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Duke Ellington

11 questions · Music

Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in Washington in 1899, into a family in which both parents played the piano. Even as a boy he cared so much about his clothes and bearing that a friend called him “Duke”. His first piano lessons came from a teacher with the wonderfully fitting name of Mrs. Clinkscales, but he learned most of all by watching the ragtime pianists of his home town. In 1923 he left for New York. The breakthrough came in 1927, when his orchestra became the house band at the Cotton Club in Harlem, where Black musicians played to an all-white audience. Radio broadcasts from the club made the band famous across the country. Ellington did not write for instruments but for people: he knew the sound of every single horn player and built his pieces around it. That is how colours like those of “Mood Indigo” from 1930 came about. From 1939 he had a partner without whom his work is hard to imagine, the composer Billy Strayhorn. Strayhorn wrote “Take the A Train”, the orchestra’s theme tune from 1941. In the 1950s big bands were thought old-fashioned, until the Newport Jazz Festival of 1956. There the tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves blew a solo of 27 choruses, the crowd leapt out of their seats, and the record “Ellington at Newport” became a bestseller. Ellington kept his orchestra on the road for almost half a century and wrote more than a thousand pieces. His autobiography “Music Is My Mistress” came out in 1973, and a year later, in 1974, he died in New York.

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Which instrument did Duke Ellington play?

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Piano

Billy Strayhorn said of him that he played the piano, but his real instrument was the orchestra.

💡 Did you know? His first piano teacher really was called Mrs. Clinkscales.

In which Harlem nightclub was his orchestra the house band from 1927?

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Cotton Club

Radio broadcasts from the club made the band famous across the country.

💡 Did you know? Only Black artists performed on stage, while the club admitted only white guests.

Which piece became the Ellington orchestra’s theme tune from 1941?

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Take the A Train

The title refers to the A line of the New York subway, which ran up to Harlem.

💡 Did you know? The composer turned it into a song after Ellington had given him directions to his home by exactly that line.

Who was his closest co-composer and arranger for almost three decades from 1939?

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Billy Strayhorn

Ellington called him his right arm, his left arm and all the eyes in the back of his head; they wrote many pieces so closely together that their shares can hardly be told apart.

💡 Did you know? Strayhorn began his ballad “Lush Life” while still a teenager.

Which tenor saxophonist played a 27-chorus solo at the 1956 Newport performance?

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Paul Gonsalves

The piece was “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue”; the frenzy at the Newport Jazz Festival brought the orchestra back to the top.

💡 Did you know? Soon afterwards Ellington appeared on the cover of “Time” magazine.

What was Duke Ellington’s real first name?

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Edward

A school friend called him “Duke” because of his elegant clothes and refined manners.

💡 Did you know? Elegance remained his trademark; all his life he was counted among the best-dressed musicians of his day.

In which city was Duke Ellington born in 1899?

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Washington

Both his parents played the piano; his father worked for a time as a butler, including at the White House.

💡 Did you know? He learned to play mainly by watching the ragtime pianists of his home town.

Which 1930 Ellington ballad was still called “Dreamy Blues” when first recorded?

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Mood Indigo

Its strange sound came from trumpet, trombone and clarinet playing together in unusual registers.

💡 Did you know? Ellington said he wrote it in fifteen minutes while his mother was cooking dinner.

What is the title of his 1973 autobiography?

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Music Is My Mistress

He published it a year before his death, with memories of journeys, musicians and encounters from five decades.

💡 Did you know? His motto about music: there are only two kinds, good music and the other kind.

In which year did Duke Ellington die?

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1974

He died at 75 of lung cancer and pneumonia.

💡 Did you know? In 1965 the Pulitzer board refused him a special prize; at 66 he joked that fate did not want him to be too famous too young.

Duke Ellington

Foto: Hans Gerber · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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