(b Washington, DC, 29 April 1899; d New York, 24 May 1974). American jazz composer, bandleader and pianist. He was for decades a leading figure in big-band jazz and remains the most significant composer of the genre.
2. Style and musical language.
ANDRÉ HODEIR/GUNTHER SCHULLER
Ellington’s father was a butler and intended him to become an artist. He began to study the piano when he was seven and was much influenced by the ragtime pianists; at the age of 17 he made his professional debut. His first visit to New York, in early 1923, ended in financial failure, but on Fats Waller’s advice he moved there later that year with Elmer Snowden’s Washington band, the Washingtonians: Sonny Greer (drums), Otto Hardwick (saxophones), Snowden (banjo) and Artie Whetsol (trumpet). Between 1923 and 1927 this small group, which played at the Hollywood and Kentucky clubs on Broadway, was gradually enlarged to a ten-piece orchestra by the addition of Bubber Miley (trumpet), Tricky Sam Nanton (trombone), Harry Carney (baritone saxophone), Rudy Jackson (clarinet and tenor saxophone) and Wellman Braud (double bass); Fred Guy replaced Snowden on banjo. The band’s early recordings (East St Louis Toodle-oo, 1926, Vic., and Black and Tan Fantasy, 1927, Bruns.) reveal growing originality.
During the following period (1927–30), at the Cotton Club in Harlem, Ellington began to share with Louis Armstrong the leading position in the jazz world. The orchestra grew to 12 musicians, including Barney Bigard (clarinet), Johnny Hodges (saxophone) and Cootie Williams (trumpet). The group went to Hollywood to appear in the film Check and Double Check (1930) and in New York made about 200 recordings, many in the ‘jungle style’ that was one of Ellington’s and Miley’s most individual creations. The success of Mood Indigo (1930, Vic.) brought Ellington worldwide fame, and in 1931 he began experiments in extended composition with Creole Rhapsody (Bruns.), later to be followed by Reminiscing in Tempo (1935, Bruns.) and Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue (1937, Bruns.). The decade from 1932 to 1942 was Ellington’s most creative. His band, consisting now of six brass instruments, four reeds and a four-man rhythm section, performed in many American cities and made highly successful concert tours of Europe in 1933 and 1939. In 1939–40 there were more important additions to the band: Jimmy Blanton (double bass), Ben Webster (tenor saxophone) and most notably Billy Strayhorn, as arranger, composer and second pianist. At this time Ellington created several outstanding short works, in particular Concerto for Cootie, Ko-Ko and Cotton Tail (all 1940, Vic.).
In the mid-1940s the orchestra was enlarged again: by 1946 it included 18 players. But the previous stability of personnel declined and Ellington’s writing, based on his members’ individual styles, began to suffer from the constant changes. Some excellent soloists, however, were added: Ray Nance (trumpet and violin), Shorty Baker (trumpet) and Jimmy Hamilton (clarinet). In January 1943 Ellington inaugurated a series of annual concerts at Carnegie Hall with his monumental work Black, Brown and Beige, a ‘tone parallel’ originally conceived in five sections and intended to portray the history of the black people in the USA through their music. Other ambitious works followed. After Ellington abandoned these concerts in 1952, the development of the long-playing record allowed him to create other multi-movement suites.
From 1950 Ellington continued to expand the scope of his compositions and his activities as a bandleader. His foreign tours became increasingly frequent and successful (including one of the USSR, in 1971); many of these stimulated him to write large-scale suites. He composed his first full-length film score, for Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder(1959), and his first incidental music, for Alain René Le Sage’s Turcaret (1960). He also made recordings with younger jazz musicians such as John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and Max Roach (Money Jungle, 1962, UA). In his last decade Ellington wrote mostly liturgical music: In the Beginning God (for a standard jazz orchestra, narrator, chorus, two soloists and dancer) was performed in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco (1965), and this was followed by other ‘sacred services’. Among his numerous awards and honours were doctorates from Howard University (1963) and Yale University (1967) and the Presidential Medal of Honor (1969); in 1970 he was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1971 he became the first jazz musician to be named a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. A documentary film of Ellington and his orchestra, On the Road with Duke Ellington, was made in 1974. Ellington directed his band until his death, when it was taken over by his son Mercer Ellington.
Ellington taught himself harmony at the piano and acquired the rudiments of orchestration by experimenting with his band; his orchestra was a workshop in which he consulted his players and tried out alternative solutions. During the formative Cotton Club period Ellington was obliged to work in a variety of musical categories: numbers for dancing, jungle-style and production numbers, popular songs, ‘blue’ or ‘mood’ pieces, as well as ‘pure’ instrumental jazz compositions. During this period, too, Ellington developed an extraordinary symbiotic relationship with his orchestra – it was his ‘instrument’ even more than the piano – enabling him to experiment with the timbral colourings, tonal effects and unusual voicings that became the hallmark of his style; the ‘Ellington effect’ (Strayhorn’s term) was virtually inimitable because it depended in large part on the particular timbre and style of each player. Remarkably, though no two players in Ellington’s orchestra sounded alike, they could, when called upon, produce the most ravishing blends and ensembles of sonority known to jazz.
An outstanding early example of the ‘Ellington effect’ may be heard on Mood Indigo (1930), in which the traditional roles of the three front-line instruments in New Orleans collective improvisation – clarinet (high-register obbligato), trumpet (melody or theme) and trombone (bass or tenor counter-themes) – are inverted so that the muted trumpet plays on top; the plunger-muted trombone functions as a high-register second voice, and the clarinet sounds more than an octave below in its chalumeau register.
In the early and mid-1920s orchestral jazz arrangements were rudimentary, serving only the simplest functions of dance music. But Ellington (along with Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson and John Nesbitt) developed an elaborate, diversified concept of arranging, which incorporated the essence of the current ‘hot’ style of solo improvisation. In this he was greatly aided and influenced by the extraordinary expressive and technical capabilities of his two principal brass players, Bubber Miley and Tricky Sam Nanton, who were both experts of the so-called growl and plunger style. These often pungent sonorities, when blended or juxtaposed with the smoother sounds of the saxophone, provided Ellington with an orchestral palette more colourful and varied than that of any other orchestra of the time (with the possible exception of Paul Whiteman’s). Faced with the formal problem posed by jazz arrangement – how best to integrate solo improvisation – Ellington learnt to exploit expertly the contrast produced by the soloist’s entry, so as to project him into the music’s movement and entrust him with its development. This partly explains why even Ellington’s finest soloists seemed lustreless after leaving his orchestra. He also had a singular gift for devising orchestral accompaniments for improvisation; no arrangers, except perhaps Sy Oliver and Gil Evans, have imagined instrumental combinations as beautiful as those of Mystery Song (1931, Vic.), Saddest Tale (1934, Bruns.), Delta Serenade (1934, Vic.), Azure (1937, Master), Subtle Lament (1939, Bruns.), Dusk (1940, Vic.), Ko-Ko (1940, Vic) and Moon Mist (1942, Vic.).
Ellington’s talents as a pianist are generally neglected or underrated. While he rarely featured himself as a soloist with his orchestra, he was nevertheless a remarkably individual contributor to the overall ‘Ellington effect’. He saw himself primarily as a catalyst and an accompanist, a feeder of ideas and rhythmic energy to the band as a whole or to its soloists. In this unobtrusive role, playing only when necessary, he was known for remaining silent during entire choruses or indeed pieces. His piano tone, produced deep in the keys, was the richest and most resonant imaginable; it had the ability to energize and inspire the entire orchestra. Although he was an erratic soloist in his early years and sometimes relied on pianistic clichés – incessant downward-fluttering arpeggios, for instance – Ellington could on occasion vie with the best players. An outstanding example of his work as a pianist-composer is Clothed Woman (1947, Col.), remarkable for its virtually complete atonality (ex.1). He also wrote a Piano Method for Blues (New York, 1943).
Ellington is generally recognized as the most important composer in jazz history. Most of the enormous number of works he recorded are his own; the exact number of his compositions is unknown, but is estimated at about 2000, including hundreds of three-minute instrumental pieces (for 78 r.p.m. recordings), popular songs (many consisting of instrumental pieces to which lyrics by Irving Mills and others were added), large-scale suites, several musical comedies, many film scores and an incomplete and unperformed opera, Boola. Ellington combined a flair for orchestration with extraordinary gifts as a bandleader; while other jazz composers had comparable talent, they lacked the organizational abilities necessary to create and maintain a permanent orchestral vehicle. The excerpt from Ko-Ko (ex.2), showing the orchestration of a passage from an ensemble section, is one of the most remarkable pieces in all of Ellington’s writing.
Ellington was one of the first musicians to concern himself with composition and musical form in jazz – as distinct from improvisation, tune writing and arranging. In Concerto for Cootie, ten-bar phrases are combined into a complex ternary form which abandons the chorus structure common to most jazz. In Cotton Tail, from the same period, Ellington made use of a call-and-response technique of writing in order to heighten the drama of the last climactic chorus (ex.3). Black, Brown and Beige uses symphonic devices (the fragmentation and development of motifs, thematic recall and mottoes) as well as symphonic proportions in its several sections; it is thus perhaps unique among Ellington’s earlier works, showing a preoccupation with form far in advance of his contemporaries. Only a few jazz musicians (among them Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus and Gil Evans) have followed Ellington in this respect.
Ellington’s prodigious productivity makes an overview of his work virtually impossible. But it is generally agreed that he attained the zenith of his creativity in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and that he worked best in the miniature forms dictated by the three-minute ten-inch disc. His creativity declined somewhat after the 1940s, many of the late-period extended compositions and multi-movement suites generally suffering, despite their occasional visionary inspirations, from a diminished, less consistent originality and hasty work, mostly occasioned by incessant touring. But even ‘lesser’ Ellington is bound to be of above-average quality, and the work in recent years of Wynton Marsalis and his Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra’s championing of Ellington’s late work has led to a more favourable assessment in many quarters. Serious study of Ellington’s oeuvre has also been hampered by an almost total absence to date of his scores in published form, having thus to rely on transcriptions from recordings. However, in recent years the newly acquired holdings of several hundred thousand sheets of Ellington’s scores and parts at the Smithsonian Institute has at last provided easier access to the immensity of Ellington’s oeuvre.
(selective list)
dates are those of composition and are sometimes conjectural
for jazz orchestra unless otherwise stated
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Suites: Reminiscing in Tempo, 1935; Diminuendo in Blue/Crescendo in Blue, 1937; Black, Brown and Beige, 1943; Blue Belles of Harlem, 1943; Blutopia, 1944; NewWorld a-Comin’, 1945; Deep South Suite, 1946; Liberian Suite, 1947; The Tattooed Bride, 1948; Harlem (A Tone Parallel to Harlem), 1950; Night Creature, jazz orch, sym. orch; A Drum is a Woman, 1956; Such Sweet Thunder, 1957; Nutcracker Suite [from Tchaikovsky], 1960; Suite Thursday, 1960; Perfume Suite, 1963; Far East Suite, 1964 |
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The Golden Broom and the Green Apple, 1965; Virgin Islands Suite, 1965; Murder in the Cathedral, 1967; La plus belle africaine, 1967; Latin American Suite, 1968; Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, 1971; The Goutelas Suite, 1971; New Orleans Suite, 1971; Togo Brava Suite, 1971 |
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Short pieces: Soda Fountain Rag, 1914; East St Louis Toodle-oo, 1926, collab. B. Miley; Black and Tan Fantasy, 1927, collab. Miley; Creole Love Call, 1927, collab. Miley; Awful Sad, 1928; The Mooche, 1928; Mood Indigo (Dreamy Blues), 1930, collab. B. Bigard; Old Man Blues, 1930; Rockin’ in Rhythm, 1930; Creole Rhapsody, 1931; Ducky Wucky, 1932; It don’t mean a thing, 1932; Sophisticated Lady, 1932, collab. O. Hardwick; Daybreak Express, 1933; Harlem Speaks, 1933; Delta Serenade, 1934; Saddest Tale, 1934; Solitude, 1934; Clarinet Lament (Barney’s Concerto), 1935, collab. Bigard |
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Echoes of Harlem (Cootie’s Concerto), 1935; In a Sentimental Mood, 1935; Uptown Downbeat (Blackout), 1936; Azure, 1937; Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, 1937; Blue Light, 1938; Braggin’ in Brass, 1938; Gypsy without a Song, 1938; Prelude to a Kiss, 1938; Prologue to Black and Tan Fantasy, 1938; Steppin’ into Swing Society, 1938; Portrait of the Lion, 1939; Serenade to Sweden, 1939; Bojangles, 1940; Concerto for Cootie, 1940; Conga brava, 1940; Cotton Tail, 1940; Dusk, 1940; Harlem Air Shaft, 1940; In a Mellotone, 1940; Jack the Bear, 1940; Ko-Ko, 1940 |
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A Portrait of Bert Williams, 1940; Sepia Panorama, 1940; Warm Valley, 1940; Chelsea Bridge, 1941, collab. B. Strayhorn; I Got it Bad, 1941; Main Stem, 1941; American Lullaby, 1942; C-jam Blues, 1942; Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, 1942; Moon Mist, 1942, collab. M. Ellington; Don’t You Know I Care, 1944; I’m beginning to see the light, 1944, collab. H. James; Air-Conditioned Jungle, 1945; Carnegie Blues, 1945; Clothed Woman, 1947; Satin Doll, 1958 |
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Stage: Jump for Joy (musical), 1941; Beggar’s Holiday (musical), New York, 1946; Turcaret (incid music, A. R. Le Sage), Paris, 1960; Timon of Athens (incid music, W. Shakespeare), Stratford, Ontario, 1963; Sugar City (musical), Detroit, 1965; The River (ballet), New York, 1970; Boola (op), inc. |
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Film scores: Symphony in Black, 1935; The Asphalt Jungle, 1950; Anatomy of a Murder, 1959; Paris Blues, 1960; Assault on a Queen, 1966; Change of Mind, 1968 |
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Sacred: In the Beginning God, 1965; Second Sacred Concert, 1968; Third Sacred Concert, 1973 |
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MSS in US-Wc |
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Principal publishers: Belwin-Mills, Robbins, Schirmer |
L. Massagli, L. Pusateri and G.M. Volonté: Duke Ellington’s Story on Records (Milan, 1966–83)
W.E. Timner: Ellingtonia: the Recorded Music of Duke Ellington and his Sidemen (Metuchen, NJ, 3/1988)
O.J. Nielsen: Jazz Records, 1942–80: a Discography, vi, ed. E. Rabin (Copenhagen, 1989)
K. Stratemann: Duke Ellington: Day by Day and Film by Film (Copenhagen, c1992)
J. Valburn: Duke Ellington on Compact Disc (Hicksville, NY, 1993)
D. Preston: Mood Indigo (Egham, 1946)
J. de Trazegnies: Duke Ellington: Harlem Aristocrat of Jazz (Brussels, 1946)
B. Ulanov: Duke Ellington (New York, 1946/R)
P. Gammond, ed.: Duke Ellington: his Life and Music (London, 1958/R)
G.E. Lambert: Duke Ellington (London, 1959); repr. in Kings of Jazz, ed. S. Green (South Brunswick, NJ, 1978), 141–73
S. Dance: The World of Duke Ellington (London, 1970/R) [collection of previously pubd articles and interviews]
D. Ellington: Music is my Mistress (Garden City, NY, 1973; index by H.F. Huon pubd separately, Melbourne, c1977, 2/1982)
D. Jewell: Duke: a Portrait of Duke Ellington (London, 1977, 2/1978)
S. Dance and D. Morgenstern: disc notes, Giants of Jazz: Duke Ellington, TL J02 (1978)
M. Ellington and S. Dance: Duke Ellington in Person: an Intimate Memoir (Boston, 1978)
D. George: The Real Duke Ellington (London, 1982)
H. Ruland: Duke Ellington: sein Leben, seine Musik, seine Schallplatten (Gauting, 1983)
P. Gammond: Duke Ellington (London, 1987) [incl. discography]
J.L. Collier: Duke Ellington (New York, 1987)
R.D. Darrell: ‘Black Beauty’, Disques [Philadelphia], iii/4 (1932–3), 152–61
R. de Toledano: Frontiers of Jazz (New York, 1947, 2/1962)
V. Bellerby: ‘Duke Ellington’, JazzM, i (1955), no.9, pp.26–7; no.l0, pp.28–30; i/12 (1956), 9–11, 31; ii/2 (1956), 28–30
N. Shapiro and N. Hentoff, eds.: The Jazz Makers: Essays of the Greats of Jazz (New York, 1957/R)
W. Balliett: Ecstasy at the Onion (New York, 1971) [collection of previously pubd articles and reviews]
L. Feather: From Satchmo to Miles (New York, 1972)
R. Stewart: Jazz Masters of the Thirties (New York, c1972)
A. McCarthy: Big Band Jazz (New York, 1974/R)
R.J. Gleason: Celebrating the Duke: and Louis, Bessie, Billie, Bird, Carmen, Miles, Dizzy and other Heroes (Boston, 1975), 153–266 [incl. ‘A Ducal Calendar 1952–1974’, 169–262]
M. Tucker, ed.: The Duke Ellington Reader (New York, 1993)
A. Hodier: Hommes et problèmes du jazz, suivi de La religion du jazz (Paris, 1954; Eng. trans., rev. 1956/R, 2/1979, as Jazz: its Evolution and Essence)
M. Clar: ‘The Style of Duke Ellington’, JR, ii/3 (1959), 6–10
R. Crowley: ‘Black, Brown and Beige after 16 Years’, Jazz: a Quarterly of American Music, no.2 (1959), 98–104
M. Harrison: ‘The Anatomy of a Murder Music’, JR, ii/10 (1959), 35–6
M. Harrison: ‘Ellington’s Back to Back’, JR, iii/3 (1960), 24–5
A.J. Bishop: ‘Duke’s ‘Creole Rhapsody’, JazzM, ix/9 (1963–4), 12–13
M. Harrison: ‘Duke Ellington: Reflections on Some of the Larger Works’, JazzM, ix/11 (1963–4), 12–15
A. Bishop: ‘Reminiscing in Tempo: an Analysis’, JJ, xvii/2 (1964), 5–6
W. Mellers: Music in a New Found Land: Themes and Developments in the History of American Music (London, 1964/R)
W.W. Austin: Music in the 20th Century: from Debussy through Stravinsky (New York, 1966)
G. Schuller: ‘The Ellington Style: its Origins and Early Development’, Early Jazz: its Roots and Musical Development (New York, 1968/R), 318–57
E. Lambert: ‘Duke Ellington on Reprise’, JJ, xxii/5 (1969), 2–4
E. Lambert: ‘Quality Jazz, no.l4: Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite’, JJ, xxii/11 (1969), 11 only
B. Priestley: ‘Duke Ellington’s Greatest Recordings and the Far East Suite’, JazzM, xv/1 (1969), 17–19
A.J. Bishop: ‘The Protean Imagination of Duke Ellington: the Early Years’, JJ, xxiv (1971), no.10, pp.2–4; no.12, pp.12–14
M. Elliott: ‘Duke and the Blues’, JJ, xxvii/11 (1974), 18–19
B. Priestley and A. Cohen: ‘Black, Brown and Beige’, Composer, no.51 (1974), 33–7; no.52 (1974), 29–32; no.53 (1974–5), 29–32
C. Sheridan: ‘Piano in the Background’, Into Jazz, i/6 (1974), 6
G. Schuller: Musings (New York, 1986), 47–59
G. Schuller: ‘Duke Ellington: Master Composer’, The Swing Era: the Development of Jazz, 1930–1945 (New York, 1989), 46–157
Oral history material in US-NH; recordings and other material in US-DN; collection of scores in George P. Vanier Library of Cancordia University, Montreal