Ellington, Duke (Edward Kennedy) 1899-1974
US jazz pianist, composer and bandleader

Duke Ellington was born in Washington DC, into a middle-class black family. He received his only formal musical education as a child through elementary piano lessons, but he was influenced while young by church music and burlesque theatre. After forming bands to play at parties and dances he led his first regular group, the Washingtonians, when he succeeded Elmer Snowden as its leader in New York in 1925. In the next three years, his band increased in size from six to 10 or more players. In 1927 he began a four-year residence at the Cotton Club in Harlem, which not only offered him a high-profile live engagement (albeit to segregated white-only audiences), but regular access to radio airtime, then crucial in the dissemination of popular music, and recording contracts. His work at this time placed him in the forefront of orchestral jazz, a position he maintained throughout his career.

His music of this period was largely written and performed as the accompaniment for dance shows; but he began to emerge as the most important of jazz composers, and went on to produce around 2,000 works. He worked closely with his staff arranger, Billy Strayhorn (1915-67), who was an important composer in his own right, and wrote the tune which became the band's signature, 'Take The A Train'. He led some of the greatest big bands ever assembled by a jazz musician, and was highly skilled at drawing the optimum contributions from his outstanding soloists. He wrote much of his music with their specific qualities and sound characteristics in mind, a process that has led some critics to suggest the bandrather than the piano was his real instrument, and he was not averse to borrowing themes and ideas from his sidemen, and incorporating them within his trademark sophisticated compositions.

He broke new ground in jazz by writing extended works and suites like Black, Brown and Beige (1943) and The Perfume Suite (1945). Such works remained a regular feature of his output until the end of his career. His use of instrumental colours and textures and innovative chord voicings make him a major figure in 20th-century music, irrespective of genre, although his real genius is arguably more accurately reflected in his shorter works, or in individual segments of extended suites, rather than genuine long-form works. Many of his song-length pieces, such as 'Mood Indigo' and 'Sophisticated Lady', became part of the standard jazz repertoire. He also wrote and performed music for films, the most important of which were Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Paris Blues (1961). His son, Mercer Ellington (1919-96), continued to run the orchestra after his father's death, but an irreplaceable element was missing.

Bibliography: His vast discography is among the richest in jazz. He also wrote a highly selective memoir, Music Is My Mistress (1973), which stops short of being a proper autobiography. Mercer Ellington also wrote a memoir, Duke Ellington In Person, with critic Stanley Dance, whose own The World of Duke Ellington (1970) remains highly useful. See also J L Collier, Duke Ellington (1987).