazz historian Rosetta Reitz points out that by the time Waters returned to Harlem in 1921, women blues singers were among the most powerful entertainers in the country. In 1921 Waters became the fifth black woman to make a record, on the tiny Cardinal Records label. She later joined Black Swan Records, where Fletcher Henderson was her accompanist. Waters later commented that Henderson tended to perform in a more classical style than she would prefer, often lacking "the damn-it-to-hell bass". According to Waters, she influenced Henderson to practice in a "real jazz" style.

She recorded with Black Swan from 1921 through 1923. In early 1924 Paramount bought the Black Swan label, and she stayed with Paramount through 1924. Waters then first recorded for Columbia Records in 1925, achieving a hit with her voicing of "Dinah"—which recording was voted a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998. Soon after, she started working with Pearl Wright, and together they toured in the South. In 1924 Waters played at the Plantation Club on Broadway. She also toured with the Black Swan Dance Masters. With Earl Dancer, she joined what was called the "white time" Keith Circuit, a traditional white-audience based vaudeville circuit combined with screenings of (then-silent) movies. They received rave reviews in Chicago, and earned the unheard-of salary of US$1,250 in 1928. In 1929, Harry Akst helped Wright and Waters compose a version of "Am I Blue?", her signature tune.

Although she was considered a blues singer during the pre-1925 period, Waters belonged to the Vaudeville-style style similar to Mamie Smith, Viola McCoy, and Lucille Hegamin. While with Columbia, she introduced many popular standards including "Dinah", "Heebie Jeebies", "Sweet Georgia Brown", "Someday, Sweetheart", "Am I Blue?" and "(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue".

During the 1920s, Waters performed and was recorded with the ensembles of Will Marion Cook and Lovie Austin. As her career continued, she evolved toward being a blues and Broadway singer, performing with artists such as Duke Ellington.

She remained with Columbia through 1931. She then signed with Brunswick in 1932 and remained until 1933 when she went back to Columbia. She signed with Decca in late 1934 for only two sessions, as well as a single session in early 1938. She recorded for the specialty label "Liberty Music Shops" in 1935 and again in 1940. Between 1938 and 1939, she recorded for Bluebird.

In 1933, Waters made a satirical all-black film entitled Rufus Jones for President. She went on to star at the Cotton Club, where, according to her autobiography, she "sang 'Stormy Weather' from the depths of the private hell in which I was being crushed and suffocated." She took a role in the Broadway musical revue As Thousands Cheer in 1933, where she was the first black woman in an otherwise white show. She had three gigs at this point; in addition to the show, she starred in a national radio program and continued to work in nightclubs. She was the highest paid performer on Broadway, but she was starting to age. MGM hired Lena Horne as the ingenue in the all-Black musical Cabin in the Sky, and Waters starred as Petunia in 1942, reprising her stage role of 1940. The film, directed by Vincente Minnelli, was a success, but Waters, offended by the adulation accorded Horne and feeling her age, went into something of a decline.

in Stage Door Canteen (1943)]]

She began to work with Fletcher Henderson again in the late 1940s. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in 1949 for the film Pinky. In 1950, she won the New York Drama Critics Award for her performance opposite Julie Harris in the play The Member of the Wedding. Waters and Harris repeated their roles in the 1952 film version of Member of the Wedding In 1950, Waters starred in the television series Beulah but quit after complaining that the scripts' portrayal of African-Americans was "degrading." She later guest starred in 1957 and 1959 on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford.'' In the former episode she sang "Cabin in the Sky."

Despite these successes, her brilliant career was fading. She lost tens of thousands in jewelry and cash in a robbery, and the IRS hounded her. Her health suffered, and she worked only sporadically in following years. In 1950-51 she wrote the autobiography His Eye is on the Sparrow, with Charles Samuels. (It later was adapted for a stage production in which she was portrayed by Ernestine Jackson.) In it, she talks candidly about her life. She also explains why her age has often been misstated, saying that her mother had to sign a paper saying she was four years older than she was. She states she was born in 1900. In her second autobiography, To Me, It's Wonderful, Waters states that she was born in 1896.

Rosetta Reitz called Waters "a natural". Her "songs are enriching, nourishing. You will want to play them over and over again, idling in their warmth and swing. Though many of them are more than 50 years old, the music and the feeling are still there."

Private life

Waters is the great-aunt of Dance music singer and songwriter Crystal Waters. In the period before her death in Los Angeles, California, she toured with The Reverend Billy Graham, despite the fact that she had once been a Catholic and he was a Protestant. She died in 1977 at the age of 80 from heart disease, at the Chatsworth, California, home of a young couple who cared for her.

Awards and honors

Grammy Hall of Fame

Recordings of Ethel Waters were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five yrs old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

{| class=wikitable |- | colspan=5 align=center | Ethel Waters: Grammy Hall of Fame Award |- ! Year Recorded ! Title ! Genre ! Label ! Year Inducted |- align=center | 1929 | "Am I Blue?" | Traditional Pop (Single) | Columbia | 2007 |- align=center | 1933 | "Stormy Weather"(Keeps Rainin' All The Time) | Jazz (Single) | Brunswick | 2003 |- align=center | 1925 | "Dinah" | Traditional Pop (Single) | Columbia | 1998 |- align=center |}

National Recording Registry

Waters' recording of "Stormy Weather" (1933) was honored by the Library of Congress. It was listed in the National Recording Registry in 2004.

Legacy

{| class=wikitable ! Year ! Title ! Organization ! Result ! Notes |- align=center | 2007 | Christian Hall of Fame | | Inducted |- align=center | 1994 | 29 cents Commemorative stamp | U.S. Postal Service | Honoree | Photo (Scott #2851) |- align=center | 1983 | Gospel Music Hall of Fame | | Inducted |- align=center | 1962 | Outstanding Single Performanceby an Actress in a Series | Emmy Awards | Nominee | Route 66"Goodnight Sweet Blues" |- align=center | 1949 | Best Supporting Actress | Academy Award | Nominee | Pinky (film) |- align=center |}

Hollywood Walk of Fame

Waters was approved for a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004. However, the actual Star has not been funded, and as of December 2010, public fundraising efforts continue.

Filmography

On with the Show! (1929)

Rufus Jones for President (1933)

Bubbling Over (1934)

Gift of Gab (1934)

Tales of Manhattan (1942)

Cairo (1942)

Cabin in the Sky (1943)

Stage Door Canteen (1943)

Pinky (1949)

The Member of the Wedding (1952)

Carib Gold (1957)

The Heart Is a Rebel (1958)

The Sound and the Fury (1959)

References

Further reading

Harlem Godfather: The Rap on my Husband, Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson (Paperback) by Mayme Hatcher Johnson (Author), Karen E. Quinones Miller (Author) (ISBN 978-0967602837)

External links

Ethel Waters at the African American Registry

Ethel Waters discography

Category:1896 births Category:1977 deaths Category:African American actors Category:African-American Catholics Category:African American singers Category:American female singers Category:American film actors Category:American gospel singers Category:American jazz singers Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale) Category:Classic female blues singers Category:Gospel Music Hall of Fame inductees Category:Jubilee Records artists Category:Mercury Records artists Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Vocalion Records artists Category:Musicians from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:People from Delaware County, Pennsylvania Category:Torch singers Category:Vaudeville performers

Name	Duke Ellington
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	Edward Kennedy Ellington
Born	April 29, 1899Washington, D.C., U.S.
Died	May 24, 1974New York City, New York, U.S.
Instrument	Piano
Genre	Orchestral jazz, swing, big band
Occupation	Bandleader, pianist, composer
Years active	1914–1974
Url	Duke Ellington Legacy

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was a composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions. In the words of Bob Blumenthal of the Boston Globe "In the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington."

A prominent figure in the history of jazz, Ellington's music stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular, and classical. His career spanned more than 50 years and included leading his orchestra, composing an inexhaustible songbook, scoring for movies, composing stage musicals, and world tours. Several of his instrumental works were adapted into songs that became standards. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. His reputation increased after his death, the Pulitzer Prize Board bestowing a special posthumous honor in 1999.

Ellington called his music "American Music" rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as "beyond category". These included many of the musicians who were members of his orchestra, some of whom are considered among the best in jazz in their own right, but it was Ellington who melded them into one of the most well-known jazz orchestral units in the history of jazz. He often composed specifically for the style and skills of these individuals, such as "Jeep's Blues" for Johnny Hodges, "Concerto for Cootie" for Cootie Williams, which later became "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me" with Bob Russell's lyrics, and "The Mooche" for Tricky Sam Nanton and Bubber Miley. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's "Caravan" and "Perdido" which brought the 'Spanish Tinge' to big-band jazz. Several members of the orchestra remained there for several decades. After 1941, he frequently collaborated with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his "writing and arranging companion." Ellington recorded for many American record companies, and appeared in several films.

Ellington led his band from 1923 until his death in 1974. His son Mercer Ellington, who had already been handling all administrative aspects of his father's business for several decades, led the band until his own death in 1996. At that point, the original band dissolved. Paul Ellington, Mercer's youngest son and executor of the Duke Ellington estate, kept the Duke Ellington Orchestra going from Mercer's death onwards.

Biography

Early life

Edward Kennedy Ellington was born on April 29, 1899 to James Edward Ellington and Daisy Kennedy Ellington. Daisy and J.E. were both pianists. She primarily played parlor songs and he operatic airs. They lived with his maternal grandparents at 2129 Ida Place (now Ward Place), NW in the West End neighborhood of Washington, D.C. His father, James Edward Ellington was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina on April 15, 1879 and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1886 with his parents. Daisy Kennedy, was born in Washington, D.C. on January 4, 1879, and was the daughter of a former American slave. James Ellington made s for the United States Navy. He also worked as a butler for Dr. Middleton F. Cuthbert, a prominent white physician, and occasionally worked as a White House caterer.

At the age of seven Ellington began taking piano lessons from Marietta Clinkscales. Daisy surrounded her son with dignified women to reinforce his manners and teach him to live elegantly. Ellington’s childhood friends noticed that "his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, and his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman", and began calling him Duke. Ellington credited his "chum" Edgar McEntree for the nickname. "I think he felt that in order for me to be eligible for his constant companionship, I should have a title. So he called me Duke."

Though Ellington took piano lessons, he was more interested in baseball. "President Roosevelt (Teddy) would come by on his horse sometimes, and stop and watch us play," he recalled. Ellington went to Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D.C. He got his first job selling peanuts at Washington Senators baseball games.

In the summer of 1914, while working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe, he wrote his first composition, "Soda Fountain Rag" (also known as the "Poodle Dog Rag"). Ellington created "Soda Fountain Rag" by ear, because he had not yet learned to read and write music. "I would play the 'Soda Fountain Rag' as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango, and fox trot," Ellington recalled. "Listeners never knew it was the same piece. I was established as having my own repertoire." In his autobiography, Music is my Mistress (1973), Ellington said he missed more lessons than he attended, feeling at the time that playing the piano was not his talent. Ellington started sneaking into Frank Holiday's Poolroom at the age of fourteen. Hearing the poolroom pianists play ignited Ellington's love for the instrument and he began to take his piano studies seriously. Among the many piano players he listened to, he listened to Doc Perry, Lester Dishman, Louis Brown, Turner Layton, Gertie Wells, Clarence Bowser, Sticky Mack, Blind Johnny, Cliff Jackson, Claude Hopkins, Phil Wurd, Caroline Thornton, Luckey Roberts, Eubie Blake, Joe Rochester, and Harvey Brooks.

Ellington began listening to, watching, and imitating ragtime pianists, not only in Washington, D.C., but in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, where he vacationed with his mother during the summer months.

From 1917 through 1919, Ellington launched his musical career, painting commercial signs by day and playing piano by night. Through his day job, Duke's entrepreneurial side came out: when a customer would ask him to make a sign for a dance or party, he would ask them if they had musical entertainment; if not, Ellington would ask if he could play for them. He also had a messenger job with the U.S. Navy and State Departments. Ellington moved out of his parents' home and bought his own as he became a successful pianist. At first, he played in other ensembles, and in late 1917 formed his first group, "The Duke’s Serenaders" ("Colored Syncopators", his telephone directory advertising proclaimed).

Ellington played throughout the Washington, D.C. area and into Virginia for private society balls and embassy parties. The band included Otto Hardwick, who switched from bass to saxophone; Arthur Whetsol on trumpet; Elmer Snowden on banjo; and Sonny Greer on drums. The band thrived, performing for both African-American and white audiences, a rarity during the racially divided times.

Early career

When his drummer Sonny Greer was invited to join the Wilber Sweatman Orchestra in New York City, Ellington made the fateful decision to leave behind his successful career in Washington, D.C., and move to Harlem, becoming one of the figures of the Harlem Renaissance. New dance crazes like the Charleston emerged in Harlem, as well as African-American musical theater, including Eubie Blake's Shuffle Along. After the young musicians left the Sweatman Orchestra to strike out on their own, they found an emerging jazz scene that was highly competitive and hard to crack. They hustled pool by day and played whatever gigs they could find. The young band met Willie "The Lion" Smith who introduced them to the scene and gave them some money. They played at rent-house parties for income. After a few months the young musicians returned to Washington, D.C., feeling discouraged.

In June 1923 a gig in Atlantic City, New Jersey, led to a play date at the prestigious Exclusive Club in Harlem. This was followed in September 1923 by a move to the Hollywood Club – 49th and Broadway – and a four-year engagement, which gave Ellington a solid artistic base. He was known to play the bugle at the end of each performance. The group was called Elmer Snowden and his Black Sox Orchestra and had seven members, including James "Bubber" Miley. They renamed themselves "The Washingtonians". Snowden left the group in early 1924 and Ellington took over as bandleader. After a fire the club was re-opened as the Club Kentucky (often referred to as the "Kentucky Club"), an engagement which set the stage for the biggest opportunities in Ellington's life.

Ellington made eight records in 1924, receiving composing credit on three including Choo Choo. In 1925 Ellington contributed four songs to Chocolate Kiddies, an all-African-American revue which introduced European audiences to African-American styles and performers. "Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra" grew to a ten-piece organization; they developed their distinct sound by displaying the non-traditional expression of Ellington’s arrangements, the street rhythms of Harlem, and the exotic-sounding trombone growls and wah-wahs, high-squealing trumpets, and sultry saxophone blues licks of the band members. For a short time soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet played with the group, imparting his propulsive swing and superior musicianship to the young band members. This helped attract the attention of some of the biggest names of jazz, including Paul Whiteman.

In 1927 King Oliver turned down a regular booking for his group as the house band at Harlem's Cotton Club; the offer passed to Ellington. With a weekly radio broadcast and famous white clientèle nightly pouring in to see them, Ellington and his band thrived in the period from 1932 to 1942, a golden age for the band.

Ellington was joined in New York City by his wife, Edna Thompson, and son Mercer in the late twenties, but the couple soon permanently separated. According to her obituary in Jet magazine, she was "[h]omesick for Washington" and returned (she died in 1967).

Although trumpeter Bubber Miley was a member of the orchestra for only a short period, he had a major influence on Ellington's sound. An early exponent of growl trumpet, his style changed the "sweet" dance band sound of the group to one that was hotter, which contemporaries termed 'jungle' style. He also composed most of "Black and Tan Fantasy" and "Creole Love Call". An alcoholic, Miley had to leave the band before they gained wider fame. He died in 1932 at the age of twenty-nine. He was an important influence on Cootie Williams, who replaced him.

In 1927 Ellington made a career-advancing agreement with agent-publisher Irving Mills, giving Mills a 45% interest in Ellington's future. Mills had an eye for new talent and early on published compositions by Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Fields, and Harold Arlen. During the 1930s Ellington's popularity continued to increase – largely as a result of the promotional skills of Mills – who got more than his fair share of co-composer credits. Mills arranged recording sessions on the Brunswick, Victor, and Columbia labels which gave Ellington popular recognition. Mills lifted the management burden from Ellington's shoulders, allowing him to focus on his band's sound and his compositions. Ellington ended his association with Mills in 1937, although he continued to record under Mills' banner through to 1940.

At the Cotton Club, Ellington's group performed all the music for the revues, which mixed comedy, dance numbers, vaudeville, burlesque, music, and illegal alcohol. The musical numbers were composed by Jimmy McHugh and the lyrics by Dorothy Fields (later Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler), with some Ellington originals mixed in. Weekly radio broadcasts from the club gave Ellington national exposure. In 1929 Ellington appeared in his first movie, a nineteen-minute all-African-American RKO short, Black and Tan, in which he played the hero "Duke". In the same year, The Cotton Club Orchestra appeared on stage for several months in Florenz Ziegfeld's Show Girl, along with vaudeville stars Jimmy Durante, Eddie Foy, Jr., Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, and with music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Gus Kahn. That feverish period also included numerous recordings, under the pseudonyms "Whoopee Makers", "The Jungle Band", "Harlem Footwarmers", and the "Ten Black Berries". In 1930 Ellington and his Orchestra connected with a whole different audience in a concert with Maurice Chevalier and they also performed at the Roseland Ballroom, "America's foremost ballroom". Noted composer Percy Grainger was also an early admirer and supporter.

In 1929, when Ellington conducted the orchestra for Show Girl, he met Will Vodery, Ziegfeld’s musical supervisor. In his 1946 biography, Duke Ellington, Barry Ulanov wrote:

As the Depression worsened, the recording industry was in crisis, dropping over 90% of its artists by 1933. Ellington and his orchestra survived the hard times by taking to the road in a series of tours. Radio exposure also helped maintain popularity. Ivie Anderson was hired as their featured vocalist. Sonny Greer had been providing occasional vocals and continued to do in a cross-talk feature with Anderson. Ellington, however, later had many different vocalists, including Herb Jeffries (until 1943) and Al Hibbler (who replaced Jeffries in 1943 and continued until 1951).

Ellington led the orchestra by conducting from the keyboard using piano cues and visual gestures; very rarely did he conduct using a baton. As a bandleader Ellington was not a strict disciplinarian; he maintained control of his orchestra with a crafty combination of charm, humor, flattery, and astute psychology. A complex, private person, he revealed his feelings to only his closest intimates and effectively used his public persona to deflect attention away from himself.

While the band's United States audience remained mainly African-American in this period, the Cotton Club had a near-exclusive white clientèle and the Ellington orchestra had a huge following overseas, exemplified by the success of their trip to England in 1933 and their 1934 visit to the European mainland. The English visit saw Ellington win praise from members of the 'serious' music community, including composer Constant Lambert, which gave a boost to Ellington's aspiration to compose longer works. For agent Mills it was a publicity triumph, as Ellington was now internationally known. On the band's tour through the segregated South in 1934, they avoided some of the traveling difficulties of African-Americans by touring in private railcars. These provided easy accommodations, dining, and storage for equipment while avoiding the indignities of segregated facilities.

The death of Ellington's mother in 1935 led to a temporary hiatus in his career. Competition was also intensifying, as African-American and white swing bands began to receive popular attention, including those of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Carter, Earl Hines, Chick Webb, and Count Basie. Swing dancing became a youth phenomenon, particularly with white college audiences, and "danceability" drove record sales and bookings. Jukeboxes proliferated nationwide, spreading the gospel of "swing". Ellington band could certainly swing, but Ellington's strengths were mood and nuance, and richness of composition; hence his statement "jazz is music; swing is business". Ellington countered with two developments. He made recordings of smaller groups (sextets, octets, and nonets) drawn from his then-15-man orchestra and he composed pieces intended to feature specific instrumentalist, as with "Jeep's Blues" for Johnny Hodges, "Yearning for Love" for Lawrence Brown, "Trumpet in Spades" for Rex Stewart, "Echoes of Harlem" for Cootie Williams and "Clarinet Lament" for Barney Bigard.

In 1937 Ellington returned to the Cotton Club which had relocated to the mid-town theater district. In the summer of that year, his father died, and due to many expenses, Ellington's finances were tight. Things improved in 1938 and he met and moved in with Cotton Club employee Beatrice "Evie" Ellis. After splitting with agent Irving Mills, he signed on with the William Morris Agency. The 1930s ended with a very successful European tour just as World War II loomed.

Ellington delivered some huge hits during the 1930s, which greatly helped to build his overall reputation. Some of them include: "Mood Indigo" (1930), "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" (1932), "Sophisticated Lady" (1933), "Solitude" (1934), "In a Sentimental Mood" (1935), "Caravan" (1937), "I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart" (1938). "Take the "A" Train" which hit big in 1941, was written by Billy Strayhorn.

Strayhorn, originally hired as a lyricist, began his association with Ellington in 1939. Nicknamed "Swee' Pea" for his mild manner, Strayhorn soon became a vital member of the Ellington Organization. Ellington showed great fondness for Strayhorn and never failed to speak glowingly of the man and their collaborative working relationship, "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine". Strayhorn, with his training in classical music, not only contributed his original lyrics and music, but also arranged and polished many of Ellington's works, becoming a second Ellington or "Duke's doppelganger". It was not uncommon for Strayhorn to fill in for Duke, whether in conducting or rehearsing the band, playing the piano, on stage, and in the recording studio.

Duke in the 1940s

The band reached a creative peak in the early 1940s, when Ellington and a small hand-picked group of his composers and arrangers wrote for an orchestra of distinctive voices who displayed tremendous creativity.

Some of the musicians created a sensation in their own right. The short-lived Jimmy Blanton transformed the use of double bass in jazz, allowing it to function as a solo rather than a rhythm instrument alone. Ben Webster, the Orchestra's first regular tenor saxophonist, started a rivalry with Johnny Hodges as the Orchestra's foremost voice in the sax section. Ray Nance joined, replacing Cootie Williams (who had "defected", contemporary wags claimed, to Benny Goodman). Nance, however, added violin to the instrumental colors Ellington had at his disposal.

Three-minute masterpieces flowed from the minds of Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Ellington's son Mercer Ellington, Mary Lou Williams and members of the Orchestra. "Cotton Tail", "Main Stem", "Harlem Airshaft", "Sidewalks of New York (East Side, West Side)", "Jack the bear", and dozens of others date from this period.

Privately made recordings of Nance's first concert date, at Fargo, North Dakota, on November 7, 1940 by Jack Towers and Dick Burris, are probably the most effective display of the band during this period. These recordings, later released as Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940 Live, are among the first of innumerable live performances which survive, made by enthusiasts or broadcasters, significantly expanding the Ellington discography.

Ellington's long-term aim became to extend the jazz form from the three-minute limit of the 78 rpm record side, of which he was an acknowledged master. He had composed and recorded Creole Rhapsody as early as 1931 (issued as both sides of 12" record for Victor and both sides of a 10" record for Brunswick), and his tribute to his mother, "Reminiscing in Tempo," had filled four 10" record sides in 1935; however, it was not until the 1940s that this became a regular feature of Ellington's work.

In this, he was helped by Strayhorn, who had enjoyed a more thorough training in the forms associated with classical music than Ellington. The first of these, "Black, Brown, and Beige" (1943), was dedicated to telling the story of African-Americans, and the place of slavery and the church in their history. Ellington debuted Black, Brown and Beige in Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1943, beginning a series of concerts there suited to displaying Ellington's longer works. While some jazz musicians had played at Carnegie Hall before, few had performed anything as elaborate as Ellington’s work.

Unfortunately, starting a regular pattern, Ellington's longer works were generally not well-received. Jump for Joy, a full-length musical based on themes of African-American identity, debuted on July 10, 1941 at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles. Although it had the support of the Hollywood establishment, and received mostly positive reviews, its socio-political outlook provoked a negative reaction among some members of the public. It ran for 122 performances until September 29, 1941, with a brief revival in November of that year. Its subject matter did not make it appealing to Broadway, despite Ellington's plans to take it there.

The settlement of the first recording ban of 1942–43 had a serious effect on all the big bands because of the increase in royalty payments to musicians which resulted from it. The financial viability of Ellington's Orchestra came under threat, though Ellington's income as a songwriter ultimately subsidized it. Ellington always spent lavishly and although he drew a respectable income from the Orchestra's operations, the band's income often just covered expenses.

The music industry's focus shifted away from the Big Bands to the work of solo vocalists such as the young Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday and mainstream groups like The Andrews Sisters as World War II drew to a close. While Ellington had featured some of the most talented singers of the day fronting his orchestra, he and his band took a back seat to no one, which set him down a path that put him increasingly at odds with the growing recording industry which was profiting from celebrity singers who were cheaper to keep than a big band, and produced bigger revenues.

By the mid 1940s artists were creatively changing. One of Ellington's composer-arrangers, Mary Lou Williams, left Ellington in 1943 and by 1945 was working with Dizzy Gillespie on a new form of jazz music, "Bebop."

Bebop rebelled against mainstream jazz and the strict forms of which Ellington was perhaps its most well known standard-bearer. The music, which had redefined the American sound over 35 years, was about to be shaken up.

It would take another ten years for Bebop to begin catching on with jazz aficionados world-wide, but it was an early hit with club owners of smaller venues who could draw the jazz form's growing audiences in New York City at a fraction of the cost of hosting a big band, particularly one of Ellington's caliber. Newer, smaller bands and splinter forms of music increasingly put pressure on the bigger clubs who paid out increasingly more to maintain their big bands. Ellington's elite band was a costly enterprise that, along with his excessive personal spending, always teetered on the brink of break-even. The new music trends eventually pushed it over the edge and put Ellington out on the road in search of venues that could afford to showcase his music.

Bebop was also a huge shift for young talent, from Charlie Parker to John Coltrane to Thelonious Monk who did not embrace Big Band and sought out new creative frontiers, redefining "modern" jazz music forever. Ellington did not recruit or embrace these new artists and change with the times.

In 1950 another emerging musical trend, the African-American popular music style known as Rhythm and Blues driven by a new generation of composers and musicians like Fats Domino drew away young audiences from both the African-American and white communities, and ultimately unified those audiences as R&B; morphed into Rock & Roll which expanded the cults of the singers from the Big Band era to the singer/songwriters from Domino to Elvis Presley to Buddy Holly. Again, Ellington did not embrace the new musical form, leaving him further in the growing dust cloud of musical history.

Ellington continued on his own course through these tectonic shifts in the music business. He did not wholly resist trends while trying to turn out major works. The Kay Davis vocal feature "Transblucency" was an attempt to cater to the singer-centric music world. He still performed major extended compositions such as Harlem (1950), whose score he presented to music-loving President Harry Truman, but these works were rapidly becoming reflections of his greatness in the 1930s and 1940s, and not ground-breaking works that rattled the music world back into the Big Band camp.

In 1951, Ellington suffered a major loss of personnel, with Sonny Greer, Lawrence Brown, and most significantly Johnny Hodges, leaving to pursue other ventures. Lacking overseas opportunities and motion picture appearances, Ellington's Orchestra survived on "one-nighters" and whatever else came their way.

By the summer of 1955 the band was performing for six weeks at the Aquacade in Flushing, New York, where Ellington is supposed to have "invented" a drink known as "The Tornado," the only alcoholic concoction that features his signature Coca-Cola and sugar.

Ellington had hoped that television would provide a significant new outlet for his type of jazz was not fulfilled. Tastes and trends had moved on without him. The introduction of the 33 1/3 rpm LP record and hi-fi phonograph though, did give new life to many of his older compositions. However by 1955, after three years of recording for Capitol, Ellington no longer had a regular recording affiliation.

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Career revival

The music business' increasing factionization into specific forms of rock-and-roll, country, bluegrass, or jazz broke down into even more sub-sets, and opened the door for the second act in Duke Ellington's career. An international fascination with Jazz re-opened the door at record labels to artists like Ellington and Louis Armstrong who had found themselves out of step with the times for the last half-decade. The Ellington who was too big or too proud to change would now appear with a variety of artists from the different jazz forms.

Ellington's appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, 1956 returned him to wider prominence and exposed him to new audiences. The feature "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue", with saxophonist Paul Gonsalves's six-minute saxophone solo, had been in the band's book since 1937, but on this occasion nearly created a riot. The revived attention should not have surprised anyone – Hodges had returned to the fold the previous year, and Ellington's collaboration with Strayhorn had been renewed around the same time, under terms more amenable to the younger man. Such Sweet Thunder (1957), based on Shakespeare's plays and characters, and The Queen's Suite, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth II, were products of the renewed impetus which the Newport appearance helped to create.

A new record contract with Columbia produced Ellington's best-selling LP Ellington at Newport and yielded six years of recording stability under producer Irving Townsend, who coaxed both commercial and artistic productions from Ellington. In 1957, CBS (Columbia's parent corporation) aired a live television production of A Drum Is a Woman, an allegorical suite which received mixed reviews. Festival appearances at the new Monterey Jazz Festival and elsewhere provided venues for live exposure, and a European tour in 1958 was wildly received.

After a 25-year gap, Ellington (with Strayhorn) returned to work on film scores, this time for Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Paris Blues (1961). Ellington and Strayhorn, always looking for new musical territory, produced adaptations of John Steinbeck's novel Sweet Thursday, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt. The late 1950s also saw Ella Fitzgerald record her Duke Ellington Songbook with Ellington and his orchestra—a recognition that Ellington's songs had now become part of the cultural canon known as the "Great American Songbook".

Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker concludes that the work of Billy Strayhorn and Ellington in Anatomy of a Murder, the trial court drama film directed by Otto Preminger in 1959, is "indispensable, [although] . . . too sketchy to rank in the top echelon among Ellington-Strayhorn masterpiece suites like Such Sweet Thunder and The Far East Suite, but its most inspired moments are their equal." Film historians have recognized the soundtrack "as a landmark – the first significant Hollywood film music by African Americans comprising non-diegetic music, that is, music whose source is not visible or implied by action in the film, like an on-screen band." The score avoided the cultural stereotypes which previously characterized jazz scores and rejected a strict adherence to visuals in ways that presaged the New Wave cinema of the ’60s".

In the early 1960s, Ellington embraced recording with artists who had been fierce rivals of the past, or who had been young artists from the Bebop beginnings whom he didn't associate with. The Ellington and Count Basie orchestras recorded together. During a period when he was between recording contracts he made a records with Louis Armstrong (Roulette), Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane (both for Impulse) and participated in a session with Charles Mingus and Max Roach which produced the Money Jungle (United Artists) album.

Ironically, the singer most responsible for setting off the changes that brought an end to the big band era became Ellington's salvation. He signed to Frank Sinatra's new Reprise label. Musicians who had previously worked with Ellington returned to the Orchestra as members: Lawrence Brown in 1960 and Cootie Williams in 1962.

The international mania for jazz reinstated Ellington as one of the highest earning artists in jazz. He performed all over the world; a significant part of each year was now spent making overseas tours.

He formed notable new working relationships with international artists from around the world, including the Swedish vocalist Alice Babs, and South African musicians Dollar Brand and Sathima Bea Benjamin (A Morning in Paris, 1963/1997).

His earlier hits became big sellers in the rediscovery of the music world-wide, earning Ellington impressive royalties.

"The writing and playing of music is a matter of intent.... You can't just throw a paint brush against the wall and call whatever happens art. My music fits the tonal personality of the player. I think too strongly in terms of altering my music to fit the performer to be impressed by accidental music. You can't take doodling seriously." His reaction at 67 years old: "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be famous too young." In September of the same year, the first of his Sacred Concerts was given its premiere. It was an attempt to fuse Christian liturgy with jazz, and even though it received mixed reviews, Ellington was proud of the composition and performed it dozens of times. This concert was followed by two others of the same type in 1968 and 1973, known as the Second and Third Sacred Concerts. This caused controversy in what was already a tumultuous time in the United States. Many saw the Sacred Music suites as an attempt to reinforce commercial support for organized religion, though Ellington simply said it was, "the most important thing I've done." The Steinway piano upon which the Sacred Concerts were composed is part of the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Like Haydn and Mozart, Ellington conducted his orchestra from the piano - he always played the keyboard parts when the Sacred Concerts were performed.

from President Nixon, 1969.]] Ellington continued to make vital and innovative recordings, including The Far East Suite (1966), the New Orleans Suite (1970), and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971), much of it inspired by his world tours. It was during this time that Ellington recorded his only album with Frank Sinatra, entitled Francis A. & Edward K. (1967).

Ellington was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1966. He was later awarded several other prizes, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, an Honorary PhD from the Berklee College of Music in 1971, and the Legion of Honor by France in 1973, the highest civilian honors in each country. At his funeral attended by over 12,000 people at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Ella Fitzgerald summed up the occasion, "It's a very sad day. A genius has passed." Mercer Ellington picked up the reins of the orchestra immediately after Duke's death. Ellington's last words were, "Music is how I live, why I live and how I will be remembered."

Work in films and the theater

Ellington's film work began in 1929 with the short film Black and Tan. Symphony in Black (1935) featured his extended piece 'A Rhapsody of Negro Life'. It introduced Billie Holiday, and won an Academy Award as the best musical short subject. He also appeared in the Amos 'n' Andy film Check and Double Check (1930). Ellington and his Orchestra continued to appear in films through the 1930s and 1940s, both in short films and in features such as Murder at the Vanities and Belle of the Nineties (1934), and Cabin in the Sky (1943). In the late 1950s, his work in films took the shape of scoring for soundtracks, notably Anatomy of a Murder (1959), with James Stewart, in which he appeared fronting a roadhouse combo, and Paris Blues (1961), which featured Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier as jazz musicians.

He wrote an original score for director Michael Langham's production of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada which opened on July 29, 1963. Langham has used it for several subsequent productions, most recently in an adaptation by Stanley Silverman which expands the score with some of Ellington's best-known works.

Ellington composed the score for the musical Jump For Joy, which was performed in Los Angeles during 1941. Ellington's sole book musical, Beggar's Holiday, was staged on Broadway in 1946. Sophisticated Ladies, an award-winning 1981 musical revue, incorporated many tunes from his repertoire.

Private life

Ellington married his high school sweetheart, Edna Thompson, on July 2, 1918, when he was 19. Shortly after their marriage, on March 11, 1919 Edna gave birth to their only son, Mercer Kennedy Ellington. Mercer played trumpet, led his own band and worked as his father's business manager, eventually taking full control of the band after Duke's death. He was an important archivist of his father's musical life.

Ellington's sister Ruth (1915–2004) later ran Tempo Music, Ellington's music publishing company. Ruth's second husband was the bass-baritone McHenry Boatwright, whom she met when he sang at her brother's funeral.

Ellington's grandson Edward Ellington is a musician and maintains a small salaried band known as the Duke Ellington Legacy, which frequently comprises the core of the big band operated by The Duke Ellington Center for the Arts.

Legacy

Duke Ellington's work has come to be recognized as a cornerstone of American culture and heritage. He is widely regarded as the most important composer in jazz; he was also a galvanizing bandleader who inspired many of his musicians to produce their best work, whilst himself being a significant exponent of jazz piano. His works have been revisited by artists and musicians around the world both as a source of inspiration and a bedrock of their own performing careers. Ellington's compositions are now the staple of the repertoire of music conservatories, and even high school band programs that have embraced his music continue to give it life and voice.

His son, Mercer Ellington kept his big band alive after his passing. When Mercer died, Paul Ellington kept the Duke Ellington Orchestra going. It plays in concert halls around the world to this day.

Discography

Awards, honors and recognitions

Memorials

Numerous memorials have been dedicated to Duke Ellington, in cities from New York and Washington, DC to Los Angeles.

In Ellington's birthplace of Washington, D.C., there is a school dedicated to his honor and memory as well as one of the bridges over Rock Creek Park. The Duke Ellington School of the Arts educates talented students, who are considering careers in the arts, by providing intensive arts instruction and strong academic programs that prepare students for post-secondary education and professional careers. The Calvert Street Bridge was renamed the Duke Ellington Bridge; built in 1935, it connects Woodley Park to Adams Morgan.

On February 24, 2009, the United States Mint launched a new coin featuring Duke Ellington, making him the first African-American to appear by himself on a circulating U.S. coin. Ellington appears on the reverse ("tails") side of the District of Columbia quarter.

Ellington lived for years in a townhouse on the corner of Manhattan's Riverside Drive and West 106th Street. After his death, West 106th Street was officially renamed Duke Ellington Boulevard. A large memorial to Ellington, created by sculptor Robert Graham, was dedicated in 1997 in New York's Central Park, near Fifth Avenue and 110th Street, an intersection named Duke Ellington Circle.

Although he made two more stage appearances before his death, Ellington performed what is considered his final "full" concert in a ballroom at Northern Illinois University on March 20, 1974. The hall was renamed the Duke Ellington Ballroom in 1980. at 6535 Hollywood Blvd.]]

A statue of Ellington at a piano is featured at the entrance to UCLA's Schoenberg Hall. According to UCLA magazine, "When UCLA students were entranced by Duke Ellington's provocative tunes at a Culver City club in 1937, they asked the budding musical great to play a free concert in Royce Hall. 'I've been waiting for someone to ask us!' Ellington exclaimed".

"On the day of the concert, Ellington accidentally mixed up the venues and drove to USC instead. He eventually arrived at the UCLA campus and, to apologize for his tardiness, played to the packed crowd for more than four hours. And so, "Sir Duke" and his group played the first-ever jazz performance in a concert venue."

He is one of only five jazz musicians ever to have been featured on the cover of Time (the other four being Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Wynton Marsalis, and Dave Brubeck).

The Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival is a nationally renowned annual competition for prestigious high school bands. Started in 1996 at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the festival is named after Ellington because of the large focus that the festival places on his works.

Tributes

Sathima Bea Benjamin - the South African vocalist wrote "Gift of Love", in memory of Duke Ellington, for her 1987 album Love Light.

Dave Brubeck - dedicated "The Duke" (1954) to Ellington and it became a standard covered by others, both during Ellington's lifetime (such as by Miles Davis on Miles Ahead, 1957) and posthumously (such as George Shearing on , 1992). The album The Real Ambassadors has a vocal version of this piece, You Swing Baby (The Duke), with lyrics by Iola Brubeck, Dave's wife. It is performed as a duet between Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae. It is also dedicated to Duke Ellington.

Tony Bennett frequently altered the lyrics to "Lullaby of Broadway" in live performance, to sing, "You rock-a-bye your baby 'round/to Ellington or Basie," as a personal tribute to the two jazz masters.

Judy Collins - wrote "Song For Duke" in 1975, and included it on her album Judith.

Miles Davis - one month after Ellington's death, created his half-hour dedicated dirge "He Loved Him Madly" (1974) collected on Get Up with It.

The jazz-influenced band Steely Dan recorded a note-for-note version of an early Ellington standard, "East St. Louis Toodle-oo," on their album Pretzel Logic, released in 1974, using treated slide guitars to re-create the plunger-muted "jungle sound" of the original Ellington horns.

Stevie Wonder - wrote the song "Sir Duke" as a tribute to Ellington in 1976.

Charles Mingus - composed "Open Letter to Duke" and "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love"

Lorraine Feather - has composed lyrics to many of Ellington's instrumental compositions,recorded on CD's including "Dooji Wooji" and "Such Sweet Thunder."

The Modern Jazz Quartet composed two original Ellington tributes for their album For Ellington.

There are hundreds of albums dedicated to the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn by artists famous and obscure. The more notable artists include Sonny Stitt, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Tony Bennett, Claude Bolling, Oscar Peterson, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Dick Hyman, Joe Pass, Milt Jackson, Earl Hines, André Previn, World Saxophone Quartet, Ben Webster, Zoot Sims, Kenny Burrell, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, Martial Solal, Clark Terry and Randy Weston.

Homage from critics

Gunther Schuller wrote, "Ellington composed incessantly to the very last days of his life. Music was indeed his mistress; it was his total life and his commitment to it was incomparable and unalterable. In jazz he was a giant among giants. And in twentieth century music, he may yet one day be recognized as one of the half-dozen greatest masters of our time."

Martin Williams said "Duke Ellington lived long enough to hear himself named among our best composers. And since his death in 1974, it has become not at all uncommon to see him named, along with Charles Ives, as the greatest composer we have produced, regardless of category."

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Duke Ellington on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

Andre Previn said, "You know, Stan Kenton can stand in front of a thousand fiddles and a thousand brass and make a dramatic gesture and every studio arranger can nod his head and say, ‘‘Oh, yes, that’s done like this.’’ But Duke merely lifts his finger, three horns make a sound, and I don’t know what it is!"

Awards

Grammy Awards

Ellington earned 12 Grammy awards from 1959 to 2000, nine while he was alive. {| class=wikitable |- | colspan=5 align=center | Duke Ellington Grammy Award History |- ! Year ! Category ! Title ! Genre ! Result |- align=center | 1999 | Historical Album | The Duke Ellington Centennial EditionRCA Victor Recordings (1927–1973) | Jazz | Winner |- align=center | 1979 | Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band | Duke Ellington At Fargo, 1940 Live | Jazz | Winner |- align=center | 1976 | Best Jazz Performance By A Big Band | The Ellington Suites | Jazz | Winner |- align=center | 1972 | Best Jazz Performance By A Big Band | Togo Brava Suite | Jazz | Winner |- align=center | 1971 | Best Jazz Performance By A Big Band | New Orleans Suite | Jazz | Winner |- align=center | 1968 | Best Instrumental Jazz Performance - Large GroupOr Soloist With Large Group | ...And His Mother Called Him Bill | Jazz | Winner |- align=center | 1967 | Best Instrumental Jazz Performance, Large GroupOr Soloist With Large Group | Far East Suite | Jazz | Winner |- align=center | 1966 | Best Original Jazz Composition | "In The Beginning God" | Jazz | Winner |- align=center | 1965 | Best Instrumental Jazz Performance -Large Group Or Soloist With Large Group | Ellington '66 | Jazz | Winner |- align=center | 1959 | Best Performance By A Dance Band | Anatomy of a Murder | Pop | Winner |- align=center | 1959 | Best Musical Composition First RecordedAnd Released In 1959(More Than 5 Minutes Duration) | Anatomy of a Murder | Composing | Winner |- align=center | 1959 | Best Sound Track Album - Background ScoreFrom A Motion Picture Or Television | Anatomy of a Murder | Composing | Winner |- align=center |}

Grammy Hall of Fame

Recordings of Duke Ellington were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

{| class=wikitable |- | colspan=5 align=center | Duke Ellington: Grammy Hall of Fame Award |- ! Year Recorded ! Title ! Genre ! Label ! Year Inducted |- align=center | 1932 | "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" | Jazz (Single) | Brunswick | 2008 |- align=center | 1934 | "Cocktails for Two" | Jazz (Single) | Victor | 2007 |- align=center | 1957 | Ellington at Newport | Jazz (Album) | Columbia | 2004 |- align=center | 1956 | "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" | Jazz (Single) | Columbia | 1999 |- align=center | 1967 | Far East Suite | Jazz (Album) | RCA | 1999 |- align=center | 1944 | Black, Brown and Beige | Jazz (Single) | RCA Victor | 1990 |- align=center | 1928 | "Black and Tan Fantasy" | Jazz (Single) | Victor | 1981 |- align=center | 1941 | "Take the "A" Train" | Jazz (Single) | Victor | 1976 |- align=center | 1931 | "Mood Indigo" | Jazz (Single) | Brunswick |1975 |- align=center |}

Honors and inductions

{| class=wikitable |- ! Year ! Category ! Notes |- align=center | 2009 | Commemorative U.S. quarter | D.C. and U.S. Territories Quarters Program. |- align=center | 2008 | Gennett Records Walk of Fame |- align=center | 2004 | Nesuhi Ertegün Jazz Hall of Fameat Jazz at Lincoln Center |- align=center | 1999 | Pulitzer Prize | Special Citation |- align=center | 1978 | Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame |- align=center | 1973 | French Legion of Honor | July 6, 1973 |- align=center | 1973 | Honorary Degree in Music from Columbia University | May 16, 1973 |- align=center | 1971 | Honorary Doctorate Degree from Berklee College of Music |- align=center | 1971 | Songwriters Hall of Fame |- align=center | 1969 | Presidential Medal of Freedom |- align=center | 1956 | Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame inductee |- align=center | 1968 | Grammy Trustees Award | Special Merit Award |- align=center | 1966 | Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award |- align=center | 1959 | NAACP Spingarn Medal |}

Notes

Bibliography (further reading)

Cohen, Harvey G. Duke Ellington's America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-226-11263-3

Collier, James Lincoln. Duke Ellington. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-19-503770-7

Dailey, Raleigh. "Ellington as a Composer for the Piano," in Jazz Research Proceedings Yearbook, #31 (Jan.2001), pp. 151–156.

Dance, Stanley. The World Of Duke Ellington. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970. ISBN 0-306-80136-1

Ellington, Duke. Music Is My Mistress. New York: Da Capo, 1976 ISBN 0-7043-3090-3

Ellington, Mercer. Duke Ellington In Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978. ISBN 0-395-27511-5.

Hajdu, David, Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1996. ISBN 978-0-86547-512-0.

Hasse, John Edward. Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington. New York: Da Capo, 1995. ISBN 0-306-80614-2

Lawrence, A. H. Duke Ellington and His World: A Biography. New York: Routledge, 2001. ISBN 0-415-93012-X

Schuller, Gunther. Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN 978-0-19-504043-2. Especially pp. 318–357.

Schuller, Gunther. The Swing Era: The Development Of Jazz, 1930-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 9780195072405. Esp. pp. 46–157.

Gilles Tordjman, François Billard, Duke Ellington, Le Seuil, Paris, 1994. ISBN 978-2-02-013700-3

Terkel, Studs (2002), Giants of Jazz (2nd ed.), New York: The New Press, ISBN 978-1-56584-769-9.

Tucker, Mark. Ellington, The Early Years, University of Illinois Press, 1991. ISBN 0-252-01425-1

Tucker, Mark. The Duke Ellington Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993 ISBN 978-0-19-509391-9 .

Ulanov, Barry. Duke Ellington, Creative Age Press, 1946.

Weisbard, Eric, ed.. This Is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01344-1.

Reference works (discographies, filmographies, etc.)

Massagli, Luciano and Volonté, Giovanni. The New Desor: Duke Ellington's Story on Records Parts One and Two, 1999, Milan, Italy. Privately published two part discography with no ISBN number. The most comprehensive Ellington discography for sessions and record issues.

Stratemann, Dr. Klaus. Duke Ellington: Day by Day and Film by Film. Copenhagen: JazzMedia, 1992. ISBN 87-88043-34-7 Covers all of Duke's travels and films from the 1929 short film Black and Tan onwards

Timner, W.E.. Ellingtonia: The Recorded Music of Duke Ellington and His Sidemen. 5^th ed. Lanham, Md. & Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2007. ISBN 0-8108-5889-4 Has a unique discography of Ellington's sidemen.

External links

Official website

Official family website

Symphony In Black (discussion and film)

Duke Ellington Biography, in Down Beat Magazine.

Duke Ellington Collection: Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Archive Center.

A Duke Ellington Panorama; including detailed discography.

The Duke Ellington Society, TDES, Inc

Duke Ellington: 20th International Conference. May 2008, London.

Duke Ellington Orchestra at Wenig-LaMonica Associates

Category:1899 births Category:1974 deaths Category:African American musicians Category:American autobiographers Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz pianists Category:Big band bandleaders Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Decca Records artists Category:Gennett recording artists Category:Red Baron Records artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Légion d'honneur recipients Category:Musicians from Washington, D.C. Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:Swing pianists Category:American Episcopalians Category:Cancer deaths in New York Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (The Bronx) Category:Spingarn Medal winners Category:American pianists