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- 1999 Pulitzer Prize
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- A Drum Is a Woman
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Atlantic City
http://wn.com/Atlantic_City -
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York (Columbia University) is a private research university in New York City and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. It was founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, and is one of only three United States universities to have been founded under such authority.
http://wn.com/Columbia_University -
Cotton Club
http://wn.com/Cotton_Club -
Fargo, North Dakota
Fargo is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Cass County. In 2009, its population was estimated at 95,556, and it had an estimated metropolitan population of 200,102. Fargo, along with its twin city of Moorhead, Minnesota, as well as adjacent West Fargo, North Dakota and Dilworth, Minnesota, form the center of the Fargo-Moorhead, ND-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area."
http://wn.com/Fargo_North_Dakota -
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural, and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem was annexed to New York City in 1873.
http://wn.com/Harlem -
Philadelphia
Philadelphia () is the largest city in Pennsylvania, sixth-most-populous city in the United States and the fifty-first most populous city in the world.
http://wn.com/Philadelphia -
Roseland Ballroom
The Roseland Ballroom (also referred to as Roseland Dance City) is a multi-purpose hall, in a converted ice skating rink, with a colorful ballroom dancing pedigree, in New York City's theatre district, on West 52nd Street.
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Royce Hall
Royce Hall is a building on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Designed by the Los Angeles firm of Allison & Allison (James Edward Allison, 1870-1955, and his brother David Clark Allison, 1881-1962) in the Italian Romanesque Revival style and completed in 1929, it is one of the four original buildings on UCLA's Westwood campus and has come to be the defining image of the university. Named after Josiah Royce, a California-born philosopher who received his bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley in 1875, the building's exterior is modeled after Milan's Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio.
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Smithsonian
http://wn.com/Smithsonian -
The Bronx
http://wn.com/The_Bronx -
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. (), formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790. Article One of the United States Constitution provides for a federal district, distinct from the states, to serve as the permanent national capital. The City of Washington was originally a separate municipality within the federal territory until an act of Congress in 1871 established a single, unified municipal government for the whole District. It is for this reason that the city, while legally named the District of Columbia, is known as Washington, D.C. The city shares its name with the U.S. state of Washington, which is located on the country's Pacific coast.
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Woodley Park, D.C.
http://wn.com/Woodley_Park_DC
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Al Hibbler
Albert George "Al" Hibbler (August 16, 1915 – April 24, 2001) was an American baritone vocalist who sang with Duke Ellington's orchestra before having several pop hits as a solo artist. Some of his singing is classified as rhythm and blues, but he is best classified as a bridge between R&B; and traditional pop music. According to one authority, "Hibbler cannot be regarded as a jazz singer but as an exceptionally good interpreter of twentieth-century popular songs who happened to work with some of the best jazz musicians of the time."
http://wn.com/Al_Hibbler -
Al Jolson
Al Jolson (May 26, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer".
http://wn.com/Al_Jolson -
Alice Babs
Alice Babs (born Hildur Alice Nilsson in January 26, 1924) is a singer and actor from Kalmar in Sweden. While she has worked in a wide number of genres - e.g. Swedish folklore, Elizabethan songs and opera - she is best known internationally as a jazz singer. Making her breakthrough in Swing it magistern (Swing It, Teacher!) (1940), she appeared in more than a dozen Swedish language-films. Despite playing the well-behaved, good-hearted, cheerful girl, the youth culture forming with Alice Babs as its icon caused outrage among members of the older generation. A vicar called the Alice Babs cult the "foot and mouth disease to cultural life".
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Amos 'n' Andy
'Amos 'n' Andy' is a situation comedy based on stock sketch comedy characters but set in the African-American community. It was very popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s on both radio and television.
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Andre Previn
http://wn.com/Andre_Previn -
André Previn
André George Previn KBE (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin; April 6, 1929) is a German-born naturalised American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is a winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings.
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Arthur Whetsol
Arthur Whetsol was an early "sweet" trumpeter for Duke Ellington's Washingtonians.
http://wn.com/Arthur_Whetsol -
Barry Ulanov
Barry Ulanov (April 10, 1918 – April 30, 2000) was an American writer.
http://wn.com/Barry_Ulanov -
Ben Webster
Benjamin Francis Webster (March 27, 1909 – September 20, 1973), a.k.a. "The Brute" or "Frog," was an influential American jazz tenor saxophonist. Webster, born in Kansas City, Missouri, was considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Known affectionately as "The Brute", he had a tough, raspy, and brutal tone on stomps (with his own distinctive growls), yet on ballads he played with warmth and sentiment. Stylistically he was indebted to alto star Johnny Hodges, who, he said, taught him to play his instrument.
http://wn.com/Ben_Webster -
Benny Carter
Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King. In 1958, he performed with Billie Holiday at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival.
http://wn.com/Benny_Carter -
Benny Goodman
In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman (May 30, 1909 - June 13, 1986) led one of the most popular musical groups in America. His January 16, 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."
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Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday was a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Above all, she was admired worldwide for her deeply personal, intimate approach to singing.
http://wn.com/Billie_Holiday -
Billy Strayhorn
William Thomas "Billy" Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) was an American composer, pianist and arranger, best known for his successful collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington lasting nearly three decades. His compositions include "Chelsea Bridge", "Take the "A" Train" and "Lush Life".
http://wn.com/Billy_Strayhorn -
Bubber Miley
http://wn.com/Bubber_Miley -
Buddy Holly
'''Charles Hardin Holley
http://wn.com/Buddy_Holly -
Carmen McRae
Carmen Mercedes McRae (April 8, 1920 – November 10, 1994) was an American jazz singer, composer, pianist, and actress. Considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century, it was her behind-the-beat phrasing and her ironic interpretations of song lyrics that made her memorable. McRae drew inspiration from Billie Holiday, but established her own distinctive voice. She went on to record over 60 albums, enjoying a rich musical career, performing and recording in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
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Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer. He is widely regarded as one of the first American composers of international renown. Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original". Ives combined the American popular and church-music traditions of his youth with European art music, and was among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatoric elements, and quarter tones, foreshadowing many musical innovations of the 20th century.
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Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.
http://wn.com/Charles_Mingus -
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), famously called Bird, or Yardbird was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.
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Chick Webb
William Henry Webb, usually known as Chick Webb (February 10, 1905–June 16, 1939) was an American jazz and swing music drummer as well as a band leader.
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Clark Terry
Clark Terry (born December 14, 1920) is an American swing and bop trumpeter, a pioneer of the fluegelhorn in jazz, educator, and NEA Jazz Masters inductee.
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Claude Bolling
Claude Bolling (born 10 April 1930), is a renowned French jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and occasional actor.
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Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy () (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918) was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions. Debussy is among the most important of all French composers, and a central figure in European music of the turn of the 20th century. He was made Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1903.
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Claude Hopkins
Claude Driskett Hopkins (1903–1984) was an American jazz stride pianist and bandleader.
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Cliff Jackson
Clifton Luther "Cliff" Jackson (July 19, 1902, Culpeper, Virginia - May 24, 1970, New York City) was an American jazz stride pianist.
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Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Randolph Hawkins (November 21, 1904 – May 19, 1969) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was the first important jazz musician to use the instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn". While Hawkins is most strongly associated with the swing music and big band era, he had a role in the development of bebop in the 1940s,
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Constant Lambert
Leonard Constant Lambert (23 August 190521 August 1951) was a British composer and conductor.
http://wn.com/Constant_Lambert -
Cootie Williams
Charles Melvin "Cootie" Williams (July 10, 1911 - September 15, 1985) was an American jazz and rhythm and blues trumpeter.
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Count Basie
William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's theme songs were "One O'Clock Jump" and "April In Paris".
http://wn.com/Count_Basie -
Dave Brubeck
David Warren "Dave" Brubeck (born December 6, 1920) is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures, and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.
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Dick Hyman
Richard “Dick” Hyman (born March 8, 1927, New York City) is an American jazz pianist/keyboardist and composer, best-known for his versatility with jazz piano styles. Over a 50 year career, he has functioned as pianist, organist, arranger, music director, and, increasingly, as composer. His versatility in all of these areas has resulted in well over 100 albums recorded under his own name and many more in support of other artists.
http://wn.com/Dick_Hyman -
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer.
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Dorothy Fields
Dorothy Fields (July 15, 1905 – March 28, 1974) was an American librettist and lyricist.
http://wn.com/Dorothy_Fields -
Earl Hines
Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as Earl "Fatha" Hines, (December 28, 1903 – April 22, 1983) was "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz".
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Eddie Foy, Jr.
Eddie Foy Jr. (February 4, 1905 - July 15, 1983) was an American character actor.
http://wn.com/Eddie_Foy_Jr -
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg (15 June 18434 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist who composed in the Romantic period. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt (which includes Morning Mood and In the Hall of the Mountain King), and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.
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Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves (Db3 to Db6), she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
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Elmer Snowden
Elmer Snowden (October 9, 1900 – May 14, 1973) was a banjo player of the jazz age. He also played guitar and, in the early stages of his career, all the reed instruments. He contributed greatly to jazz in its early days as both a player and a bandleader, and is responsible for launching the careers of many top musicians. However, Snowden himself has been largely overlooked in jazz history.
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Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".
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Eubie Blake
James Hubert Blake (February 7, 1887 – February 12, 1983) was an American composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, Blake and long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote the Broadway musical Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans. Blake's compositions included such hits as, "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find A Way", "Memories of You", and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". The musical Eubie! featured the works of Blake and opened on Broadway in 1978.
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Fats Domino
Antoine Dominique "Fats" Domino (born February 26, 1928) is an American R&B; and rock and roll pianist and singer-songwriter. He was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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Fats Waller
Fats Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943), born Thomas Wright Waller, was a jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer. He was the youngest of four children born to Adaline Locket Waller, wife of the Reverend Edward Martin Waller.
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Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz "Flo" Ziegfeld, Jr. (March 21, 1867 – July 22, 1932) was an American Broadway impresario. He is best known for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies (1907-1931), inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He was known as the "glorifier of the American girl".
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Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor.
http://wn.com/Frank_Sinatra -
Frederick Delius
Frederick Albert Theodore Delius CH (29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934) was an English composer. He spent much of his early adulthood in St. Johns County, Florida. His time in the US influenced his music, especially his interest in African-American spirituals and folk music.
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Gary Giddins
Gary Giddins (born March 21, 1948) is an American jazz critic, author, and director, best known for his longtime work with The Village Voice. Born in Brooklyn, and raised on Long Island, Giddins graduated from Grinnell College, Iowa, in 1970. After some freelance work as a music and film critic, in 1974 he started writing his column "Weather Bird" for the Village Voice, which he ended in December 2003.
http://wn.com/Gary_Giddins -
George Gershwin
George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known.
http://wn.com/George_Gershwin -
George Shearing
Sir George Shearing, OBE (born August 13, 1919) is an Anglo-American jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group which recorded for MGM Records and Capitol Records. The composer of over 300 titles, he has had multiple albums on the Billboard charts during the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s.
http://wn.com/George_Shearing -
Gunther Schuller
Gunther Schuller (born November 22, 1925) is an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, and jazz musician.
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Gus Kahn
Gustav Gerson Kahn (November 6, 1886 – October 8, 1941) was a musician, songwriter and lyricist.
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Harold Arlen
Harold Arlen (February 15, 1905 – April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music, having written over 500 songs, a number of which have become known the world over. In addition to composing the songs for The Wizard of Oz, including the classic 1938 song, "Over the Rainbow,” Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. "Over the Rainbow," in fact, was voted the twentieth century's No. 1 song by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
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Harry Truman
http://wn.com/Harry_Truman -
Irving Mills
Irving Mills (January 16, 1894 – April 21, 1985) was a jazz music publisher, also known by the name of Joe Primrose.
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Irving Townsend
Irving Townsend (1920-1981) was an American record producer and author. He is most famous for having produced, in March 1959, the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue, which at #12, is the highest-ranked jazz album on ''Rolling Stone's'' 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and according to the RIAA, is the best-selling jazz album of all time. He later served as president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States from 1969-.
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Jack Towers
http://wn.com/Jack_Towers -
James "Bubber" Miley
James Wesley "Bubber" Miley (April 3, 1903–May 20, 1932) was an early jazz trumpeter and cornet player, specializing in the use of the plunger mute.
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James P. Johnson
James P. Johnson [also known as Jimmy Johnson] (February 1, 1894–November 17, 1955) was an American pianist and composer. With Luckey Roberts, Johnson was arguably the most important pioneer of the stride style of jazz piano playing.
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Jimmie Lunceford
James Melvin "Jimmie" Lunceford (June 6, 1902 – July 12, 1947) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era.
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Jimmy Dorsey
James "Jimmy" Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He was known as "JD". He composed the standards "I'm Glad There is You (In This World of Ordinary People)" and "It's the Dreamer in Me".
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Jimmy Durante
James Francis "Jimmy" Durante (February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American singer, pianist, comedian and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. His jokes about his nose included referring to it as a "Schnozzola", and the word became his nickname.
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Joe Pass
Joe Pass (born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalacqua) (January 13, 1929 – May 23, 1994) was a jazz guitarist. His extensive use of walking basslines, melodic counterpoint during improvisation, use of a chord-melody style of play and outstanding knowledge of chord progressions opened up new possibilities for jazz guitar and had a profound influence on future guitarists.
http://wn.com/Joe_Pass -
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane (sometimes abbreviated "Trane"; September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz. He was prolific, organizing at least fifty recording sessions as a leader during his recording career, and appeared as a sideman on many other albums, notably with trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk.
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John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). He wrote a total of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and five collections of short stories. In 1962, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Johnny Hodges
John Cornelius "Johnny" Hodges (July 25, 1906 – May 11, 1970) was an American alto saxophonist, best known for his solo work with Duke Ellington's big band. He played lead alto in the saxophone section for many years, except the period between 1932 – 1946 when Otto Hardwick generally played first chair. Hodges was also featured on soprano saxophone, but refused to play soprano after 1946, when he also got the task of playing the lead chair.
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Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn (31 March 173231 May 1809), known as Joseph Haydn (; ), was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these genres. He was also instrumental in the development of the piano trio and in the evolution of sonata form.
http://wn.com/Joseph_Haydn -
Juan Tizol
Juan Tizol (22 January 1900 – 23 April 1984) was a Puerto Rican trombonist and composer.
http://wn.com/Juan_Tizol -
Kay Davis
Katherine McDonald Wimp stage name Kay Davis (born December 5, 1920) was an American jazz singer best known for her time with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
http://wn.com/Kay_Davis -
Kenny Burrell
Kenneth Earl "Kenny" Burrell (born July 31, 1931) is an American jazz guitarist. His playing is grounded in bebop and blues; he has performed and recorded with a wide range of jazz musicians.
http://wn.com/Kenny_Burrell -
Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.
http://wn.com/Louis_Armstrong -
Luckey Roberts
Charles Luckeyeth Roberts, better known as Luckey Roberts (August 7, 1887 – February 5, 1968) was an American composer and stride pianist who worked in the jazz, ragtime, and blues styles.
http://wn.com/Luckey_Roberts -
Martial Solal
Martial Solal (born August 23, 1927, Algiers, Algeria) is a French jazz pianist and composer, who is probably most widely known for the music he wrote for Jean-Luc Godard's debut feature film À bout de souffle (1960).
http://wn.com/Martial_Solal -
Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams (May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Williams wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions). Williams wrote and arranged for such bandleaders as Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie.
http://wn.com/Mary_Lou_Williams -
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier (September 12, 1888 – January 1, 1972) was a French actor, singer, and popular vaudeville entertainer. Chevalier's signature songs included "Louise", "Mimi", "Valentine", and "Thank Heaven for Little Girls". His trademark was a boater hat, which he always wore on stage with his tuxedo (dinner jacket).
http://wn.com/Maurice_Chevalier -
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (March 7, 1875December 28, 1937) was a French composer of Impressionist music known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects. Much of his piano music, chamber music, vocal music and orchestral music has entered the standard concert repertoire.
http://wn.com/Maurice_Ravel -
Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel Roach (January 10, 1924 – August 16, 2007) was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.
http://wn.com/Max_Roach -
McHenry Boatwright
McHenry Boatwright (February 29, 1928November 5, 1994) was an American operatic bass-baritone and singing teacher.
http://wn.com/McHenry_Boatwright -
Mercer Ellington
Mercer Kennedy Ellington (11 March 1919 – 8 February 1996) was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and arranger.
http://wn.com/Mercer_Ellington -
Michael Langham
Michael Langham (born August 22, 1919 in Bridgwater, England) is a British actor and director, who has spent much of his career living and working in Canada and the United States. He studied law at the University of London before enlisting in the British Army in 1939. After spending five years as a prisoner of war, Langham set his sights on the theatre and led several repertory theatres in the U.K. including Coventry (1946-48), Birmingham (1948-50) and Glasgow (1953-54).
http://wn.com/Michael_Langham -
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer.
http://wn.com/Miles_Davis -
Milt Jackson
Milton "Milt" Jackson (January 1, 1923 - October 9, 1999) was an American jazz vibraphonist, usually thought of as a bebop player, although he performed in several jazz idioms. He is especially remembered for his coolly swinging solos as a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet and his penchant for collaborating with several hard bop and post-bop players.
http://wn.com/Milt_Jackson -
Oscar Peterson
Oscar Emmanuel Peterson, CC, CQ, OOnt, (August 15, 1925 – December 23, 2007) was a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, "O.P." by his friends, and was a member of jazz royalty. He released over 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, and received other numerous awards and honours over the course of his career. He is considered to have been one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, who played thousands of live concerts to audiences worldwide in a career lasting more than 65 years.
http://wn.com/Oscar_Peterson -
Otto Hardwick
Otto James "Toby" Hardwicke (May 31, 1904 - August 5, 1970) was a saxophone player associated with Duke Ellington.
http://wn.com/Otto_Hardwick -
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger (5 December 1905, Vyzhnytsia – 23 April 1986) was an Austro–Hungarian-born American film director who moved from the theatre to Hollywood, directing over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura (1944) and Fallen Angel (1945). In the 1950s and 1960s, he directed a number of high-profile adaptations of popular novels and stage works. Several of these pushed the boundaries of censorship by dealing with topics which were then taboo in Hollywood, such as drug addiction (The Man with the Golden Arm, 1955), rape (Anatomy of a Murder, 1959), and homosexuality (Advise and Consent, 1962). He was twice nominated for the Best Director Academy Award. He also had a few acting roles.
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Paul Gonsalves
Paul Gonsalves, ( - ) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.
http://wn.com/Paul_Gonsalves -
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.
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Paul Whiteman
Paul Samuel Whiteman (March 28, 1890 – December 29, 1967) was an American bandleader and orchestral director.
http://wn.com/Paul_Whiteman -
Percy Grainger
George Percy Grainger (8 July 188220 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer and pianist who worked under the stage name of Percy Aldridge Grainger.
http://wn.com/Percy_Grainger -
Ralph J. Gleason
Ralph J. Gleason (1917-1975) was an influential American jazz and pop music critic. He contributed for many years to the San Francisco Chronicle, was a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and cofounder of the Monterey Jazz Festival.
http://wn.com/Ralph_J_Gleason -
Randy Weston
Randy Weston (born April 6, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York), is an American jazz pianist and composer, of Jamaican parentage.
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Ray Nance
Ray Willis Nance (December 10, 1913 Chicago - January 28, 1976 in New York City ) was a jazz trumpeter, violinist and singer.
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Rex Stewart
Rex Stewart (22 February 1907–7 September 1967) was an American jazz cornetist best known for his work with the Duke Ellington orchestra.
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Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States from 1969 to 1974, having formerly been the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. A member of the Republican Party, he was the only President to resign the office as well as the only person to be elected twice to both the Presidency and the Vice Presidency.
http://wn.com/Richard_Nixon -
Ruby Keeler
Ruby Keeler, born Ethel Hilda Keeler, (August 25, 1910 – February 28, 1993) was an actress, singer, and dancer most famous for her on-screen coupling with Dick Powell in a string of successful early musicals at Warner Brothers, particularly 42nd Street (1933). From 1928 to 1940, she was married to legendary singer Al Jolson. She retired from show business in the 1940s but made a widely publicized comeback on Broadway in 1971.
http://wn.com/Ruby_Keeler -
Sathima Bea Benjamin
Sathima Bea Benjamin (born 17 October 1936, Johannesburg, South Africa), is a South African vocalist and composer born in Johannesburg, raised in Cape Town, and now based in New York City.
http://wn.com/Sathima_Bea_Benjamin -
Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.
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Sidney Poitier
Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE ( or ; born February 20, 1927) is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat. He broke through as a star in acclaimed performances in American films and plays, which, by consciously defying racial stereotyping, gave a new dramatic credibility for black actors to mainstream film audiences in the Western world.
http://wn.com/Sidney_Poitier -
Sonny Greer
Sonny Greer (13 December 1895–23 March 1982) was an American jazz drummer, best known for his work with Duke Ellington.
http://wn.com/Sonny_Greer -
Sonny Stitt
Edward "Sonny" Stitt (b. February 2, 1924, Boston, Massachusetts – d. July 22, 1982, Washington, D.C.) was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. He was also one of the most well-documented saxophonists of his generation, recording over 100 albums in his lifetime. He was nicknamed the "Lone Wolf" by jazz critic Dan Morgenstern in tribute to his relentless touring and his devotion to jazz. He is considered the greatest disciple of Charlie Parker. Although his playing was at first heavily inspired by Charlie Parker and Lester Young, Stitt eventually developed his own style, one which influenced John Coltrane. Stitt was especially effective with blues and with ballad pieces such as "Skylark".
http://wn.com/Sonny_Stitt -
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Judkins (born May 13, 1950), name later changed to Stevland Hardaway Morris, known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist. Blind from shortly after birth, Wonder signed with Motown Records' Tamla label at the age of eleven, and continues to perform and record for Motown to this day.
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Tchaikovsky
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Ted Koehler
Ted L. Koehler (July 14, 1894 – January 17, 1973) was an American lyricist.
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Teddy Roosevelt
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Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk (October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser" and "Well, You Needn't". Monk is the second most recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, which is particularly remarkable as Ellington composed over 1,000 songs while Monk wrote about 70.
http://wn.com/Thelonious_Monk -
Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett (born Anthony Dominick Benedetto; August 3, 1926) is an American singer of popular music, standards, show tunes, and jazz.
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Tricky Sam Nanton
Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton (February 1, 1904 – July 20, 1946) was a famous trombonist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
http://wn.com/Tricky_Sam_Nanton -
Turner Layton
Turner Layton (July 2, 1894 – February 6, 1978), born John Turner Layton, Jr., was an American songwriter, singer and pianist. Born in Washington, D.C., in 1894, he was the son of John Turner Layton, "a bass singer, music educator and hymn composer." After receiving a musical education from his father, he attended the Howard University Dental School, later coming to New York City in the early 1900s, where he met future songwriting partner, lyricist Henry Creamer. He is best known for his many compositions with Creamer, the best known of which is the jazz standard "After You've Gone", which was written in 1918 and first popularized by Sophie Tucker. The two contributed music and lyrics to many Broadway shows, including the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917, 1921 and 1922, Three Showers (1920), Some Party (1922) and Creamer's own Strut Miss Lizzie (1922). Beginning in 1924, Layton found major popular success in England with Clarence "Tandy" Johnstone as member of the group Layton & Johnstone, quickly earning a reputation as a cabaret act with the pair allegedly selling over "10 million records." He split with Johnstone in 1935, with Johnstone returning to New York and continuing to perform with significantly less success and Turner continuing to perform in England. An elegant song stylist, Turner had held a regular, successful spot over the years at the Café de Paris, a London club, until his retirement in 1946. He died in London in February of 1978. Two compilation albums of recordings by Layton have been released on CD. His daughter A'Lelia Shirley inherited his musical estate and left the copyright and royalties to her father's music to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London (UK) in her will on her death in January 2001.
http://wn.com/Turner_Layton -
Wilber Sweatman
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Will Marion Cook
Will Marion Cook (January 27, 1869 – July 19, 1944) was a composer and violinist from the United States. Cook was a student of Antonín Dvořák and performed for King George V among others.
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Will Vodery
Will Vodery (October 8, 1885 - November 18, 1951) was an African-American composer, conductor, orchestrator, and arranger, and one of the few black Americans of his time to make a name for himself as a composer on Broadway, working largely for Florenz Ziegfeld.
http://wn.com/Will_Vodery -
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
http://wn.com/William_Shakespeare -
Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American jazz and Western classical virtuoso trumpeter and composer. He is Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted the appreciation of Classical and Jazz music, often focusing on young audiences.
http://wn.com/Wynton_Marsalis -
Zoot Sims
John Haley "Zoot" Sims (October 29, 1925 - March 23, 1985) was an American jazz saxophonist, playing mainly tenor and soprano.
http://wn.com/Zoot_Sims
Ellington, Duke Filmography
- Johnny Mercer: The Dream's on Me (2009)
- Jazz Giants of the 20th Century (2007)
- Reminiscing in Tempo (2006)
- Billie Holiday: The Ultimate Collection (2005)
- Duke Ellington Swinging at His Best (2005)
- Great Women Singers of the 20th Century: Chaka Khan (2005)
- From Shtetl to Swing (2005)
- Harlem Renaissance (2004)
- Improvisation (2004)
- Cinerama Adventure (2002)
- Rhapsody in Black (2002)
- It's Black Entertainment (2002)
- Hollywood Rhythm Vol. 1: The Best of Jazz and Blues (2001)
- The Century: America's Time (1999)
- New York: A Documentary Film (1999)
- The Fifties (1997)
- Victor Borges Tivoli 150 år (1993)
- American Justice: Target - Mafia (1993)
- Apollo Theatre Hall of Fame (1993)
- The Very Best of the Ed Sullivan Show (1991)
- That's Black Entertainment (1990)
- Memories of Duke (1980)
- Black Shadows on the Silver Screen (1975)
- On the Road with Duke Ellington (1974)
- Duke Ellington... We Love You Madly (1973)
- Timex All Star Swing Festival (1972)
- Black Music in America: From Then Till Now (1971)
- ...And Beautiful II (1970)
- Change of Mind (1969)
- The Barbara McNair and Duke Ellington Special (1968)
- Newport Jazz Festival (1968)
- The Strolling '20s (1966)
- Assault on a Queen (1966)
- Freedom Spectacular (1964)
- Paris Blues (1961)
- Schlager-Raketen (1960)
- Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
- Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
- Holiday (1957)
- Jazz Ball (1956)
- Rock 'n' Roll Revue (1955)
- Symphony in Swing (1949)
- Date with Duke (1947)
- Cabin in the Sky (1943)
- Reveille with Beverly (1943)
- Upbeat in Music (1943)
- Jam Session (1942)
- Flamingo (1942)
- Flamingo (1942)
- Jam Session (1942)
- Birth of the Blues (1941)
- Verdensberømtheder i København (1939)
- Hit Parade of 1937 (1937)
- Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life (1935)
- Belle of the Nineties (1934)
- Murder at the Vanities (1934)
- A Bundle of Blues (1933)
- Hollywood on Parade No. A-9 (1933)
- Check and Double Check (1930)
- Black and Tan (1929)
Composer ("It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing", "Sophisticated Lady", "Mood Indigo", "Solitude", "In a Mellotone", "Satin Doll"), pianist and conductor, holder of an honorary music degree from Wilberforce University and an LHD from Milton College, Duke Ellington led his own orchestra by 1918, and came to New York in 1923, appearing at the Cotton Club between 1927 and 1932. Making his first European tour in 1933, he followed with his annual Carnegie Hall concerts between 1943 and 1950, and then a Middle East tour (under the auspices of the State Department), including an appearance at the International Fair in Damascus in 1963. His stage scores include "Jump for Joy" and "Beggars Holiday" (Broadway). He made many records. Joining ASCAP in 1953, his chief musical collaborators included 'Billy Strayhorn' (qv), 'Irving Mills' (qv), 'Mitchell Parish' (qv), 'Mann Curtis' (qv), 'Barney Bigard' (qv), Henry Nemo, 'Bob Russell (II)' (qv), 'Don George (I)' (qv), Lee Gaines, 'Paul Francis Webster' (qv), 'Edgar De Lange' (qv), 'Johnny Hodges' (qv), 'Cootie Williams' (qv), 'Juan Tizol' (qv) and his own son, 'Mercer Ellington' (qv). His other popular song and instrumental compositions include "Blind Man's Buff", "Creole Love Call", "Black and Tan Fantasy", "I Let a Song Go Out of my Heart", "Rockin' in Rhythm", "Caravan", "Pyramid", "Creole Rhapsody", "Don't Get Around Much Anymore", "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good", "I'm Beginning to See the Light", "In a Sentimental Mood", "East St. Louis Toodle-oo", "Birmingham Breakdown", "Black Beauty", "Flaming Youth", "Awful Sad", "The Duke Steps Out", "Saturday Night Function", "Old Man Blues", "Ring Dem Bells", "Drop Me Off in Harlem", "Daybreak Express", "Delta Serenade", "Reminiscing in Tempo", "In a Jam", "Clarinet Lament", "Echoes of Harlem", "Dusk on the Desert", "Lost in Meditation", "Blue Reverie", "I've Got to Be a Rug Cutter", "Please Forgive Me", "Chatterbox", "Harmony in Harlem", "If You Were in My Place", "Skronch", "Braggin' in Brass", "Blue Light", "Buffet Flat", "The Gal from Joe's", "Subtle Lament", "Old King Dooji", "Boy Meets Horn", "Stevedore's Serenade", "You Gave Me the Gate and I'm Swinging", "Grievin'", "The Sergeant Was Shy", "Tootin' Through the Roof", "Rumpus in Richmond", "Jack the Bear", "Me and You", "Flaming Sword", "Harlem Air Shaft", "Bojangles", "Portrait of Bert Williams", "Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me" (Concerto for Cootie), "Kind of Moody" (Serenade to Sweden), "Morning Glory", "Blue Goose", "Cotton Tail", "Conga Brava", "Chocolate Shake", "Rocks in My Bed", "San Juan Hill", "Crescendo in Blue", "Diminuendo in Blue", "Dusk", "C Jam Blues", "Main Stem", "I Didn't Know About You", "Just a-Sittin' and a-Rockin'", "Jazz Convulsions", "I'm Just a Lucky So and So", "The Blues", "Come Sunday", "Magenta Haze", "Just Squeeze Me", "Happy-Go-Lucky Local", "Takle Love Easy", "Tomorrow Mountain", "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'", "Money Jungle", "Prelude to a Kiss", "Jump for Joy", "I'm Checking Out, Goom-Bye", "The Mooche", "Warm Valley", "Blue Serge", "I Wish I Was Back in My Baby's Arms", "Lament for a Lost Love", "It Shouldn't Happen to a Dream", "Afro-Bosso", "In the Beginning, God" and "Christmas Surprise".
RELEASE
ALBUMS
- In a Sentimental Mood
- Take the Coltrane
- Big Nick
- Stevie
- My Little Brown Book
- Angelica
- The Feeling of Jazz
- Satin Doll
- Stardust
- Stormy Weather
- Take The "A" Train
- 4:30 Blues
- In Triplicate
- Chili Bowl
- Janet
- Happy Reunion
- Caravan
- Wig Wise
- One O'Clock Jump
Duke Ellington: The Complete 1936–1940 Variety, Vocalion and Okeh Small Group Sessions
(Released 2006)
add all to playlist
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- Tough Truckin'
- Tough Truckin' (alternate take)
- Indigo Echoes
- Indigo Echoes (alternate take)
- Rexatious (alternate take)
- Rexatious
- Lazy Man's Shuflle
- Lazy Man's Shuflle (alternate take)
- Clouds in My Heart (alternate take)
- Clouds in My Heart
- Frolic Sam (alternate take)
- Frolic Sam
- Caravan
- Caravan
- Stompy Jones
- Stompy Jones
- Mood Indigo / Solititude
- Sophisticated Lady / In a Sentimental Mood
- I Can't Believe That You Are in Love With Me (alternate take)
- I Can't Believe That You Are in Love With Me
- Downtown Uproar (alternate take)
- Downtown Uproar
- Digga Digga Do (alternate take)
- Digga Digga Do
- Bakiff
- Reflections in D
- Body and Soul
- The E and D Blues (E for Ella, D for Duke)
- Going Up
- Big Shoe
- Pie Eye's Blues
- Azalea
- Wig Wise
- Fleurette Africaine
- Take the Coltrane
- The Feeling of Jazz
- West Indian Pancake
- Cotton Tail
- The Blues
- The Hawk Talks
- Prelude to a Kiss
- Love You Madly
- Just Squeeze Me (but Don't Tease Me)
- Everything but You
- East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
- Black and Tan Fantasy
- Take It Easy
- Hot and Bothered
- The Mooche
- Rockn' in Rhythm
- Creole Rhapsody
- It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
- Creole Love Call
- Sophisticated Lady
- Drop Me Off in Harlem
- Solitude
- In a Sentimental Mood
- Back Room Romp
- Clouds in My Heart
- Echoes of Harlem
- Caravan
- Blue Reverie
- Diminuendo in Blue
- Crescendo in Blue
- I Can't Get Started
- Cong-Go
- Body and Soul
- Blues for Jerry
- Fountainebleau Forest
- Summertime
- It's Bad to Be Forgotten
- A Hundred Dreams Ago
- So
- Searching (Pleading for Love)
- Springtime in Africa
- Lotus Blossom
- All the Things You Are (take 1)
- All the Things You Are (take 2)
- Piano Improvisation No. 2
- Piano Improvisation No. 3
- Piano Improvisation No. 4
- Piano Improvisation No. 1
- Satin Doll
- Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me
- I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
- Body and Soul
- Creole Love Call
- Prelude to a Kiss
- The Star-Crossed Lovers (A.K.A. Pretty Girl)
- Corner Pocket (A.K.A. Until I Met You)
- To You
- Take Love Easy
- All of Me
- Tenderly
- Love You Madley
- Love (My Everything)
- Mood Indigo
- Solitude
- In a Sentimental Mood
- Duke's Place
- I'm Just a Lucky So and So
- Cottontail
- Mood Indigo
- Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me
- The Beautiful American
- Black and Tan Fantasy
- Drop Me Off in Harlem
- The Mooche
- In a Mellow Tone
- It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
- Solitude
- Don't Get Around Much Anymore
- I'm Beginning to See the Light
- Just Squeeze Me
- I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)
- Azalea
- Take The "A" Train
- Don't Get Around Much Anymore
- I Didn't Know About You (Sentimental Lady)
- Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me
- Someone
- I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good
- Main Stem
- I'm Beginning To See The Light
- I Ain't Got Nothin' But The Blues
- My Little Brown Book
- Take the "A" Train
- Caravan
- Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me
- How High the Moon
- Tea for Two
- One O'Clock Jump
- Rockin' in Rhythm
- Passion Flower
- Everything Goes
- The Mooche
- Jam With Sam
- Tip Toe Topic
- In a Mellow Tone
- I'm Beginning to See the Light
- Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me
- Don't Get Around Much Anymore
- Duke's Place
- Drop Me Off in Harlem
- I'm Just a Lucky So and So
- Azalea
- Black and Tan Fantasy
- Band Discussion on Cottontail
- Prologue to Black and Tan Fantasy
- The New Black and Tan Fantasy
- The Mooche
- Saturday Night Function
- Mississippi Moan
- Jungle Jamboree
- Haunted Nights
- Jungle Nights in Harlem
- Shout 'Em Aunt Tillie
- Jungle Blues
- Echoes of the Jungle
- Baby, When You Ain't There
- Dear Old Southland
- The New East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
- Delta Mood
- Dooji Wooji
- Way Low
- A Gathering in a Clearing
- Liberian Suite: Dance No. 5
- Air Conditioned Jungle
- Duke's Place
- I'm Just a Lucky So and So
- Cotton Tail
- Mood Indigo
- Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me
- The Beautiful American
- Black and Tan Fantasy
- Drop Me Off at Harlem
- The Mooche
- In a Mellow Tone
- It Don't Mean a Thing
- Solitude
- Don't Get Around Much Anymore
- I'm Beginning to See the Light
- Just Squeeze Me
- I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good
- Azalea
- The Jeep Is Jumpin'
- Mood Indigo
- Limbo Jazz
- Wanderlust
- In a Sentimental Mood
- Stevie
- My Little Brown Book
- C Jam Blues
- Lotus Blossom
- Medley
- Satin Doll
- Take the "A" Train
- You Know Something?
- Battle Royal
- Bird Jungle
- What's Paris Blues?
- Mood Indigo
- Autumnal Suite
- Nite
- Wild Man Moore
- Paris Stairs
- I Wasn't Shopping
- Guitar Amour
- A Return Reservation
- Paris Blues
- Take the "A" Train
- I Got It Bad
- Perdido
- Chelsea Bridge
- "C" Jam Blues
- What Am I Here For
- Main Stem
- Johnny Come Lately
- Sentimental Lady
- Rockin' the Rythm
- Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me
- Summertime
- Creole Love Call
- I'm Beginning to See the Light
- Something to Live For
- A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing
- Passion Flower
- I Like the Sunrise
- Azure
- Imagine My Frustration
- Duke's Place
- Brownskin Gal
- What Am I Here For
- Cotton Tail
- Intro
- Tulip or Turnip
- Ting-A-Ling
- Flamingo
- Rockin' in Rhythm
- Sophisticated Lady
- Take the "A" Train
- Flying Home
- All of Me
- Bakiff
- The Hawk Talks
- Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me
- V.I.P.'s Boogie
- Jam With Sam
- Just A-Sittin' and A-Rockin'
- Mood Indigo
- Star Spangled Banner
- Lady of the Lavender Mist
- Suddenly It Jumped
- Reminiscing in Tempo
- She Wouldn't Be Moved
- Paradise
- The Symphomaniac Pt. 1 (Symphonic or Bust)
- The Symphomaniac Pt. 2 (How You Sound)
- My Friend
- You Oughta
- Creole Love Call
- Don't Blame Me
- Lover Man
- The Tattooed Bride
- Dancers In Love
- Take the 'A' Train
- Perdido
- Tea For Two
- Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me
- Caravan
- How High the Moon
- In a Jam
- Rockabye River
- On the Alamo
- Moon Mist
- Blue Lou
- Just You, Just Me
- Crosstown
- Don't Get Around Much Anymore (Medley 3)
- Satin Doll
- Medley: Creole Love Call, Black & Tan Fantasy, The Mooch
- Mexican Suite
- It Don't Mean A Thing
- I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good
- Things Ain't What They Used To Be
- Mood Indigo
- Mood Indigo 2
- Happy Go Lucky Local
- Sophisticated Lady
- Prelude to a Kiss
- Diminuendo in Blue
- Crescendo in Blue
- Ko-Ko
- Do Nothin' 'Til You Hear From Me
- Harlem Air Shaft
- All Too Soon
- Sepia Panorama
- Across the Track Blues
- Chloe
- Take the "A" Train
- What Can A Poor Fellow Do ?
- Black And Tan Fantasy
- Black And Tan Fantasy
- Chicago Stomp Down
- Harlem River Quiver (Brown Berries)
- Harlem River Quiver (Brown Berries)
- Harlem River Quiver (Brown Berries)
- East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
- Blue Bubbles
- Blue Bubbles
- Red Hot Band
- Doin' The Frog
- Sweet Mama
- Stack O'Lee Blues
- Bugle Call Rag
- Take It Easy
- Jubilee Stomp
- Harlem Twist (East St. Louis Toodle-Oo)
- East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
- East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
- Jubilee Stomp
- Jubilee Stomp
- Take It Easy
- Take It Easy
- Steppin' Into Swing Society
- Prologue To Black And Tan Fantasy
- The New Black And Tan Fantasy
- Riding On A Blue Note
- Lost In Meditation
- The Gal From Joe's
- Skrontch
- I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart
- Braggin' In Brass
- Dinah's In A Jam
- You Gave Me The Gate (And I'm Swingin')
- Rose Of The Rio Grande
- Rose Of The Rio Grande [alternate take]
- Pyramid
- When My Sugar Walks Down The Street
- A Gypsy Without A Song
- Tonk
- Drawing Room Blues
- Frankie and Johnny
- Jumpin' Room Only
- Lots O' Fingers
- Dear Old Southland (take 1)
- Solitude (take 1)
- Solitude (take 2)
- Lotus Blossom
- Pither Panther Patter (take 1)
- Pither Panther Patter (take 2)
- Body and Soul (take 1)
- Body and Soul (take 2)
- Body and Soul (take 3)
- Sophisticated Lady (take 1)
- Sophisticated Lady (take 2)
- Mr. J.B. Blues (take 1)
- Mr. J.B. Blues (take 2)
- House of Lords
- The Second Portrait of the Lion
- Take the "A" Train
- Cottontail
- "C" Jam Blues
- Flamingo
- Bang-Up Blues
- Tonk
- Johnny Come Lately
- In a Blue Summer Garden
- Great Times
- Perdido
- Take the ''A'' Train
- Oscalypso
- Blues for Blanton
- Take The "A" Train
- Sophisticated Lady
- Perdido
- Prelude To A Kiss
- C Jam Blues
- Mood Indigo
- The Mooche
- Satin Doll
- Solitude
- What Am I Here For
- I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good
- Skin Deep
- Caravan
- Satin Doll
- Cotton Tail
- Echoes of Harlem
- New World A Comin'
- Night Train
- Prelude To A Kiss
- Sophisticated Lady
- In A Sentimental Mood
- Perdido
- Come Sunday
- Take The "A" Train
Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Ladies (Original Broadway Cast)
(Released 1989)
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- Overture: Things Ain't What They Used to Be / Sophisticated Lady / Perdido
- Music Is a Woman
- Hit Me With a Hot Note and Watch Me Bounce
- It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
- Cotton Tail
- Take the "A" Train
- Solitude
- Don't Get Around Much Anymore / I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart
- Caravan
- Something to Live For
- Rockin' in Rhythm
- In a Sentimental Mood
- I'm Beginning to See the Light
- Satin Doll / Just Squeeze Me
- Echoes of Harlem
- I'm Just a Lucky So-And-So
- Imagine My Frustration
- I'm Checking Out Goodbye / Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me
- I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good) / Mood Indigo
- Sophisticated Lady
- It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) (Finale)
The Private Collection, Vol. 1: Studio Sessions: Chicago 1956
(Released 1988)
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- March 19th Blues
- Feet Bone
- In a Sentimental Mood
- Discontented
- Jump for Joy
- Just Scratchin the Surface
- Prelude to a Kiss
- Miss Lucy
- Uncontrieved
- Satin Doll
- Do Not Disturb
- Love You Madly
- Short Sheet Cluster
- Moon Mist
- Long Time Blues
Music by Ellington & Bartók (feat. violin: Nigel Kennedy)
(Released 1986)
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- Sonata for Solo Violin (1944): I. Tempo di ciaccona
- Sonata for Solo Violin (1944): II. Fuga - Risoluto, non troppo vivo
- Sonata for Solo Violin (1944): III. Melodia - Adagio
- Sonata for Solo Violin (1944): IV. Presto
- Mainly Black (from Black, Brown and Beige Suite, arr. Nigel Kenney): I. Introduction (feat. double bass: Alec Dankworth)
- Mainly Black (from Black, Brown and Beige Suite, arr. Nigel Kenney): II. Come Sunday (feat. double bass: Alec Dankworth)
- Mainly Black (from Black, Brown and Beige Suite, arr. Nigel Kenney): III. Work Song (feat. double bass: Alec Dankworth)
- Mainly Black (from Black, Brown and Beige Suite, arr. Nigel Kenney): IV. The Blues (Mauve) (feat. double bass: Alec Dankworth)
- Mainly Black (from Black, Brown and Beige Suite, arr. Nigel Kenney): V. Come Sunday (feat. double bass: Alec Dankworth)
- Jubilee Stomp
- Crole Love Call
- East St. Louis Toodle-OO
- Black and Tan Fantasy
- Hot and Bothered
- Take It Easy
- Cotton Club Stomp
- Tiger Rag
- Old Man Blues
- Mood Indigo
- Saratoga Swing
- Wall Street Wail
- Echoes of the Jungle
- Doin the Voom Voom
- Rocking in Rhythm
- Ring Dem Belld
- Duke's Place
- I'm Just a Lucky So and So
- Cottontail
- Mood Indigo
- Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me
- The Beautiful American
- Black and Tan Fantasy
- Drop Me Off at Harlem
- The Mooche
- In a Mellow Tone
- It Don't Mean a Thing
- Solitude
- Don't Get Around Much Anymore
- I'm Beginning to See the Light
- Just Squeeze Me
- I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good
- Azalea
- Satin Doll
- Star Dust
- One O'Clock Jump
- Stormy Weather
- Take The A Train
- 4:30 Blues
- In Triplicate
- Chile Bowl
- Janet
- Happy Reunion
- Caravan
- Wig Wise
- Mood Indigo (Stereo)
- Hot & Bothered (Stereo)
- Creole Love Call (Stereo)
- East St Louis Toodle-Oo (Stereo)
- Lots O' Fingers (Stereo)
- Black and Tan Fantasy (Stereo)
- Harlem Air Shaft
- I Don't Mind (All Too Soon)
- Rose of the Rio Grande
- Ridin' on a Blue Note
- Boy Meets Horn
- Rose Room
- Stompy Jones
- Jig Walk
- Little Posey
- Warm Valley
- Home (Sentimental Lady or I Didn't Know About You)
- Things Ain't What They Used to Be
- Just A-Sitting and A-Rockin'
- Solitude
- Brazilali Lou
- Five O'Clock Drag
- Perdido
- Slippery Horn
- I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart
- I'm Beginning To See The Light
- The Mood To Be Wooed
- Oh Babe! Maybe Someday
- Downtown Uproar
- Demi-Tasse (Ev'ry Day)
- Azure
- Carnival In Caroline
- Dinah's In A Jam
- The Gal From Joe's
- Riding On A Blue Note
- Crosstown
- Everything Goes
- Transblucency
- Rugged Romeo
- Tip Toe Topic
- Rockaby River
- The Unbooted Character
- The Suburbanite
- Moon Mist
- In A Jam
- Indiana
- I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me
- Someone
- The Mooche
- Tea For Too
- One O'Clock Jump
- When the Saints Go Marching In
- On the Sunny Side of the Street
- Ain't Misbehavin'
- Tiger Rag
- Muskrat Ramble
- Jerry Roll Blues
- C'Est Si Bon
- Hello Dolly
- Mack the Knife
- A Kiss to Build a Dream On
- Tyrees Blues
- Pretty Little Missy
- Dear Old Southland
- Panama
- St. James Infirmary
- New Orleans Stomp
- Black, Brown & Beige - Suite
- Three Black Kings
- New World A-Comin'
- Harlem, for Jazz Band and Orchestra
- Take The 'A' Train
- Jack The Bear
- Ko-Ko
- Morning Glory
- Conga Brava
- Concerto For Cootie
- Bojangles
- Never No Lament
- Blue Goose
- Cotton Tail
- A Portrait Of Bert Williams
- Harlem Air Shaft
- All Too Soon
- Sepia Panorama
- My Greatest Mistake
- In A Mellotone
- Warm Valley
- Across The Track Blues
- Jumpin' Punkins
- John Hardy's Wife
- Take the "A" Train
- Ain't Misbehavin'
- Caravan
- Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me (concerto for Cootie)
- How High the Moon
- Tea for Two
- One O'Clock Jump
- Rockin' in Rhythm
- Passion Flower
- Everything Goes
- The Mooche
- Pretty Woman
- Jam With Sam
- Just Squeeze Me
- Tip Toe Topic
- Transblucency
- Double Ruff
- Ring Dem Bells
- Do Nothn' Till You Hear From Me
- I'm Just a Lucky So and So
- Cotton Tail
- Mood Indigo
- Duke's Place
- The Beautiful American
- Black and Tan Fantasy
- Drop Me Off in Harlem
- In a Mellow Tone
- The Mooche
- Battle Royal
- To You
- Take the "A" Train
- Until I Met You
- Wild Man
- Segue in C
- B D B
- Jumpin' at the Woodside
- It Don't Mean a Thing
- Solitude
- Don't Get Around Much Anymore
- I'm Beginning to See the Light
- Just Squeeze Me
- I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good
- I'm Just a Lucky So and So
- Cotton Tail
- Mood Indigo
- Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me
- Black and Tan Fantasy
- Drop Me Off in Harlem
- The Mooche
- In a Mellowtone
- Take the "A" Train
- Caravan
- I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)
- I'm Beginning To See The Light
- I Didn't Know About You
- I Ain't Got Nothin' but the Blues
- Everything but You
- (I've Got) Something to Live For
- Duke's Place
- Passion Flower
- Cottontail
- Mack the Knife
- It Don't Mean a Thing (If it Ain't Got That Swing)
Born: 1899-04-29
Died: 1974-05-24
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Duke Ellington: Take The "A" Train
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:08
- Published: 15 Jun 2008
- Updated: 14 May 2012
Duke Ellington: Take The "A" Train
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington_Take_The_A_Train
Duke Ellington - C Jam Blues (1942)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:04
- Published: 07 Sep 2007
- Updated: 14 May 2012
A 1942 recording of C Jam Blues beformed by Duke Ellington and a collection of other Jazz giants in a famous recording called "Jam Session". Other artist included Barney Bigard, Sonny Greer, Ray Nance, Joe 'Tricky Sam' Nanton, Rex Stewart, and Ben Webster. Use this link to open my Jazz Giants library playlist. www.youtube.com EUdGs6FKg=
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington__C_Jam_Blues_1942
Duke Ellington, "Take the A Train"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:14
- Published: 09 Oct 2008
- Updated: 14 May 2012
This is a segment from the film Reveille with Beverly from 1943; the song was composed in 1939.
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington,_Take_the_A_Train
Duke Ellington - It don't mean a thing (1943)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:44
- Published: 04 Jan 2008
- Updated: 14 May 2012
Duke Ellington and his orchestra playing this awesome tune in 1943. "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" is a 1931 composition by Duke Ellington with lyrics by Irving Mills, now accepted as a jazz standard. The music was written and arranged by Ellington in August 1931 during intermissions at Chicago's Lincoln Tavern and was first recorded by Ellington and his orchestra for Brunswick Records (Br 6265) on February 2, 1932. Ivie Anderson sang the vocal and trombonist Joe Nanton and alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges played the instrumental solos. The title was based on the oft stated credo of Ellington's former trumpeter Bubber Miley, who was dying of tuberculosis. The song became famous, Ellington wrote, "as the expression of a sentiment which prevailed among jazz musicians at the time." Probably the first song to use the phrase "swing" in the title, it introduced the term into everyday language and presaged the Swing Era by three years. The Ellington band played the song continuously over the years and recorded it numerous times, most often with trumpeter Ray Nance as vocalist.
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington__It_don't_mean_a_thing_1943
Duke Ellington and his orchestra
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:19
- Published: 23 Sep 2005
- Updated: 14 May 2012
Duke Elington et son orchestre it don't mean a thing
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington_and_his_orchestra
Duke Ellington - Take the A Train (Ella Fitzgerald)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:11
- Published: 13 Mar 2007
- Updated: 14 May 2012
Duke Ellington Take the A Train (Ella Fitzgerald)
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington__Take_the_A_Train_Ella_Fitzgerald
In a Sentimental Mood - Duke Ellington & John Coltrane
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:19
- Published: 04 Dec 2008
- Updated: 14 May 2012
Beautiful tune performed by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane in 1962, to a small pictire-video of mine. According to Ellington, the song was born in Durham, North Carolina. "We had played a big dance in a tobacco warehouse, and afterwards a friend of mine, an executive in the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, threw a party for us. I was playing piano when another one of our friends had some trouble with two chicks. To pacify them, I composed this there and then, with one chick standing on each side of the piano." Ellington composed the piece in 1935 and recorded it with his orchestra the same year. Lyrics were later written for the tune by Irving Mills and Manny Kurtz. The song uses a technique called contrapuntal or chromatic embellishment of static harmony. A "line cliché". This is the best-known version of the song, and is featured on "Duke Ellington and John Coltrane" and "Coltrane for Lovers".
http://wn.com/In_a_Sentimental_Mood__Duke_Ellington_John_Coltrane
Duke Ellington - Satin Doll
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:23
- Published: 30 Oct 2006
- Updated: 14 May 2012
Duke Ellington & His Orchestra performing Satin Doll
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington__Satin_Doll
Duke Ellington - Caravan
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:30
- Published: 24 Jan 2010
- Updated: 14 May 2012
Album - The Popular Duke Ellington
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington__Caravan
Billy Taylor, Duke Ellington and Willie the Lion
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:58
- Published: 30 Aug 2006
- Updated: 14 May 2012
www.billytaylorjazz.net presents Billy Taylor playing along with the Master himself, and piano legend Willie the Lion Smith, from a 1969 tv celebration of Billy's birthday.
http://wn.com/Billy_Taylor,_Duke_Ellington_and_Willie_the_Lion
Duke Ellington - Isfahan
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:34
- Published: 27 Mar 2007
- Updated: 14 May 2012
@cookdandbombd - www.cookdandbombd.co.uk Encoded by lfbarfe! Watching the Duke Ellington Jazz 65 show (kindly encoded by Mr lfbarfe), I was VERY taken with the performance of Isfahan, from the "Far East Suite." I've chopped it out to share on YouTube, partly so I can keep it handy. Hope you enjoy it. Johnny Hodge's playing is extraordinarily beautiful, very warm and emotive. If you like this, then check out Demonoid for the full thing.
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington__Isfahan
Duke Ellington 'Cotton Tail'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:51
- Published: 03 Jun 2010
- Updated: 13 May 2012
The song from Duke Ellington's big band, 'Cotton Tail'.
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington_'Cotton_Tail'
Duke Ellington - Flamingo
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:49
- Published: 27 Oct 2006
- Updated: 13 May 2012
Duke Ellington Orchestra with Herb Jeffries on vocals
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington__Flamingo
Duke Ellington on "What's My Line?"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:23
- Published: 04 Dec 2009
- Updated: 09 May 2012
Duke Ellington Orchestra "Take The A Train" 1943
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:00
- Published: 26 Feb 2009
- Updated: 14 May 2012
The Duke still swung when the band recorded this rare version of "Take The A Train" in 1943. The vocalist is Joya Sherrill who actually wrote the lyrics to this famous Ellington composition.
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington_Orchestra_Take_The_A_Train_1943
Duke Ellington Trio - Fleurette Africaine
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:38
- Published: 08 Sep 2009
- Updated: 12 May 2012
"Fleurette Africaine" by Duke Ellington (Piano), Charles Mingus (Bass) and Max Roach (Drums). From the 1962 "Money Jungle" album. Composed by Duke Ellington.
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington_Trio__Fleurette_Africaine
Duke Ellington - The Creole Love Call
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:04
- Published: 27 Apr 2008
- Updated: 10 May 2012
Foxtrot - Slow tempo (Duke Ellington) Duke Ellington and His Orchestra Vocal: Kay Davis
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington__The_Creole_Love_Call
Duke Ellington interview
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:33
- Published: 23 Sep 2006
- Updated: 09 May 2012
Ellington talking about how his inspiration works, from the documentary On The Road With Duke Ellington directed by Robert Drew.
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington_interview
Duke Ellington(Paul Gonsalves)-Crescendo+Diminuendo In Blue
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:53
- Published: 19 Jan 2008
- Updated: 15 May 2012
This shamefully under-rated and largely ignored tenor-sax giant delivers a lesson here on how to play,and swing,the blues.
http://wn.com/Duke_EllingtonPaul_Gonsalves-Crescendo+Diminuendo_In_Blue
Duke Ellington - Perdido (1964)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:14
- Published: 25 Jan 2008
- Updated: 14 May 2012
UK TV concert -featured Paul Gonsalves
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington__Perdido_1964
Duke Ellington & His Orchestra - VIP's Boogie / Jam with Sam
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:27
- Published: 14 Dec 2008
- Updated: 08 May 2012
In the early 1960s five jazz films were commissioned by a corporate sponsor -- one of which featured the Duke Ellington Orchestra. "VIP's Boogie/Jam with Sam" are showcases for the band's phenomenal soloists and just about everyone in the band participates (except, notably, Hodges), including a stunning closer by Cat Anderson. The soloists here are (in order): VIP's Boogie - 1. Harry Carney (bars) 2. Jimmy Hamilton (cl) Jam with Sam - 1. Harold "Shorty" Baker (tp) 2. Paul Gonsalves (ts) 3. Lawrence Brown (tb) 4. Russel Procope (as) 5. Bill Berry (tp) 6. Ray Nance (tp w/ mute) 7. Eddie Mullens (tp) 8. Cat Anderson (tp) Personnel: Ray Nance, Shorty Baker, Cat Anderson, Bill Berry, Ed Mullens (t), Lawrence Brown, Leon Cox, Chuck Connors (tb), Russell Procope, Johnny Hodges (as), Paul Gonsalves (ts), Jimmy Hamilton (cl, ts), Harry Carney (bars), Duke Ellington (p), Aaron Bell (b), Sam Woodyard (d). NYC, Jan 9, 1962.
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington_His_Orchestra__VIP's_Boogie_/_Jam_with_Sam
Duke Ellington - East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:29
- Published: 05 Sep 2009
- Updated: 14 May 2012
*UPDATE* March, 2010 I found out that this version was released in 1956, and it's on the "Historically speaking - The Duke". The trumpeter is Ray Nance :) Thank you motorflygare1 and thanks everyone for helping! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I politely ask jazz lovers to help me find out what year Mr Ellington and his band recorded this version and who played the trumpet. (Was it Bubber Miley or someone else?) This is one of the greatest jazz songs of all time, in my opinion. Sends shivers down my spine.. I've been loving this since my childhood days, so any possible help will be much appreciated :)
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington__East_St_Louis_Toodle-Oo
Duke Ellington & John Coltrane - In a sentimental mood
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:19
- Published: 16 Jul 2009
- Updated: 15 May 2012
Classical tune 'In a sentimental mood' performed by outstanding Duke Ellington and John Coltrane (1962)
http://wn.com/Duke_Ellington_John_Coltrane__In_a_sentimental_mood
Public Domain / Jim.henderson
Creative Commons / Anthony22
Creative Commons / Rudi Riet
Creative Commons / Jim.henderson![The Taft Bridge, also known as the Connecticut Avenue Bridge or William Howard Taft Bridge, is a historic bridge located in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. It carries Connecticut Avenue over Rock Creek and the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, connecting the neighborhoods of Woodley Park and Kalorama. It is situated south of the Duke Ellington Bridge.[1][3] On July 3, 2003, the Taft Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places.[2]](http://web.archive.org./web/20120614000711im_/http://cdn5.wn.com/pd/11/8d/5d30c1c6c0a8bd71da614af98be0_small.jpg "The Taft Bridge, also known as the Connecticut Avenue Bridge or William Howard Taft Bridge, is a historic bridge located in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. It carries Connecticut Avenue over Rock Creek and the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, connecting the neighborhoods of Woodley Park and Kalorama. It is situated south of the Duke Ellington Bridge.[1][3] On July 3, 2003, the Taft Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places.[2]")
Creative Commons / Flickr
WN music poster- WN music poster
- WN music poster
WN music poster
![The Taft Bridge, also known as the Connecticut Avenue Bridge or William Howard Taft Bridge, is a historic bridge located in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. It carries Connecticut Avenue over Rock Creek and the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, connecting the neighborhoods of Woodley Park and Kalorama. It is situated south of the Duke Ellington Bridge.[1][3] On July 3, 2003, the Taft Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places.[2]](http://web.archive.org./web/20120614000711/http://cdn9.wn.com/pd/11/8d/5d30c1c6c0a8bd71da614af98be0_medium.jpg "The Taft Bridge, also known as the Connecticut Avenue Bridge or William Howard Taft Bridge, is a historic bridge located in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. It carries Connecticut Avenue over Rock Creek and the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, connecting the neighborhoods of Woodley Park and Kalorama. It is situated south of the Duke Ellington Bridge.[1][3] On July 3, 2003, the Taft Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places.[2]")
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| name | Duke Ellington |
|---|---|
| background | non_vocal_instrumentalist |
| birth name | Edward Kennedy Ellington |
| birth date | April 29, 1899 |
| Birth place | Washington D.C., United States |
| death date | May 24, 1974 |
| Death place | New York City, United States |
| instrument | Piano |
| genre | Orchestral jazz, swing, big band |
| occupation | Bandleader, pianist, composer |
| years active | 1914–1974 |
| website |
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.
Early life[link]
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 blueprints for the United States Navy.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 were 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. Dunbar High School music teacher Henry Lee Grant gave him private lessons in harmony. With the additional guidance of Washington pianist and band leader Oliver "Doc" Perry, Ellington learned to read sheet music, project a professional style, and improve his technique. Ellington was also inspired by his first encounters with stride pianists James P. Johnson and Luckey Roberts. Later in New York he took advice from Will Marion Cook, Fats Waller, and Sidney Bechet. Ellington started to play gigs in cafés and clubs in and around Washington, D.C. and his attachment grew to be so strong that he turned down an art scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1916. Three months before graduating he dropped out of Armstrong Manual Training School, where he was studying commercial art.
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). He was not only a member, but also the booking agent. His first play date was at the True Reformer's Hall, where he took home 75 cents.
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.
Music career[link]
Early career[link]
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 clientele 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 29. 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. From the beginning of their relationship, Mills arranged recording sessions on nearly every label including Brunswick, Victor, Columbia, OKeh, Perfect, Pathe, the ARC/Plaza group of labels (Cameo, Romeo, Lincoln, Oriole, Domino, Jewel, Banner), Hit of the Week, and Columbia's cheaper labels (Harmony, Diva, Velvet Tone, Clarion) labels which gave Ellington popular recognition, as well giving Ellington's fans the opportunity of hearing multiple versions of the same song. 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. He wrote "The three greatest composers who ever lived are Bach, Delius and Duke Ellington. Unfortunately Bach is dead, Delius is very ill but we are happy to have with us today The Duke".
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 clientele 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's band could certainly swing, but their 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[link]
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 a 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 Holiday 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.
Ellington's hope 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.
Career revival[link]
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 did not associate with. The Ellington and Count Basie orchestras recorded together. During a period when he was between recording contracts he made 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."
Last years[link]
Ellington was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1965, but was turned down. 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.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.
Work in films and the theater[link]
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.
Personal life[link]
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 eldest grandson Edward Kennedy Ellington II also 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.
Ellington died of lung cancer and pneumonia on May 24, 1974, a month after his 75th birthday, and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York City. 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.
Legacy[link]
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 death. When Mercer died, Paul Ellington kept the Duke Ellington Orchestra going. It plays in concert halls around the world to this day.
Awards, honors and recognitions[link]
Memorials[link]
Numerous memorials have been dedicated to Duke Ellington, in cities from New York and Washington, D.C. 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. The coin is part of the U.S. Mint's program honoring the District and the U.S. territories and celebrates Ellington's birthplace in the District of Columbia. Ellington is depicted on the quarter seated at a piano, sheet music in hand, along with the inscription "Justice for All", which is the District's motto.
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.
A statue of Ellington at a piano is featured at the entrance to UCLA's Schoenberg Hall. According to ''UCLA Magazine'':
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[link]
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 ''I Hear a Rhapsody: Live at the Blue Note'', 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.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[link]
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[link]
Grammy Awards[link]
Ellington earned 12 Grammy awards from 1959 to 2000, three of which were posthumous. {| class=wikitable |- | colspan="5" style="text-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 |}
Grammy Hall of Fame[link]
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" style="text-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 |}
Honors and inductions[link]
{| 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 | 1992 | Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame |- align=center | 1986 | 22¢ commemorative U.S. stamp | Issued April 29, 1986 |- 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[link]
References[link]
External links[link]
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:Cancer deaths in New York Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx) Category:Spingarn Medal winners Category:American pianists Category:Jazz record producers
an:Duke Ellington be:Дзюк Элінгтан bg:Дюк Елингтън bs:Duke Ellington ca:Duke Ellington cv:Дюк Эллингтон cs:Duke Ellington da:Duke Ellington de:Duke Ellington et:Duke Ellington el:Ντιούκ Έλινγκτον es:Duke Ellington eo:Duke Ellington eu:Duke Ellington fa:دوک الینگتون fr:Duke Ellington gl:Duke Ellington ko:듀크 엘링턴 hr:Duke Ellington io:Duke Ellington id:Duke Ellington is:Duke Ellington it:Duke Ellington he:דיוק אלינגטון ka:დიუკ ელინგტონი sw:Duke Ellington la:Dux Ellington lv:Djūks Elingtons lb:Duke Ellington lt:Duke Ellington hu:Duke Ellington nl:Duke Ellington ja:デューク・エリントン no:Duke Ellington nn:Duke Ellington oc:Duke Ellington nds:Duke Ellington pl:Duke Ellington pt:Duke Ellington ro:Duke Ellington ru:Эллингтон, Дюк scn:Duke Ellington simple:Duke Ellington sk:Duke Ellington sl:Duke Ellington sh:Duke Ellington fi:Duke Ellington sv:Duke Ellington tl:Duke Ellington th:ดุค เอลลิงตัน tr:Duke Ellington uk:Дюк Еллінгтон zh:艾靈頓公爵This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| name | Ella Fitzgerald |
|---|---|
| background | solo_singer |
| birth name | Ella Jane Fitzgerald |
| alias | First Lady of Song, Lady Ella |
| birth place | Newport News, Virginia, US |
| birth date | April 25, 1917 |
| origin | Yonkers, New York |
| death date | June 15, 1996 |
| death place | Beverly Hills, California, US |
| genre | Swing, traditional pop, vocal jazz |
| instrument | Piano |
| occupation | Vocalist |
| years active | 1934–1993 |
| label | Capitol, Decca, Pablo, Reprise, Verve |
| website | Official website}} |
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the "First Lady of Song" "Queen of Jazz" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves (D3 to D6), she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
She was a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook. Over the course of her 59-year recording career, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.
Early life[link]
Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald. The pair separated soon after her birth and she and her mother went to Yonkers, New York, where they eventually moved in with Tempie's longtime boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923.In her youth Fitzgerald wanted to be a dancer, although she loved listening to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and The Boswell Sisters. She idolized the lead singer Connee Boswell, later saying, "My mother brought home one of her records, and I fell in love with it....I tried so hard to sound just like her."
In 1932, her mother died from a heart attack. Following this trauma, Fitzgerald's grades dropped dramatically and she frequently skipped school. Abused by her stepfather, she was first taken in by an aunt and at one point worked as a lookout at a bordello and also with a Mafia-affiliated numbers runner. When the authorities caught up with her, she was first placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, the Bronx. However, when the orphanage proved too crowded she was moved to the New York Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York, a state reformatory. Eventually she escaped and for a time was homeless.
She made her singing debut at 17 on November 21, 1934, at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. She pulled in a weekly audience at the Apollo and won the opportunity to compete in one of the earliest of its famous "Amateur Nights". She had originally intended to go on stage and dance but, intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, she opted to sing instead in the style of Connee Boswell. She sang Boswell's "Judy" and "The Object of My Affection," a song recorded by the Boswell Sisters, and won the first prize of US$25.00.
Later life[link]
Fitzgerald married at least twice, and there is evidence that she may have married a third time. In 1941 she married Benny Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer and local dockworker. The marriage was annulled after two years.Her second marriage, in December 1947, was to the famous bass player Ray Brown, whom she had met while on tour with Dizzy Gillespie's band a year earlier. Together they adopted a child born to Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances, whom they christened Ray Brown, Jr. With Fitzgerald and Brown often busy touring and recording, the child was largely raised by her aunt, Virginia. Fitzgerald and Brown divorced in 1953, bowing to the various career pressures both were experiencing at the time, though they would continue to perform together.
In July 1957, Reuters reported that Fitzgerald had secretly married Thor Einar Larsen, a young Norwegian, in Oslo. She had even gone as far as furnishing an apartment in Oslo, but the affair was quickly forgotten when Larsen was sentenced to five months hard labor in Sweden for stealing money from a young woman to whom he had previously been engaged.
Fitzgerald was also notoriously shy. Trumpet player Mario Bauza, who played behind Fitzgerald in her early years with Chick Webb, remembered that "she didn’t hang out much. When she got into the band, she was dedicated to her music….She was a lonely girl around New York, just kept herself to herself, for the gig." When, later in her career, the Society of Singers named an award after her, Fitzgerald explained, "I don't want to say the wrong thing, which I always do. I think I do better when I sing."
Already visually impaired by the effects of diabetes, Fitzgerald had both her legs amputated in 1993. In 1996 she died of the disease in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 79. She is buried in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. The career history and archival material from Ella's long career are housed in the Archives Center at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History while her personal music arrangements are at The Library of Congress. Her extensive cookbook collection was donated to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University while her published sheet music collection is at the Schoenberg Library at UCLA.
Career[link]
Big-band singing[link]
In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. She met drummer and bandleader Chick Webb there. Webb had already hired singer Charlie Linton to work with the band and was, ''The New York Times'' later wrote, "reluctant to sign her....because she was gawky and unkempt, a ''diamond in the rough.''" Webb offered her the opportunity to test with his band when they played a dance at Yale University.She began singing regularly with Webb's Orchestra through 1935 at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom. Fitzgerald recorded several hit songs with them, including "Love and Kisses" and "(If You Can't Sing It) You'll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)". But it was her 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket", a song she co-wrote, that brought her wide public acclaim.
Chick Webb died on June 16, 1939, and his band was renamed "Ella and her Famous Orchestra" with Ella taking on the role of nominal bandleader. Fitzgerald recorded nearly 150 sides with the orchestra before it broke up in 1942, "the majority of them novelties and disposable pop fluff".
The Decca years[link]
In 1942, Fitzgerald left the band to begin a solo career. Now signed to the Decca label, she had several popular hits while recording with such artists as the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and the Delta Rhythm Boys.With Decca's Milt Gabler as her manager, she began working regularly for the jazz impresario Norman Granz, and appeared regularly in his Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concerts. Fitzgerald's relationship with Granz was further cemented when he became her manager, although it would be nearly a decade before he could record her on one of his many record labels.
With the demise of the Swing era and the decline of the great touring big bands, a major change in jazz music occurred. The advent of bebop led to new developments in Fitzgerald's vocal style, influenced by her work with Dizzy Gillespie's big band. It this in was period that Fitzgerald started including scat singing as a major part of her performance repertoire. While singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled, "I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the horns in the band doing."
Her 1945 scat recording of "Flying Home" arranged by Vic Schoen would later be described by ''The New York Times'' as "one of the most influential vocal jazz records of the decade....Where other singers, most notably Louis Armstrong, had tried similar improvisation, no one before Miss Fitzgerald employed the technique with such dazzling inventiveness." Her bebop recording of "Oh, Lady be Good!" (1947) was similarly popular and increased her reputation as one of the leading jazz vocalists.
Move to Verve and mainstream success[link]
Fitzgerald was still performing at Granz's JATP concerts by 1955. Fitzgerald left Decca and Granz, now her manager, created Verve Records around her.
Fitzgerald later described the period as strategically crucial, saying, "I had gotten to the point where I was only singing be-bop. I thought be-bop was 'it,' and that all I had to do was go some place and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where I had no place to sing. I realized then that there was more to music than bop. Norman ... felt that I should do other things, so he produced ''The Cole Porter Songbook'' with me. It was a turning point in my life."
''Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook'', released in 1956, was the first of eight multi-album Songbook sets Fitzgerald would record for Verve at irregular intervals from 1956 to 1964. The composers and lyricists spotlighted on each set, taken together, represent the greatest part of the cultural canon known as the ''Great American Songbook''. Her song selections ranged from standards to rarities and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over into a non-jazz audience.
''Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook'' was the only Songbook on which the composer she interpreted played with her. Duke Ellington and his longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn both appeared on exactly half the set's 38 tracks and wrote two new pieces of music for the album: "The E and D Blues" and a four-movement musical portrait of Fitzgerald (the only Songbook track on which Fitzgerald does not sing). The Songbook series ended up becoming the singer's most critically acclaimed and commercially successful work, and probably her most significant offering to American culture. ''The New York Times'' wrote in 1996, "These albums were among the first pop records to devote such serious attention to individual songwriters, and they were instrumental in establishing the pop album as a vehicle for serious musical exploration."
A few days after Fitzgerald's death, ''New York Times'' columnist Frank Rich wrote that in the Songbook series Fitzgerald "performed a cultural transaction as extraordinary as Elvis's contemporaneous integration of white and African-American soul. Here was a black woman popularizing urban songs often written by immigrant Jews to a national audience of predominantly white Christians." Frank Sinatra was moved out of respect for Fitzgerald to block Capitol Records from re-releasing his own recordings in a similar, single composer vein.
Fitzgerald also recorded albums exclusively devoted to the songs of Porter and Gershwin in 1972 and 1983; the albums being, respectively, ''Ella Loves Cole'' and ''Nice Work If You Can Get It''. A later collection devoted to a single composer was released during her time with Pablo Records, ''Ella Abraça Jobim'', featuring the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim.
While recording the Songbooks and the occasional studio album, Fitzgerald toured 40 to 45 weeks per year in the United States and internationally, under the tutelage of Norman Granz. Granz helped solidify her position as one of the leading live jazz performers.
In the mid-1950s, Fitzgerald became the first African-American to perform at the Mocambo, after Marilyn Monroe had lobbied the owner for the booking. The booking was instrumental in Fitzgerald's career. The incident was turned into a play by Bonnie Greer in 2005. There are several live albums on Verve that are highly regarded by critics. ''Ella at the Opera House'' shows a typical JATP set from Fitzgerald. ''Ella in Rome'' and ''Twelve Nights In Hollywood'' display her vocal jazz canon. ''Ella in Berlin'' is still one of her best selling albums; it includes a Grammy-winning performance of "Mack the Knife" in which she forgets the lyrics, but improvises magnificently to compensate.
Voice[link]
As Will Friedwald noted,Unlike any other singer you could name, Fitzgerald has the most amazing asset in the very sound of her voice: it's easily one of the most beautiful and sonically perfect sounds known to man. Even if she couldn't do anything with it, the instrument that Fitzgerald starts with is dulcet and pure and breathtakingly beautiful. As Henry Pleasants has observed, she has a wider range than most opera singers, and many of the latter, including Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, are among her biggest fans. And the intonation that goes with the voice is, to put it conservatively, God-like. Fitzgerald simply exists in tune, and she hits every note that there is without the slightest trace of effort. Other singers tend to sound like they're trying to reach up to a note - Fitzgerald always sounds like she's already there. If anything, she's descending from her heavenly perch and swooping down to whatever pitch she wants.
Henry Pleasants, an American classical-music critic, wrote this about her:
She has a lovely voice, one of the warmest and most radiant in its natural range that I have heard in a lifetime of listening to singers in every category. She has an impeccable and ultimately sophisticated rhythmic sense, and flawless intonation. Her harmonic sensibility is extraordinary. She is endlessly inventive... it is not so much what she does, or even the way she does it, it's what she does not do. What she does not do, putting it simply as possible, is anything wrong. There is simply nothing in performance to which one would take exception... Everything seems to be just right. One would not want it any other way. Nor can one, for a moment imagine it any other way.Fitzgerald had an extraordinary vocal range. A mezzo-soprano (who sang much lower than most classical contraltos), she had a range of “2 octaves and a sixth from a low D or D flat to a high B flat and possibly higher”.
Film and television[link]
In her most notable screen role, Fitzgerald played the part of singer Maggie Jackson in Jack Webb's 1955 jazz film ''Pete Kelly's Blues''. The film costarred Janet Leigh and singer Peggy Lee. Even though she had already worked in the movies (she had sung briefly in the 1942 Abbott and Costello film ''Ride 'Em Cowboy''), she was "delighted" when Norman Granz negotiated the role for her, and, "at the time....considered her role in the Warner Brothers movie the biggest thing ever to have happened to her." Amid ''The New York Times''' pan of the film when it opened in August 1955, the reviewer wrote, "About five minutes (out of ninety-five) suggest the picture this might have been. Take the ingenious prologue ... [or] take the fleeting scenes when the wonderful Ella Fitzgerald, allotted a few spoken lines, fills the screen and sound track with her strong mobile features and voice." Fitzgerald's race precluded major big-screen success. After ''Pete Kelly's Blues'', she appeared in sporadic movie cameos, in ''St. Louis Blues'' (1958), and ''Let No Man Write My Epitaph'' (1960). Much later, she appeared in the 1980s television drama ''The White Shadow''.
She made numerous guest appearances on television shows, singing on ''The Frank Sinatra Show'', ''The Andy Williams Show'', ''The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom'', and alongside other greats Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Mel Tormé, and many others. Perhaps her most unusual and intriguing performance was of the 'Three Little Maids' song from Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operetta ''The Mikado'' alongside Joan Sutherland and Dinah Shore on Shore's weekly variety series in 1963. A performance at "Ronnie Scott's" jazz club in London was filmed and shown on the BBC. Fitzgerald also made a one-off appearance alongside Sarah Vaughan and Pearl Bailey on a 1979 television special honoring Bailey. In 1980, she performed a medley of standards in a duet with Karen Carpenter on the Carpenters' television program, ''Music, Music, Music''.
Fitzgerald also appeared in TV commercials, her most memorable being an ad for Memorex. In the commercials, she sang a note that shattered a glass while being recorded on a Memorex cassette tape. The tape was played back and the recording also broke the glass, asking "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" She also starred in a number of commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken, singing and scatting to the fast-food chain's longtime slogan, "We do chicken right!" Her final commercial campaign was for American Express, in which she was photographed by Annie Leibovitz.
Discography[link]
Collaborations[link]
Fitzgerald's most famous collaborations were with the trumpeter Louis Armstrong, the guitarist Joe Pass, and the bandleaders Count Basie and Duke Ellington.Fitzgerald recorded three Verve studio albums with Armstrong, two albums of standards (1956's ''Ella and Louis'' and 1957's ''Ella and Louis Again''), and a third album featured music from the Gershwin musical ''Porgy and Bess''. Fitzgerald also recorded a number of sides with Armstrong for Decca in the early 1950s. Fitzgerald is sometimes referred to as the quintessential swing singer, and her meetings with Count Basie are highly regarded by critics. Fitzgerald features on one track on Basie's 1957 album ''One O'Clock Jump'', while her 1963 album ''Ella and Basie!'' is remembered as one of her greatest recordings. With the 'New Testament' Basie band in full swing, and arrangements written by a young Quincy Jones, this album proved a respite from the 'Songbook' recordings and constant touring that Fitzgerald was engaged in during this period. Fitzgerald and Basie also collaborated on the 1972 album ''Jazz at Santa Monica Civic '72'', and on the 1979 albums ''Digital III at Montreux'', ''A Classy Pair'' and ''A Perfect Match''. Fitzgerald and Joe Pass recorded four albums together toward the end of Fitzgerald's career. She recorded several albums with piano accompaniment, but a guitar proved the perfect melodic foil for her. Fitzgerald and Pass appeared together on the albums ''Take Love Easy'' (1973), ''Easy Living'' (1986), ''Speak Love'' (1983) and ''Fitzgerald and Pass... Again'' (1976). Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington recorded two live albums, and two studio albums. Her ''Duke Ellington Songbook'' placed Ellington firmly in the canon known as the Great American Songbook, and the 1960s saw Fitzgerald and the 'Duke' meet on the Côte d'Azur for the 1966 album ''Ella and Duke at the Cote D'Azur'', and in Sweden for ''The Stockholm Concert, 1966''. Their 1965 album ''Ella at Duke's Place'' is also extremely well received. Fitzgerald had a number of famous jazz musicians and soloists as sidemen over her long career. The trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie, the guitarist Herb Ellis, and the pianists Tommy Flanagan, Oscar Peterson, Lou Levy, Paul Smith, Jimmy Rowles, and Ellis Larkins all worked with Ella mostly in live, small group settings.
Possibly Fitzgerald's greatest unrealized collaboration (in terms of popular music) was a studio or live album with Frank Sinatra. The two appeared on the same stage only periodically over the years, in television specials in 1958 and 1959, and again on 1967's ''A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim'', a show that also featured Antonio Carlos Jobim. Pianist Paul Smith has said, "Ella loved working with [Frank]. Sinatra gave her his dressing room on ''A Man and His Music'' and couldn't do enough for her." When asked, Norman Granz would cite "complex contractual reasons" for the fact that the two artists never recorded together. Fitzgerald's appearance with Sinatra and Count Basie in June 1974 for a series of concerts at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas was seen as an important incentive for Sinatra to return from his self-imposed retirement of the early 1970s. The shows were a great success, and September 1975 saw them gross $1,000,000 in two weeks on Broadway, in a triumvirate with the Count Basie Orchestra.
Awards, citations and honors[link]
Fitzgerald won thirteen Grammy awards, including one for Lifetime Achievement in 1967.Other major awards and honors she received during her career were the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Medal of Honor Award, National Medal of Art, first Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award, named "Ella" in her honor, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement, UCLA Spring Sing. Across town at the University of Southern California, she received the coveted USC "Magnum Opus" Award which hangs in the office of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation.
Philanthropies[link]
Fitzgerald was a quiet but ardent supporter of many charities and non-profit organizations, including the American Heart Association and the City of Hope Medical Center. In 1993, she established the "Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation", which continues to fund programs that perpetuate Ella's ideals. The Foundation's mission and goals, as well as many of the organizations that receive support, can be found at the official Ella Fitzgerald Foundation website Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation. The Foundation also runs a Children's Book Program in memory of Miss Fitzgerald; called "A Book Just For Me!", it provides over 100,000 brand-new books each year to disadvantaged children.
Tributes/Legacy[link]
In 1997, Newport News, Virginia created a music festival with Christopher Newport University to honor Ella Fitzgerald in her birth city. The Ella Fitzgerald Music Festival is designed to teach the region's youth of the musical legacy of Fitzgerald and jazz. Past performers at the week-long festival include: Diana Krall, Arturo Sandoval, Jean Carne, Phil Woods, Aretha Franklin, Freda Payne, Cassandra Wilson, Ethel Ennis, David Sanborn, Jane Monheit, Dianne Reeves, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Ramsey Lewis, Patti Austin, and Ann Hampton CallawayCallaway, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Patti Austin have all recorded albums in tribute to Fitzgerald. Callaway's album ''To Ella with Love'' (1996) features fourteen jazz standards made popular by Fitzgerald, and the album also features the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Bridgewater's album ''Dear Ella'' (1997) featured many musicians that were closely associated with Fitzgerald during her career, including the pianist Lou Levy, the trumpeter Benny Powell, and Fitzgerald's second husband, double bassist Ray Brown. Bridgewater's following album, ''Live at Yoshi's'', was recorded live on April 25, 1998, what would have been Fitzgerald's 81st birthday.
Austin's album, ''For Ella'' (2002) features 11 songs most immediately associated with Fitzgerald, and a twelfth song, "Hearing Ella Sing" is Austin's tribute to Fitzgerald. The album was nominated for a Grammy. In 2007, ''We All Love Ella'', was released, a tribute album recorded for the 90th anniversary of Fitzgerald's birth. It featured artists such as Michael Bublé, Natalie Cole, Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, Diana Krall, k.d. lang, Queen Latifah, Ledisi, Dianne Reeves, Linda Ronstadt, and Lizz Wright, collating songs most readily associated with the "First Lady of Song". Folk singer Odetta's album ''To Ella'' (1998) is dedicated to Fitzgerald, but features no songs associated with her. Her accompanist Tommy Flanagan affectionately remembered Fitzgerald on his album ''Lady be Good ... For Ella'' (1994).
Fitzgerald is also referred to on the 1987 song "Ella, elle l'a" by French singer France Gall and the Belgian singer Kate Ryan, the 1976 Stevie Wonder hit "Sir Duke" from his album ''Songs in the Key of Life'', and the song "I Love Being Here With You", written by Peggy Lee and Bill Schluger. Sinatra's 1986 recording of "Mack the Knife" from his album ''L.A. Is My Lady'' (1984) includes a homage to some of the song's previous performers, including 'Lady Ella' herself. She is also honored in the song "First Lady" by Canadian artist Nikki Yanofsky.
In 2008, the Downing-Gross Cultural Arts Center in Newport News named its brand new 276-seat theater the Ella Fitzgerald Theater. The theater is located several blocks away from her birthplace on Marshall Avenue. The Grand Opening performers (October 11 & 12, 2008) were Roberta Flack and Queen Esther Marrow.
USPS stamp and Yonkers statue[link]
There is a bronze sculpture of Fitzgerald in Yonkers,created by American artist Vinnie Bagwell, the city in which she grew up. It is located southeast of the main entrance to the Amtrak/Metro-North Railroad station. A bust of Fitzgerald is on the campus of Chapman College in Orange, California. On January 10, 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that Fitzgerald would be honored with her own 39-cent postage stamp. The stamp was released in April 2007 as part of the Postal Service's Black Heritage series.
Filmography[link]
! Year ! Film ! Role ! Notes and awards ''Ride 'Em Cowboy'' Ruby Maggie Jackson Singer ''Let No Man Write My Epitaph'' Flora
References[link]
Further reading[link]
Nicholson, Stuart. (1996) ''Ella Fitzgerald''. Gollancz; ISBN 0-575-40032-3 Gourse, Leslie. (1998) ''The Ella Fitzgerald Companion: Seven Decades of Commentary''. Music Sales Ltd.; ISBN 0-02-864625-8 Johnson, J. Wilfred. (2001) ''Ella Fitzgerald: A Complete Annotated Discography''. McFarland & Co Inc.; ISBN 0-7864-0906-1
External links[link]
Ella Fitzgerald at Find a Grave Ella Fitzgerald Complete Discography Ella Fitzgerald: Twelve Essential Performances by Stuart Nicholson (Jazz.com). Ella Fitzgerald at the Library of Congress Ella Fitzgerald, The Official Ed Sullivan Show Website Redsugar's Ella page 'Remembering Ella' by Phillip D. Atteberry Todd's Ella Fitzgerald Lyrics Page Ella Swings Gently, The Ella Fitzgerald Pages Ella Fitzgerald Tribute CD Video Footage New York Times article on Ella's early years Listen to Big Band Serenade podcast, episode 6 Includes complete NBC remote broadcast of "Ella Fitzgerald & her Orchestra" from the Roseland Ballroom (or download)
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This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| name | John Coltrane |
|---|---|
| background | non_vocal_instrumentalist |
| birth name | John William Coltrane |
| alias | "Trane" |
| birth date | September 23, 1926 |
| Birth place | Hamlet, North Carolina, US |
| death date | July 17, 1967 |
| Death place | Huntington, New York, US |
| genre | Avant-garde jazz, bebop, hard bop, post-bop, modal jazz, free jazz |
| occupation | Saxophonist, composer, bandleader |
| instrument | tenor, soprano, and alto saxophone, bass clarinet |
| years active | 1946–1967 |
| label | Prestige, Blue Note, Atlantic, Impulse!, Pablo |
| associated acts | Alice Coltrane, Miles Davis Quintet, Thelonious Monk, Pharoah Sanders, Eric Dolphy |
| website | johncoltrane.com }} |
| Name | Saint John William Coltrane |
|---|---|
| Birth date | September 23, 1926 |
| birth place | Hamlet, North Carolina, US |
| Death date | July 17, 1967 |
| death place | Huntington, New York, US |
| Venerated in | African Orthodox Church |
| Patronage | All Artists }} |
John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz. He organized at least fifty recording sessions as a leader during his recording career, and appeared as a sideman on many other albums, notably with trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk.
As his career progressed, Coltrane and his music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension. His second wife was pianist Alice Coltrane, and their son Ravi Coltrane is also a saxophonist. Coltrane influenced innumerable musicians, and remains one of the most significant tenor saxophonists in jazz history. He received many posthumous awards and recognitions, including canonization by the African Orthodox Church as Saint John William Coltrane. In 2007, Coltrane was awarded the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his "masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz."
Biography[link]
Early life and career (1926–1954)[link]
John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina on September 23, 1926, and grew up in High Point, NC, attending William Penn High School (now Penn-Griffin School for the Arts). Beginning in December 1938 Coltrane's aunt, grandparents, and father all died within a few months of each other, leaving John to be raised by his mother and a close cousin. In June 1943 he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He enlisted in the Navy in 1945, and played in the Navy jazz band once he was stationed in Hawaii. Coltrane returned to civilian life in 1946 and began jazz theory studies with Philadelphia guitarist and composer Dennis Sandole. Coltrane continued under Sandole's tutelage until the early 1950s. Originally an altoist, during this time Coltrane also began playing tenor saxophone with the Eddie Vinson Band. Coltrane later referred to this point in his life as a time when "a wider area of listening opened up for me. There were many things that people like Hawk, and Ben, and Tab Smith were doing in the '40s that I didn't understand, but that I felt emotionally."An important moment in the progression of Coltrane's musical development occurred on June 5, 1945, when he saw Charlie Parker perform for the first time. In a ''DownBeat'' article in 1960 he recalled: "the first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes." Parker became an early idol, and they played together on occasion in the late 1940s.
Contemporary correspondence shows that Coltrane was already known as "Trane" by this point, and that the music from some 1946 recording sessions had been played for Miles Davis—possibly impressing the latter.
There are recordings of Coltrane from as early as 1945. He was a member of groups led by Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Bostic and Johnny Hodges in the early- to mid-1950s.
Miles and Monk period (1955–1957)[link]
Coltrane was freelancing in Philadelphia in the summer of 1955 while studying with guitarist Dennis Sandole when he received a call from trumpeter Miles Davis. Davis, whose success during the late forties had been followed by several years of decline in activity and reputation, due in part to his struggles with heroin, was again active, and was about to form a quintet. Coltrane was with this edition of the Davis band (known as the "First Great Quintet" - along with Paul Chambers on bass, Philly Joe Jones on drums, and Red Garland on piano - to distinguish it from Davis's later group with Wayne Shorter) from October 1955 through April 1957 (with a few absences), a period during which Davis released several influential recordings which revealed the first signs of Coltrane's growing ability. This First Quintet, represented by two marathon recording sessions for Prestige in 1956 that resulted in the albums ''Cookin''', ''Relaxin''', ''Workin''', and ''Steamin''', disbanded in mid April due partly to Coltrane's heroin addiction.During the later part of 1957 Coltrane worked with Thelonious Monk at New York’s Five Spot, a legendary jazz club, and played in Monk's quartet (July–December 1957), but owing to contractual conflicts took part in only one official studio recording session with this group. A private recording made by Juanita Naima Coltrane of a 1958 reunion of the group was issued by Blue Note Records in 1993 as ''Live at the Five Spot-Discovery!''. More significantly, a high-quality tape of a concert given by this quartet in November 1957 surfaced, and in 2005 Blue Note made it available on CD. Recorded by Voice of America, the performances confirm the group's reputation, and the resulting album, ''Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall'', is widely acclaimed.
''Blue Train'', Coltrane's sole date as leader for Blue Note, featuring trumpeter Lee Morgan, bassist Paul Chambers, and trombonist Curtis Fuller, is often considered his best album from this period. Four of its five tracks are original Coltrane compositions, and the title track, "Moment's Notice," and "Lazy Bird", have become standards. Both tunes employed the first examples of his chord substitution cycles known as Coltrane changes.
Davis and Coltrane again[link]
Coltrane rejoined Davis in January 1958. In October of that year, jazz critic Ira Gitler coined the term "sheets of sound" to describe the style Coltrane developed during his stint with Monk and was perfecting in Davis' group, now a sextet. His playing was compressed, with rapid runs cascading in hundreds of notes per minute. He stayed with Davis until April 1960, working with alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley; pianists Red Garland, Bill Evans, and Wynton Kelly; bassist Paul Chambers; and drummers Philly Joe Jones and Jimmy Cobb. During this time he participated in the Davis sessions ''Milestones'' and ''Kind of Blue'', and the live recordings ''Miles & Monk at Newport'' and ''Jazz at the Plaza''.At the end of this period Coltrane recorded his first album for Atlantic Records, ''Giant Steps'', made up exclusively of his own compositions. The album's title track is generally considered to have the most complex and difficult chord progression of any widely-played jazz composition. ''Giant Steps'' utilizes Coltrane changes. His development of these altered chord progression cycles led to further experimentation with improvised melody and harmony that he would continue throughout his career. {| style="font-size:100%" align="right" border="0" color="black" width=130px | |}
First albums as leader[link]
Coltrane formed his first group, a quartet, in 1960 for an appearance at the Jazz Gallery in New York City. After moving through different personnel including Steve Kuhn, Pete La Roca, and Billy Higgins, the lineup stabilized in the fall with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Steve Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones. Tyner, from Philadelphia, had been a friend of Coltrane's for some years and the two men long had an understanding that the pianist would join Coltrane when Tyner felt ready for the exposure of regularly working with him. Also recorded in the same sessions were the later released albums ''Coltrane's Sound'' and ''Coltrane Plays the Blues''.Still with Atlantic Records, for whom he had recorded ''Giant Steps'', his first record with his new group was also his debut playing the soprano saxophone, the hugely successful ''My Favorite Things''. Around the end of his tenure with Davis, Coltrane had begun playing soprano saxophone, an unconventional move considering the instrument's near obsolescence in jazz at the time. His interest in the straight saxophone most likely arose from his admiration for Sidney Bechet and the work of his contemporary, Steve Lacy, even though Miles Davis claimed to have given Coltrane his first soprano saxophone. The new soprano sound was coupled with further exploration. For example, on the Gershwin tune "But Not for Me", Coltrane employs the kinds of restless harmonic movement (Coltrane changes) used on ''Giant Steps'' (movement in major thirds rather than conventional perfect fourths) over the A sections instead of a conventional turnaround progression. Several other tracks recorded in the session utilized this harmonic device, including "26–2," "Satellite," "Body and Soul", and "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes".
First years with Impulse Records (1960–1962)[link]
In May 1961, Coltrane's contract with Atlantic was bought out by the newly formed Impulse! Records label. An advantage to Coltrane recording with Impulse! was that it would enable him to work again with engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who had taped both his and Davis's Prestige sessions, as well as ''Blue Train''. It was at Van Gelder's new studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey that Coltrane would record most of his records for the label.By early 1961, bassist Davis had been replaced by Reggie Workman while Eric Dolphy joined the group as a second horn around the same time. The quintet had a celebrated (and extensively recorded) residency in November 1961 at the Village Vanguard, which demonstrated Coltrane's new direction. It featured the most experimental music he'd played up to this point, influenced by Indian ragas, the recent developments in modal jazz, and the burgeoning free jazz movement. John Gilmore, a longtime saxophonist with musician Sun Ra, was particularly influential; after hearing a Gilmore performance, Coltrane is reported to have said "He's got it! Gilmore's got the concept!" The most celebrated of the Vanguard tunes, the 15-minute blues, "Chasin' the 'Trane", was strongly inspired by Gilmore's music.
During this period, critics were fiercely divided in their estimation of Coltrane, who had radically altered his style. Audiences, too, were perplexed; in France he was famously booed during his final tour with Davis. In 1961, ''Down Beat'' magazine indicted Coltrane, along with Eric Dolphy, as players of "Anti-Jazz" in an article that bewildered and upset the musicians. Coltrane admitted some of his early solos were based mostly on technical ideas. Furthermore, Dolphy's angular, voice-like playing earned him a reputation as a figurehead of the "New Thing" (also known as "Free Jazz" and "Avant-Garde") movement led by Ornette Coleman, which was also denigrated by some jazz musicians (including Miles Davis) and critics. But as Coltrane's style further developed, he was determined to make each performance "a whole expression of one's being".
Classic Quartet period (1962–1965)[link]
In 1962, Dolphy departed and Jimmy Garrison replaced Workman as bassist. From then on, the "Classic Quartet", as it came to be known, with Tyner, Garrison, and Jones, produced searching, spiritually driven work. Coltrane was moving toward a more harmonically static style that allowed him to expand his improvisations rhythmically, melodically, and motivically. Harmonically complex music was still present, but on stage Coltrane heavily favored continually reworking his "standards": "Impressions", "My Favorite Things", and "I Want to Talk about You."The criticism of the quintet with Dolphy may have had an impact on Coltrane. In contrast to the radicalism of Trane's 1961 recordings at the Village Vanguard, his studio albums in 1962 and 1963 (with the exception of ''Coltrane'', which featured a blistering version of Harold Arlen's "Out of This World") were much more conservative and accessible. He recorded an album of ballads and participated in collaborations with Duke Ellington on the album ''Duke Ellington and John Coltrane'' and with deep-voiced ballad singer Johnny Hartman on an eponymous co-credited album. The Impulse compilation ''Coltrane for Lovers'' is largely drawn from these three albums. The album ''Ballads'' is emblematic of Coltrane's versatility, as the quartet shed new light on old-fashioned standards such as "It's Easy to Remember". Despite a more polished approach in the studio, in concert the quartet continued to balance "standard" and its own more exploratory and challenging music, as can be seen on the ''Impressions'' album (two extended jams including the title track along with "Dear Old Stockholm", "After the Rain" and a blues), ''Coltrane at Newport'' (where he plays "My Favorite Things") and ''Live at Birdland'' both from 1963. Coltrane later said he enjoyed having a "balanced catalogue."
The Classic Quartet produced their most famous record, ''A Love Supreme'', in December 1964. It is reported that Coltrane, who struggled with repeated drug addiction, derived inspiration for ''A Love Supreme'' through a near overdose in 1957 which galvanized him to spirituality. A culmination of much of Coltrane's work up to this point, this four-part suite is an ode to his faith in and love for God. These spiritual concerns would characterize much of Coltrane's composing and playing from this point onwards, as can be seen from album titles such as ''Ascension'', ''Om'' and ''Meditations''. The fourth movement of ''A Love Supreme'', "Psalm", is, in fact, a musical setting for an original poem to God written by Coltrane, and printed in the album's liner notes. Coltrane plays almost exactly one note for each syllable of the poem, and bases his phrasing on the words. Despite its challenging musical content, the album was a commercial success by jazz standards, encapsulating both the internal and external energy of the quartet of Coltrane, Tyner, Jones and Garrison. The album was composed at Coltrane's home in Dix Hills on Long Island.
The quartet only played ''A Love Supreme'' live once—in July 1965 at a concert in Antibes, France. By then, Coltrane's music had grown even more adventurous, and the performance provides an interesting contrast to the original.
Avant-garde jazz and the second quartet (1965–1967)[link]
In his late period, Coltrane showed an increasing interest in avant-garde jazz, purveyed by Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra and others. In developing his late style, Coltrane was especially influenced by the dissonance of Ayler's trio with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray, a rhythm section honed with Cecil Taylor as leader. Coltrane championed many younger free jazz musicians, (notably Archie Shepp), and under his influence Impulse! became a leading free jazz record label.After ''A Love Supreme'' was recorded, Ayler's apocalyptic style became more prominent in Coltrane's music. A series of recordings with the Classic Quartet in the first half of 1965 show Coltrane's playing becoming increasingly abstract, with greater incorporation of devices like multiphonics, utilization of overtones, and playing in the altissimo register, as well as a mutated return to Coltrane's sheets of sound. In the studio, he all but abandoned his soprano to concentrate on the tenor saxophone. In addition, the quartet responded to the leader by playing with increasing freedom. The group's evolution can be traced through the recordings ''The John Coltrane Quartet Plays'', ''Living Space'', ''Transition'' (both June 1965), ''New Thing at Newport'' (July 1965), ''Sun Ship'' (August 1965), and ''First Meditations'' (September 1965).
In June 1965, he went into Van Gelder's studio with ten other musicians (including Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, Marion Brown, and John Tchicai) to record ''Ascension'', a 40-minute long piece that included adventurous solos by the young avant-garde musicians (as well as Coltrane), and was controversial primarily for the collective improvisation sections that separated the solos. After recording with the quartet over the next few months, Coltrane invited Pharoah Sanders to join the band in September 1965.
While Coltrane used over-blowing frequently as an emotional exclamation-point, Sanders would opt to overblow his entire solo, resulting in a constant screaming and screeching in the altissimo range of the instrument. The more Coltrane played with Sanders, the more he gravitated to Sanders' unique sound.
Adding to the quartet[link]
By late 1965, Coltrane was regularly augmenting his group with Sanders and other free jazz musicians. Rashied Ali joined the group as a second drummer. This was the end of the quartet; claiming he was unable to hear himself over the two drummers, Tyner left the band shortly after the recording of ''Meditations''. Jones left in early 1966, dissatisfied by sharing drumming duties with Ali. Both Tyner and Jones subsequently expressed displeasure in interviews, after Coltrane's death, with the music's new direction, while incorporating some of the free-jazz form's intensity into their own solo projects.There are speculations that in 1965 Coltrane may have begun using LSD—informing the sublime, "cosmic" transcendence of his late period. After Jones's and Tyner's departures, Coltrane led a quintet with Pharoah Sanders on tenor saxophone, his second wife Alice Coltrane on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Rashied Ali on drums. Coltrane and Sanders were described by Nat Hentoff as "speaking in tongues". When touring, the group was known for playing very lengthy versions of their repertoire, many stretching beyond 30 minutes and sometimes even being an hour long. Concert solos for band members regularly extended beyond fifteen minutes in duration.
The group can be heard on several live recordings from 1966, including ''Live at the Village Vanguard Again!'' and ''Live in Japan''. In 1967, Coltrane entered the studio several times; though pieces with Sanders have surfaced (the unusual "To Be", which features both men on flutes), most of the recordings were either with the quartet minus Sanders (''Expression'' and ''Stellar Regions'') or as a duo with Ali. The latter duo produced six performances which appear on the album ''Interstellar Space''.
Death and funeral[link]
Coltrane died from liver cancer at Huntington Hospital on Long Island on July 17, 1967, at the age of 40. His funeral was held on Friday, July 21 at St. Peters Lutheran Church in New York City. The Albert Ayler Quartet and The Ornette Coleman Quartet respectively opened and closed the service. He is buried at Pinelawn Cemetery in Farmingdale, N.Y.Biographer Lewis Porter has suggested, somewhat controversially, that the cause of Coltrane's illness was hepatitis, although he also attributed the disease to Coltrane's heroin use. In a 1968 interview Albert Ayler claimed that Coltrane was consulting a Hindu meditative healer for his illness instead of Western medicine, though Alice Coltrane later denied this.
His death surprised many in the musical community who were not aware of his condition. Miles Davis commented: "Coltrane's death shocked everyone, took everyone by surprise. I knew he hadn't looked too good... But I didn't know he was that sick—or even sick at all."
The Coltrane family reportedly remains in possession of much more as-yet-unreleased music, mostly mono reference tapes made for the saxophonist and, as with the 1995 release ''Stellar Regions'', master tapes that were checked out of the studio and never returned. The parent company of Impulse!, from 1965 to 1979 known as ABC Records, purged much of its unreleased material in the 1970s. Lewis Porter has stated that Alice Coltrane, who died in 2007, intended to release this music, but over a long period of time; her son Ravi Coltrane, responsible for reviewing the material, is also pursuing his own career.
Instruments[link]
Coltrane played the clarinet and the alto horn in a community band before taking up the alto saxophone during high school. In 1947, when he joined King Kolax's band, Coltrane switched to tenor saxophone, the instrument he became known for playing primarily. Coltrane's preference for playing melody higher on the range of the tenor saxophone (as compared to Coleman Hawkins or Lester Young) is attributed to his start and training on the alto horn and clarinet; his "sound concept" (manipulated in ones vocal tracts- tongue, throat) of the tenor sax was set higher than the normal range of the instrument.In the early 1960s, during his engagement with Atlantic Records, he increasingly played soprano saxophone as well. The cover of his album ''My Favorite Things'' features Coltrane playing soprano. Toward the end of his career, he experimented with flute in his live performances and studio recordings.
Religious beliefs[link]
Coltrane was born and raised in a Christian home, and was influenced by religion and spirituality from childhood. His maternal grandfather, the Reverend William Blair, was a preacher at an African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in High Point, North Carolina, and John's paternal grandfather, Reverend William H. Coltrane, was an A.M.E. Zion minister in Hamlet, North Carolina. John's parents met through church affiliation, and married in 1925. John was born in 1926. As a youth, John practiced music in the southern African-American church. In ''A Night in Tunisia: Imaginings of Africa in Jazz'', Norman Weinstein notes the parallel between Coltrane's music and his experience in the southern church.In 1955, Coltrane married Juanita Naima Grubbs, a Muslim convert, for whom he later wrote the piece "Naima", and came into contact with Islam. Coltrane explored Hinduism, the Kabbalah, Jiddu Krishnamurti, African history, and the philosophical teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Coltrane also became interested in Zen Buddhism and, later in his career, visited Buddhist temples during his 1966 tour of Japan.
Since 1948, Coltrane had struggled with heroin addiction as well as alcoholism. In 1957, Coltrane had a religious experience which may have been what finally led him to overcome his addictions to alcohol and heroin. In the liner notes of ''A Love Supreme'' (released in 1965) Coltrane states "[d]uring the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music." In his 1965 album ''Meditations'', Coltrane wrote about uplifting people, "...To inspire them to realize more and more of their capacities for living meaningful lives. Because there certainly is meaning to life."
John and Naima Coltrane had no children together and were separated by the summer of 1963, and not long after that John met pianist Alice McLeod (who soon became Alice Coltrane). John and Alice moved in together and had two sons before he was "officially divorced from Naima in 1966, at which time John and Alice were immediately married." John Jr. was born in 1964, Ravi was born in 1965, and Oranyan (Oran) was born in 1967. According to Lavezzoli, "Alice brought happiness and stability to John's life, not only because they had children, but also because they shared many of the same spiritual beliefs, particularly a mutual interest in Indian philosophy. Alice also understood what it was like to be a professional musician".
Moustafa Bayoumi, an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, argues that Coltrane's ''A Love Supreme'' (recorded in December 1964 and released in 1965) features Coltrane chanting, "Allah Supreme." However, in Lewis Porter's book ''John Coltrane: His Life and Music'' (2000), on page 242, he describes the lyrics this way: "Coltrane and another voice—probably himself overdubbed—chant the words 'a love supreme' in unison with the bass ostinato". In Peter Lavezzoli's book ''The Dawn of Indian Music in the West: Bhairavi'' (2006), on page 283, he says, "Certainly in his opening solo in "Acknowledgment," with his constant modulations of the same phrase in different keys, Coltrane assumes the role of the preacher. After stating the theme in every possible key, Coltrane concludes his solo and quietly begins to chant, "A love supreme ... a love supreme," singing the same four notes played by Garrison on the bass. After chanting "A love supreme" sixteen times, Coltrane and the band shift from F minor down to E flat minor, and the chant slowly tapers off." Whatever the case may be, the liner notes to ''A Love Supreme'' appear to mention God in a Universalist sense, and do not advocate one religion over another. Further evidence of this universal view regarding spirituality can be found in the liner notes of ''Meditations'' (1965), in which Coltrane declares, "I believe in all religions."
Lavezzoli points out that "After ''A Love Supreme'', most of Coltrane's song and album titles had spiritual implications: ''Ascension'', ''Om'', ''Selflessness'', ''Meditations'', "Amen," "Ascent," "Attaining," "Dear Lord," "Prayer and Meditation Suite," and the opening movement of ''Meditations'', "The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost," the most obvious Christian reference in any of Coltrane's work." Coltrane's collection of books included ''The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna'', the Bhagavad Gita, Paramahansa Yogananda's ''Autobiography of a Yogi'', which, Lavezzoli points out, "recounts Yogananda's search for universal truth, a journey that Coltrane had also undertaken. Yogananda believed that both Eastern and Western spiritual paths were efficacious, and wrote of the similarities between Krishna and Christ. This openness to different traditions resonated with Coltrane, who studied the Qur'an, the Bible, Kabbalah, and astrology with equal sincerity."
In October 1965, Coltrane recorded ''Om'', referring to the sacred syllable in Hinduism, which symbolizes the infinite or the entire Universe. Coltrane described ''Om'' as the "first syllable, the primal word, the word of power". The 29-minute recording contains chants from the ''Bhagavad Gita'', a Hindu holy book, as well as Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders chanting from a Buddhist text, ''The Tibetan Book of the Dead'', and reciting a passage describing the primal verbalization "om" as a cosmic/spiritual common denominator in all things.
Coltrane's spiritual journey was interwoven with his investigation into world music. He believed not only in a universal musical structure which transcended ethnic distinctions, but in being able to harness the mystical language of music itself. Coltrane's study of Indian music led him to believe that certain sounds and scales could "produce specific emotional meanings." According to Coltrane, the goal of a musician was to understand these forces, control them, and elicit a response from the audience. Coltrane said: "I would like to bring to people something like happiness. I would like to discover a method so that if I want it to rain, it will start right away to rain. If one of my friends is ill, I'd like to play a certain song and he will be cured; when he'd be broke, I'd bring out a different song and immediately he'd receive all the money he needed."
Legacy[link]
The influence Coltrane has had on music spans many different genres and musicians. Coltrane's massive influence on jazz, both mainstream and avant-garde, began during his lifetime and continued to grow after his death. He is one of the most dominant influences on post-1960 jazz saxophonists and has inspired an entire generation of jazz musicians. In 1965, he was inducted into the ''Down Beat'' Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1972, ''A Love Supreme'' was certified gold by the RIAA for selling over half a million copies in Japan. This album, as well as ''My Favorite Things'', was certified gold in the United States in 2001. In 1982 Coltrane was awarded a posthumous Grammy for "Best Jazz Solo Performance" on the album ''Bye Bye Blackbird'', and in 1997, was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.His widow, Alice Coltrane, after several decades of seclusion, briefly regained a public profile before her death in 2007. Coltrane's son, Ravi Coltrane, named after the great Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, who was greatly admired by Coltrane, has followed in his father's footsteps and is a prominent contemporary saxophonist. A former home, the John Coltrane House in Philadelphia, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1999. His last home, the John Coltrane Home in the Dix Hills neighborhood of Huntington, New York, where he resided from 1964 until his death in 1967, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 29, 2007.
His revolutionary use of multi-tonic systems in jazz has become a widespread composition and reharmonization technique known as "Coltrane changes".
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed John Coltrane on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
Coltrane's tenor (Selmer Mark VI, serial number 125571, dated 1965) and soprano (Selmer Mark VI, serial number 99626, dated 1962) saxophones were auctioned on February 20, 2005 to raise money for the John Coltrane Foundation. The soprano raised $70,800 but the tenor remained unsold.
Religious figure[link]
After Coltrane's death, congregants at the Yardbird Temple, in San Francisco, began worshipping Coltrane as God incarnate. The Temple was named for Charlie Parker, who they equated to John the Baptist. The St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church, San Francisco, which is fondly known as the "Coltrane church", is the only African Orthodox Church which incorporates Coltrane's music and his lyrics as prayers in its liturgy. In order to become affiliated with the AOC, Coltrane was "demoted" from being God to a saint.In 1996, documentary filmmaker Alan Klingenstein made a short (26 minute) film called The Church of Saint Coltrane. Another documentary on Coltrane, featuring the church and presented by Alan Yentob, was produced for the BBC in 2004. Samuel G. Freedman writes in his ''New York Times'' article "Sunday Religion Inspired By Saturday Nights", December 1, 2007,
... the Coltrane church is not a gimmick or a forced alloy of nightclub music and ethereal faith. Its message of deliverance through divine sound is actually quite consistent with Coltrane’s own experience and message.In the same article, he comments on John Coltrane's place in the canon of American music.
In both implicit and explicit ways, Coltrane also functioned as a religious figure. Addicted to heroin in the 1950s, he quit cold turkey, and later explained that he had heard the voice of God during his anguishing withdrawal. In 1964, he recorded ''A Love Supreme'', an album of original praise music in a free-jazz mode... In 1966, an interviewer in Japan asked Coltrane what he hoped to be in five years, and Coltrane replied, "A saint."
John Coltrane is depicted as one of the ninety saints in the monumental Dancing Saints icon of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. The Dancing Saints icon is a painting rendered in the Byzantine iconographic style that wraps around the entire church rotunda. The icon was executed by iconographer Mark Dukes, an ordained deacon at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, who has painted other icons of Coltrane for the Coltrane Church. Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey included Coltrane on their list of historical black saints and made a "case for sainthood" for him in an article on their former website.
Discography[link]
''Discography below lists albums conceived and approved by Coltrane as a leader during his lifetime. It does not include his many releases as a sideman, sessions assembled into albums by various record labels after Coltrane's contract expired, sessions with Coltrane as a sideman later reissued with his name featured more prominently, or posthumous compilations except for the one which he approved before his death. See main discography link above for full list.''
Prestige and Blue Note Records[link]
Atlantic Records[link]
Impulse! Records[link]
References[link]
Sources[link]
External links[link]
Category:1926 births Category:1967 deaths Category:20th-century Christian saints Category:ABC Records artists Category:African American composers Category:American jazz bandleaders Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz soprano saxophonists Category:American jazz tenor saxophonists Category:American saints Category:Anglican saints Category:Atlantic Records artists Category:Avant-garde jazz composers Category:Avant-garde jazz flautists Category:Avant-garde jazz saxophonists Category:Bebop composers Category:Bebop saxophonists Category:Blue Note Records artists Category:Cancer deaths in New York Category:Combs College of Music alumni Category:Deaths from liver cancer Category:Free jazz clarinetists Category:Free jazz composers Category:Free jazz flautists Category:Free jazz saxophonists Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Hard bop saxophonists Category:Impulse! Records artists Category:Miles Davis Category:Modal jazz saxophonists Category:Musicians from North Carolina Category:Musicians from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:Pablo Records artists Category:People from Richmond County, North Carolina Category:Post-bop composers Category:Post-bop saxophonists Category:Prestige Records artists Category:Savoy Records artists Category:United States Navy sailors
an:John Coltrane bn:জন কোল্ট্র্যান bg:Джон Колтрейн bs:John Coltrane ca:John Coltrane cs:John Coltrane da:John Coltrane de:John Coltrane et:John Coltrane el:Τζον Κολτρέιν es:John Coltrane eo:John Coltrane eu:John Coltrane fa:جان کولترین fr:John Coltrane fy:John Coltrane gl:John Coltrane ko:존 콜트레인 hr:John Coltrane io:John Coltrane id:John Coltrane it:John Coltrane he:ג'ון קולטריין ka:ჯონ კოლტრეინი sw:John Coltrane lv:Džons Koltreins lt:John Coltrane hu:John Coltrane nl:John Coltrane ja:ジョン・コルトレーン no:John Coltrane nn:John Coltrane pms:John Coltrane nds:John Coltrane pl:John Coltrane pt:John Coltrane ro:John Coltrane ru:Колтрейн, Джон sc:John Coltrane simple:John Coltrane sk:John Coltrane sr:Џон Колтрејн sh:John Coltrane fi:John Coltrane sv:John Coltrane th:จอห์น โคลเทรน tr:John Coltrane uk:Джон Колтрейн zh:約翰·柯川This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| name | Billy Taylor |
|---|---|
| landscape | yes |
| background | non_vocal_instrumentalist |
| birth name | William Taylor |
| birth date | July 24, 1921 |
| died | December 28, 2010 |
| origin | Greenville, North Carolina, U.S. |
| instrument | Piano |
| genre | Jazz, hard bop |
| occupation | Pianist, composer, educator, broadcaster |
| years active | 1944–2010 |
| associated acts | Charlie ParkerDizzy GillespieMiles DavisHerbie MannChristian McBrideNancy WilsonDee Dee BridgewaterCyrus Chestnut |
| website | http://www.billytaylorjazz.com |
| notable instruments | }} |
Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and since 1994, he was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Taylor was a Jazz activist. He sat on the ''Honorary Founders Board'' of The Jazz Foundation of America. In 1989, Billy Taylor, Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs started ''The Jazz Foundation'' to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians that survived Hurricane Katrina.
Billy Taylor was also one of the foremost jazz educators. He lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador. Critic Leonard Feather once said, "It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world's foremost spokesman for jazz."
Biography[link]
Early life & career[link]
Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina but moved to Washington, D.C. when he was five. He grew up in a musical family and learned to play different instruments as a child, including guitar, drums and saxophone. But he was most successful at the piano and took classical piano lessons with Henry Grant, the same teacher that had educated Duke Ellington a generation earlier. He made his first professional appearance playing keyboard at the age of 13 and the compensation was one dollar. Taylor attended Dunbar High School, America's first high school for African American students. He went to Virginia State College and majored in sociology. Pianist Dr. Undine Smith Moore noticed young Taylor's talent in piano and he changed his major to music, graduating with a degree in music in 1942.Taylor set out to New York City after graduation and started playing piano professionally from 1944, first with Ben Webster's Quartet on New York's 52nd Street. The same night he joined Webster's Quartet, he met Art Tatum, who became his mentor. Among other musicians he worked with, he played with Machito's mambo band, when he developed a love for Latin music. After an eight-month tour with the Don Redman Orchestra in Europe, Taylor stayed there with his wife Theodora and worked in Paris and Holland. Taylor returned to New York later that year and cooperated with Bob Wyatt and Sylvia Syms at the Royal Roost jazz club and Billie Holiday in a successful show called Holiday on Broadway. A year later, he became the house pianist at Birdland and performed with many of the greatest jazz talents in history, including Charlie Parker, J.J. Johnson, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. He played at Birdland longer than any other pianist in the history of the club. In 1949, Taylor published his first book, a textbook about bebop piano styles.
Mid-career[link]
He composed one of the his most famous tunes in 1952 "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free", and subsequently achieving more popularity with Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Nina Simone covered the song in her 1967 album ''Silk and Soul''. It is widely known in the UK as a piano instrumental version, used for BBC Television's ''Film programme''. Solomon Burke, Derek Trucks, The Lighthouse Family, Levon Helm and Jools Holland & His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra have also recorded versions.He continued dozens of the recordings in the 1950s and 1960s, notably the album he made with the Cuban percussionist Candido Camero titled Billy Taylor Trio with Candido, My Fair Lady Loves Jazz, Cross Section and Taylor Made Jazz.
His broadcast career also thrived. In 1961, Taylor founded New York's Jazzmobile, which provides arts education program of the highest quality via workshops, master classes, lecture demonstrations, arts enrichment programs, outdoor summer mobile concerts, special indoor concerts and special projects. In 1958, he became the Musical Director of NBC's ''The Subject is Jazz'', the first ever television series focusing on jazz. The 13-part series was produced by the new National Educational Television Network (NET) and hosted guests including Duke Elington, Aaron Copland, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Rushing and Langston Hughes. He also worked as a DJ and program director on radio station WNEW in New York in the 1960s. During the 1960s, the Billy Taylor Trio was a regular feature of the Hickory House on West 55th street in Manhattan. From 1969 to 1972, Taylor served as the music director for''The David Frost Show'' and was the first African American to lead a talk show band. Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich were just a few of the jazz musicians who played on the show. In 1981, Jazzmobile produced a Jazz special for the National Public Radio, and for which the program received the Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting Programs. Jazzmobile's 1990 Tribute Concert to Dr. Taylor at Avery Fisher Hall, part of the JVC Jazz Festival, featured Nancy Wilson, Ahmad Jamal Trio and Terence Blanchard Quintet.
Later career[link]
In 1981, after being profiled by CBS News Sunday Morning, he was hired as an on-air correspondent and then conducted more than 250 interviews with musicians. He received an Emmy Award for his segment on the multi-talented Quincy Jones.In 1989, Taylor formed his own "Taylor Made" record label to document his own music. ''You Tempt Me'' (1996) is a strong outing by his 1985 trio (with Victor Gaskin and drummer Curtis Boyd) that includes a rendition of Duke Ellington's "Take the "A" Train". ''White Nights'' (1991) has Taylor, Gaskin, and drummer Bobby Thomas performing live from Leningrad in the Soviet Union, then came ''Solo'' (1992), and ''Jazzmobile Allstars'' (1992). In 1997, he received New York state governor's art award.
Taylor suffered from a 2002 stroke, which affected his right hand, but he continued to perform almost until his death. He died after a heart attack on Dec. 28, 2010 in Manhattan, at age of 89. His legacy was honored in a Harlem memorial service on Jan.11, 2011, featuring performances by Taylor's final working trio, bassist Chip Jackson and drummer Winard Harper, along with longtime Taylor associates Jimmy Owens, Frank Wess, Geri Allen, Christian Sands and vocalist Cassandra Wilson. He is survived by his wife of 65 years, Theodora Castion Taylor; a daughter, Kim Taylor-Thompson; and a granddaughter. His son, artist Duane Taylor, died in 1988.
Legacy[link]
Taylor appeared on hundreds of albums and composed more than 300 songs during his career spanned over six decades. His 1963 song, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free" dealt with civil rights issues and became the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. It was selected as "one of the greatest songs of the sixties" by the New York Times and was the theme music of the 1996 film "Ghosts of Mississippi". His 1967 instrumental recording of the tune is widely known in the United Kingdom as the opening theme music for the long-running TV series The Film Programme, for many years hosted by Barry Norman.Engaging and educating more audience and young people had been a central part of Taylor's career. He holds the Wilbur D. Barrett Chair of Music at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale, and holds 23 honorary degrees. Besides publishing instructional books on jazz, he taught jazz course at Howard University, Long Island University, The Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Massachusetts, where he earned his Masters and Ph.D in 1975.
His extensive appearance in television series and jazz educational programs brought the music he loves to the masses at the grass roots level as well as more formal arenas. He's sometimes more known as a television personality than a pianist. He was quoted saying in a 2007 article in the Post Magazine: "there's no question that being an advocate eclipsed my reputation as a musician. It was my doing. I wanted to prove to people that jazz has an audience. I had to do that for me."
Awards and honors[link]
With over twenty-three honorary doctoral degrees, Taylor was also the recipient of two Peabody Awards for Jazzmobile, NEA Jazz Masters Award (1998) an Emmy Award (1983) for carrying out over 250 interviews for "CBS News Sunday Morning", a Grammy Award (2004) and a host of prestigious and highly coveted prizes, such as the Down Beat magazine's Lifetime Achievement award (1984), National Medal of Arts (1992), and the Tiffany Award (1991). He was also honored in 2001 with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Jazz Living Legend Award, and election to the Hall of Fame for the International Association for Jazz Education. He served as the artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he developed many critically acclaimed concert series including the Louis Armstrong Legacy series, and the annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. In addition, he performed at the White House seven times and was one of only three jazz musicians to be appointed to the National Council of the Arts.
Discography[link]
As leader[link]
As sideman[link]
With Arkadia Jazz All Stars
References[link]
External links[link]
Category:1921 births Category:2010 deaths Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz pianists Category:Atlantic Records artists Category:Bebop pianists Category:Deaths from heart failure Category:GRP Records artists Category:Hard bop pianists Category:Mainstream jazz pianists Category:Mercury Records artists Category:People from Greenville, North Carolina Category:Prestige Records artists Category:Radio personalities from New York Category:Riverside Records artists Category:Savoy Records artists Category:Soul-jazz pianists Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients Category:University of Massachusetts Amherst alumni Category:Virginia State University alumni Category:Musicians from Washington, D.C. Category:American jazz educators
cs:Billy Taylor de:Billy Taylor es:Billy Taylor eo:Billy Taylor fr:Billy Taylor (pianiste) hy:Բիլլի Թեյլոր nl:Billy Taylor pt:Billy Taylor ru:Тейлор, Билли fi:Billy Taylor sv:Billy TaylorThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The term ''Creole'' and its cognates in other languages — such as ''crioulo'', ''criollo'', ''creolo'', ''créole'', ''kriolu'', ''criol'', ''kreyol'', ''kreol'', ''kriulo'', ''kriol'', ''krio'', etc. — have been applied to people in different countries and epochs, with rather different meanings. Those terms are almost always used in the general area of present or former colonies in other continents, and originally referred to locally born people with foreign ancestry.
United States [link]
Alaska [link]
People of mixed Alaska Native American and Russian ancestry. The intermingling of ''promyshlenniki'' men with Aleut and Alutiiq women in the late 19th century gave rise to a people who assumed a prominent position in the economy of Russian Alaska and the north Pacific rim.
Chesapeake Colonies [link]
During the early settlement of the colonies, children born of immigrants in the colonies were often referred to as creole. This is found more often in the Chesapeake Colonies
Louisiana [link]
In the United States, the word "Creole" refers to people of any race or mixture thereof who are descended from settlers in colonial French Louisiana before it became part of the United States in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase. Some writers from other parts of the country have mistakenly assumed the term to refer only to people of mixed racial descent, but this is not the traditional Louisiana usage. Originally it referred to people of French and then Spanish descent who were born in Louisiana, to distinguish them from immigrants. Later Creole was sometimes used as well to refer to people of African descent born in Louisiana. Later the terms were differentiated, by French Creole (European ancestry) and Louisiana Creole (meaning someone of mixed racial ancestry).
Contemporary usage has broadened the meaning of Louisiana Creoles to describe a broad cultural group of people of all races who share a French or Spanish background. Louisianans who identify themselves as "Creole" are most commonly from historically Francophone communities, with some ancestors who came to Louisiana either directly from France or via the French colonies in the Caribbean. Many Louisiana creole families arrived in Louisiana during the Colonial Period following the Slave Uprising led by Toussaint Breda (later called L'Overture) in 1791 in Ste. Dominique, later called Haiti. Protesting French Colonial rule - and winning the fight with the assistance, in part of the mosquito, as the French plantation owners most holding land grants from Louis XVI (farming primarily sugar) were succumbing to yellow fever. The slave army of L'Overture originally in alliance with the French to exile Spanish and English eventually helped evict them too creating a free Haiti. Though L'Overture wound up being imprisoned by Napoleon in a remote mountain jail dying of starvation and neglect while his army continued in liberating Sante Dominigue concurrently with Napoleon's Louisiana Purchase for his French King. With the French Revolution (1789) and Napoleon Bonaparte's deceiving L'Overture (despite his full cooperation with the French beginning with the Jacobian, Robespierre, and anti-slavery minded French a few years earlier) the French Colonist regime was then forced into exile with most being shipped first to Cuba. From Cuba the exiles finally arrived in the French governed and purchased Louisiana Colony where their descendents can be traced to date. New Orleans and the surrounding river parishes are the mainstays of Creole culture. The language however is a dying form. Spoken creole is dying with the dissolution of Creole families and continued 'Americanization' in the area. Most remaining creole lexemes have drifted into popular culture. Traditional French creole is spoken among those families determined to keep the language alive or in regions below New Orleans around St. James and St. John Parishes where German immigres originally settled (also known as 'the German Coast', or Les Cote Des Allemandes) and cultivated the land keeping the ill-equipped French Colonists from starvation during the Colonial Period and adopting commonly spoken French and Creole French (arriving with the exiles) as a language of trade.
Creoles are characterized as being largely Roman Catholic and influenced by traditional French culture left from the first Colonial Period officially beginning with the arrival of the Ursuline Nuns in 1721 (they were preceded by another order, the sisters of the Sacred Heart with whom they lived until their first convent could be built with monies from the French Crown. Both Orders still educate girls in 2010). The "fiery latin temperament" described by early scholars on New Orleans culture made sweeping generalizations to accommodate Creoles of Spanish heritage as well as the original French. The mulatto creoles, descendants of mixing of European colonists and slaves or sometimes 'Gens du Colour' (free men and women of colour) began during the colonial periods with the arrival of slave populations. Their collective cultures are known as "Creole" though many non-Louisianans often do not distinguish between the two groups, or do not recognize the distinctions held around the New Orleans area between the original white colonists that produced offspring who were the original first born in Louisiana and those creoles that were a mixture of European and slave populations or free men and women of color ancestry and whose skin was mulatto for lack of a better descriptor. Those 'criollos' the word of which comes from the Spanish language indicates "mixed" and was a term used in the post-French governance period to distinguish the two groups of New Orleans area and down river creoles. Both 'mulatto' (though specific amounts of blood from different ancestors is too lengthy a subject to interject here) and European creole groups share many of the same traditions, and language into this age but whose socio-economic roots differed in the original period of Louisiana history. The term is also often used to mean simply "pertaining to the New Orleans area".
Louisianans descended from the French Acadians of Canada are not creoles at all in the strictest sense but referred to as and identify as 'Cajuns' - a derivation of the word Acadian, indicating French Canadian settlers as ancestors. Though the land areas overlap around New Orleans and down river, Cajun culture and language extend westward all along the southern coast of Louisiana concentrating in areas southwest of New Orleans around Lafayette, Marksville, and as far as Crowley, Abbeville and into the rice belt of Louisiana nearer Lake Charles and the Texas border.
Africa [link]
Portuguese Africa [link]
The English word ''creole'' derives from the French ''créole'', which in turn came from Portuguese ''crioulo''. This word, a derivative of the verb ''criar'' ("to raise"), was coined in the 15th century, in the trading and military outposts established by Portugal in West Africa and Cape Verde. It originally referred to descendants of the Portuguese settlers who were born and "raised" locally. The word then spread to other languages, probably adopted from Portuguese slave traders who supplied most of the slaves to South America through the 16th century.While the Portuguese may have originally reserved the term ''crioulo'' for people of strictly European descent, the ''crioulo'' population came to be dominated by numerous people of mixed Portuguese and African ancestry. This mixing happened relatively quickly in most Portuguese colonies of the time. The growth of a mixed population was due to both the scarcity of Portuguese-born women in the settlements, and to the Portuguese Crown policy of encouraging mixed marriages in the colonies to create more stable populations.
The ''crioulos'' of mixed Portuguese and African descent eventually gave rise to several major ethnic groups in Africa, especially in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé e Príncipe, Ziguinchor (Casamance), Angola, Mozambique. Only a few of these groups have retained the name ''crioulo'' or variations of it:
Other parts of Africa [link]
Sierra Leone, founded by the British to serve as a colony for freed slaves, has a Creole ethnic group whose ancestors migrated from Canada, where many were Americans who had fought with the British and settled there after the American Revolutionary War; the British West Indies, and various parts of West Africa. Their offspring (born in the Freetown colony) came to be known as ''Creoles'' or its cognate ''Krio''. Many of these Creoles or ''Krios'' were of mixed ancestry, carrying admixture from the African slave heritage of the Americas as well as ancestry from allied Afo-European ethnic clans such as the Sherbro people.Similarly, the United States established a colony for freed slaves in what became Liberia. Descendants of African-American immigrants, or Americo-Liberians, were often called Creoles. Many of the African-American immigrants and their descendants were of mixed ancestry.
Creoles from these two nations emigrated to other African countries, such as Equatorial Guinea, where they were known as ''Krios''; or Nigeria, where they were known as ''Saros''. Some scholars report that a new wave of ''Krio'' immigrant descendants of freed slaves of Sierra Leone and Liberia are known as Fernandinos (see Fernando Po). The original Fernandinos of the region who existed on the islands of Bioko and Sao Tome and Principe, both discovered by explorer Fernão do Pó, stemmed from indigenous, Spanish and/or Portuguese ancestry.
An additional sub-group of African descent from the Caribbean and South America on Bioko Island were descendants of freed Cuban and Brazilian slaves brought to the islands during the 17th century and 19th century. People of this specific ancestry were part of the ''emancipado'' population which included other distinct groups assimilated into the local colonial society.
Brazil [link]
In Brazil, the word ''crioulo'' initially denoted persons of Portuguese parentage born in Brazil (as distinct from colonists that migrated from Portugal), like in Portuguese-speaking Africa. It eventually came to denote a person of predominantly African ancestry. In colonial Brazil, it was common refer to a Brazilian-born slave as a ''crioulo,'' whereas slaves from Africa were known as "Africans". Thus ''crioulo'' came to refer to slaves born and raised in Brazil. Later, ''crioulos'' was used to refer, derogatorily, to all people of African ancestry.African slaves were imported into the country from the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. Due to their multiple ethnic roots and to the wide geographic expanse of the country, the slaves and their descendants did not constitute a cohesive ethnic group. On the other hand, as in the Portuguese colonies in Africa, people of mixed Portuguese and African ancestry soon came to constitute a large segment of the population. There were no sharp class divisions based on degrees of African heritage.
Former Spanish Colonies [link]
In regions that were formerly colonies of Spain, the Spanish word ''criollo'' (literally, "native," "local") historically referred to class in the colonial caste system, comprising people born in the colonies with unmixed Spanish descent. People with at most 1/8 of Amerindian ancestry, were also considered Criollos; but this rule did not apply to black African ancestry. The crown often passed over Criollos for the top military, administrative, and religious offices in the colonies in favor of the Spanish-born ''Peninsulares'' (literally "born in the Iberian Peninsula").The word Criollo is a cognate of English "Creole", and often translated by it; even though many other Creole peoples never were historically connected to Spain or to the colonial system, and/or were never defined in terms of racial purity.
Spanish America [link]
The racially based caste system was in force throughout the Spanish colonies in the Americas, since the 16th century. By the 19th century, this discrimination and the example of the American Revolution and the ideals of the Enlightenment eventually led the Spanish American Criollo elite to rebel against the Spanish rule. With the support of the lower classes, they engaged Spain in the Spanish American wars of independence (1810–1826), which ended with the break-up of former Spanish Empire in America into a number of independent republics.
Caribbean [link]
In many parts of the Southern Caribbean, the term "Creolean" is used to refer to a French-speaking person of primarily European ethnicity born in the Caribbean islands.The term ''Creole'' is sometimes used to describe anyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, who was born and raised in the region. In Guadeloupe and Martinique, 'creole' is used to refer to people of mixed race accepted as white, and people classified as black/mulatto who are mixed of European, African and both native and east Indian. In the French West Indies, people of African and East Indian ancestry are called "Bata-Indians," which is not considered a pejorative term.
Creole, 'Kreyol' or 'Kweyol' also refers to the creole languages in the Caribbean, including Antillean Creole, Haitian Creole, and Jamaican Creole, among others.
Indian Ocean[link]
The usage of 'creole' in the islands of the southwest of the Indian Ocean varies according to the island. In Réunion and the Seychelles, the term 'creole' includes people born there of all ethnic groups. In Mauritius, on the other hand, the term excludes people of primarily European descent. In all three, 'creole' also refers to languages derived from French.
See also[link]
References[link]
External links [link]
Category:Multiracial affairs Category:Ethnonyms
bg:Креоли ca:Crioll cs:Kreol de:Kreolen et:Kreoolid el:Κρεολοί es:Criollo fr:Créoles it:Creolo he:קריאולים lt:Kreolai nl:Criollo (persoon) ja:クリオーリョ pl:Kreole pt:Crioulos qu:Kriyullu ru:Креол sr:Креоли sv:Kreol uk:Креоли zh:克里奧人This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
3:00
Duke Ellington Orchestra "Take The A Train" 1943
harryoakley
Duke Ellington Orchestra "Take The A Train" 1943
The Duke still swung when the band recorded this rare version of "Take The A Train" in 1943. The vocalist is Joya Sherrill who actually wrote the lyrics to this famous Ellington composition.
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