The Founding Fathers of Jazz Music: Duke Ellington - Essay Example

Suzana Zdravkovska 29 July 2008 Duke Ellington (1899-1974) Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, one of the founding fathers of jazz music, and a worldwide famous composer, arranger, musician and bandleader, was born in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 1899. Ellington was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1966, about 13 other Grammy Awards, then The President's Gold Medal in 1966 by President Lyndon Johnson, The Medal of Freedom in 1969 by President Richard Nixon. He also received the Pulitzer Prize and was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1973. He died of lung cancer and pneumonia on May 24, 1974 in New York, N.Y. To write about such a great man one would need thousands and thousands of pages to fill in with facts. To write everything in just two pages would be impossible, so let's deal with the most important ones. To begin with we'd have to deal with Duke Ellington's origins. James Edward Ellington (Duke's father) who made blueprints for the navy and worked both as a carpenter and a White House butler, and Daisy (Kennedy) Ellington (Duke's mother) were strongly religious people belonging to the middle class black families in the USA. Both of them could play the piano well, and exposed their son to music at an early age (with "Miss Clinkscales"- his piano teacher, as he nicknamed her), hoping he would learn the piano and start playing the church organ later. However, E. K. "Duke" Ellington showed as more interested in drawing and painting at the time than in music. He created a poster and won a prize from the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) for it. He became interested in music in his teenage years (in high school) after all, because he realized girls liked piano players, so he continued his piano lessons. At the age of fifteen he worked in a soda-shop after school. This experience led to his first composition, a jazz song titled as "Soda Fountain Rag". That was the time when he got his nickname Duke. Why and how he got it can only be speculated because there are so many stories about it (Duke Ellington Biography, http://www.musicguide/biographies/160800462/Duke-Ellington.html ). Duke dropped out of high school and started playing in jazz bands by night and painted signs as a freelancer during the day to make a living. Good looking, he married relatively young on July 2, 1918 to Edna Thompson. His only son from this marriage, Mercer, took leadership over the band after his death. What should be said about Duke's personality and appearances It could be seen the best from his personal quotes like "I'm a telephone freak, the greatest invention since peanut brittle" or when asked about how he got the scar on his face he replied " I have four stories about it, and it depends on which you like the best. One is a taxicab accident; another is that I slipped and fell on a broken bottle; then there is a jealous woman, and last is Old Heidelberg, where they used to stand toe to toe with a saber in each hand, and slash away. The first man to step back lost the contest, no matter how many times he's sliced the other. Take your pick." Also, in regards to his personality, we must add his own words and views on races and categories: "I don't believe in categories of any kind, and when you speak of problems between blacks and whites in the USA, you are referring to categories again" (Duke Ellington - Biography, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0254153/bio ). Duke Ellington spent most part of his life on the road. Speaking of successful touring and performing, one mustn't neglect and forget the fact about Duke's restless and ambitious character. Although Duke grew up surrounded by people from the middle class, he became a man of dignity and tended to reach for higher goals in his life. He visited New York in 1923 for the first time, but before settling in New York he played together with Sonny Greer (a drummer from New Jersey), Otto Hardwicke and Arthur Whetsol in Wisconsin and Atlantic City. He assembled several bands under various names (The Washingtonians, The Ellington Orchestra, etc.) and toured not only the whole of the USA but Europe (after the World War II), Middle East, Asia 91963-64, 1970), West Africa (1966), South America (1968) and Australia (1970) as well. His long stay at Cotton Club in Harlem had a big influence on his career and compositional scope and stimulated him to enlarge the band to 14 musicians. Jimmy Blanton, Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams, and Harry Carney were among the most devoted and best members of his band. Billy Strayhorn joined the band in 1939. Duke collaborated later even with Charles Mingus and Max Roach, Lois Armstrong All-Stars, the John Coltrane Quartet, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie (American Masters-Duke Ellington/PBS http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ellington_d.html ). Duke Ellington composed jazz music. Here we should have in mind his style, which is very difficult to define in a few words. Mostly, his music was influenced by the blacks' tradition and culture. Needless to say, he used to compose everywhere, and "wrote his notes on everything even empty packages of cornflakes" as Geoff Dyer describes him in his "But Beautiful, A Book about Jazz". In addition, Dyer says: " Most of all, he liked working on the road, especially on the train Railway is in his works as it is woven in African Americans' history. They built it, worked on it, traveled by it and finally he composed on the train - it is a tradition he inherited", ("BUT BEAUTIFUL, A book about jazz", Dyer, Geoff, 1996/ Beograd, Clio, 2005, ISBN 86-7102-149-1, p.93). Ellington's music is characterized with harmonies to blend his musicians' individual sounds. He tried to illuminate different moods in his music with the help of muted trumpet, unmuted trombone, and low-register clarinet. Such is his famous "Mood Indigo" composed in 1930. During the 1940s, Ellington started composing jazz with classical forms, i.e. suites, like "Black, Brown and Beige", "Liberian Suite", "Nutcracker Suite", "Far East Suite". He also composed motion-picture scores for "The Asphalt Jungle (1950), "Anatomy of a Murder"(1959) etc, for the ballet and theatre shows, among which. "My People" (1964) represents a celebration of African-American life. Jazz songs like "Rocks in My Bed", "Satin Doll", "Don't Get Around Much Any More", "Prelude to a Kiss", "Solitude", "I Let a Song Go out of My Heart" sung by the band's female vocalist Ivy Anderson and many other songs will be remembered and sung always. During the last decade of his life Ellington composed three pieces of sacred music: "In the Beginning God" (1965), "Second Sacred Concert" (1968), and "Third Sacred Concert" (1973) (The Biography Channel, http://www.biography.com/search/article.doid=028633&page=print ). Ellington's music has inspired and influenced many other composers and jazz singers. Those who will dare imitate him won't have any success because Ellington is unique. MLA formatted: The Purdue OWL. 26 Aug. 2008. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. 23 April 2008 . Sources: 1. Duke Ellington Biography, http://www.musicguide/biographies/160800462/Duke-Ellington.html ). 2. Duke Ellington - Biography, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0254153/bio ). 3. American Masters-Duke Ellington/PBS http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ellington_d.html ). 4. ("BUT BEAUTIFUL, A book about jazz", Dyer, Geoff, 1996/ Beograd, Clio, 2005, ISBN 86-7102-149-1, p.93). 5. The Biography Channel, http://www.biography.com/search/article.doid=028633&page=print Read More