Duke Ellington, "Take the A Train"

     This is a segment from the film Reveille with Beverly from 1943; the song was composed in 1939, by me. Then this was put in a movie.

 

Duke Ellington, orch. "Take the "A" Train." Rec. 1943. Duke Ellington, "Take the A Train" Duke Ellington Orchestra. 1939. MIDI.

Duke Ellington - It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got that Swing) (1943)

One of my most famous songs...
It Don't Mean a Thing (If it ain't got that Swing)

Duke Ellington, orch. "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)." Rec. 1943. It Don't Mean a Thing (1943). Duke Ellington Orchestra. 1943. MIDI

My Grammy Award History

1.      Best Traditional Jazz Album - Instrumental -- Nominee
2000 Juno Awards
Time Warp Plays the Music of Duke Ellington 
2.      Ti Historical Album -- Winner
1999 Grammy Awards
 The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition - The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (1927-1973)me Warp

3. Boxed Recording Package -- Nominee
   1998 Grammy Awards
   The Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington Cote D'Azur Concerts on Verve
4. Best Historical Album -- Nominee
   1995 Grammy Awards
   Early Ellington: The Complete Brunswick and Vocalion Recordings of Duke Ellington, 1926-1931 - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
5. Best Jazz Instrumental Performance - Big Band -- Nominee
   1989 Grammy AwardsDuke Ellington Orchestra conducted by Mercer Ellington - Music Is My Mistress
6. Best Jazz Instrumental Performance - Big Band -- Winner
   1987 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington Orchestra conducting by Mercer Ellington - Digital Duke
7. Best Cast Show Album -- Nominee
   1981 Grammy AwardsDuke Ellington's Sophisticated Ladies - Duke Ellington and other composers and lyricists
8. Best Jazz Instrumental Performance - Big Band -- Winner
   1979 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington - At Fargo, 1940 Live
9. Best Historical Reissue -- Nominee
   1979 Grammy AwardsDuke Ellington (Giants of Jazz)
10. Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band -- Winner
    1976 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington - The Ellington Suites
11.  Outstanding Live or Tape Sound Mixing -- Nominee
    1973 Emmy AwardsDuke Ellington...We Love You Madly
12. Best Jazz Performance - Big Band -- Winner
    1972 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington - Togo Brava Suite
13. Best Instrumental Composition -- Nominee
    1971 Grammy AwardsDuke Ellington - New Orleans Suite
14. Best Jazz Performance - Big Band -- Winner
    1971 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington - New Orleans Suite
15. Best Jazz Performance - Large Group or Soloist with Large Group -- Nominee
    1970 Grammy AwardsDuke Ellington - Duke Ellington, 70th Birthday Concert
16. Outstanding Variety or Musical Program -- Nominee
    1969 Emmy AwardsDuke Ellington Concert of Sacred Music
17. Best Instrumental Jazz Performance - Large Group or Soloist with Large Group -- Winner
    1968 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington - And His Mother Called Him Bill
18. Best Instrumental Jazz Performance - Large Group or Soloist with Large Group -- Winner
    1967 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington - Far East Suite
19. Trustees Award -- Winner
    1967 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn
20. Best Original Jazz Composition -- Winner
    1966 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington - In the Beginning God
21. Lifetime Achievement Award -- Winner
    1966 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington
22. Best Instrumental Jazz Performance - Group or Soloist with Group -- Nominee
    1966 Grammy AwardsDuke Ellington Orchestra - Concert of Sacred Music
23. Best Jazz Performance - Large Group or Soloist with Large Group -- Winner
    1965 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington Orchestra - Ellington '66
24. Best Original Jazz Composition -- Nominee
    1965 Grammy AwardsDuke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn - Virgin Islands Suite
25. Best Original Jazz Composition -- Nominee
    1964 Grammy AwardsDuke Ellington - Night Creature
26. Best Jazz Performance by a Large Group - Instrumental -- Nominee
    1962 Grammy AwardsDuke Ellington, Count Basie - First Time!
27. Best Jazz Performance - Solo or Small Group -- Nominee
    1960 Grammy AwardsDuke Ellington, Johnny Hodges - Back to Back
28. Best Jazz Performance - Group -- Nominee
    1959 Grammy AwardsDuke Ellington - Ellington Jazz Party
29. Best Performance by a Dance Band -- Winner
    1959 Grammy Awards Duke Ellington - Anatomy of a Murder

      My Grammy Accomplishments

     Los Angeles Times. Entertainment Awards Database. Web. 9 Mar. 2011. <http://theenvelope.latimes.com/factsheets/awardsdb/env-awards-db-search,0,7169155.htmlstory?searchtype=all&query=Duke+Ellington&x=8&y=6>.

Duke Ellington interview 1973

When I was interviewed by the Finnish National Broadcasting Company!!

Duke Ellington. "Duke Ellington Interview 1973." Interview by Finnish National Broadcasting Company. Www.youtube.com. 19 Apr. 2008. Web. 9 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9F_hRpwL4M&feature=related>.

My Music is bein' put in The Smithsonian!

SMITHSONIAN ACQUIRES DUKE ELLINGTON TROVE OF SCORES AND PAPERS
By IRVIN MOLOTSKY, Special to the New York Times
Published: April 27, 1988

WASHINGTON, April 26 —
          The Smithsonian Institution announced today the acquisition of a huge trove of papers, memorabilia and orchestral manuscripts of the music of Duke Ellington.
          It is a body of work that will permit the complete performance of many of Ellington's big-band pieces for the first time since his death in 1974. The material also includes tapes of the Ellington band that were made in the late 1960's at Ellington's expense and that remain unissued.
         ''We still have music that hasn't been exposed that he's written,'' said Mercer Ellington, the band leader's son.
Until the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History stepped in and acquired the collection with Federal funds, it had been deteriorating in a Manhattan warehouse. Original Score of 'Solitude'
         John Fleckner, the head of the museum's archives center, pointed to a fading photograph of an elegant Ellington at a piano, taken in the late 1920's or early 1930's, and said it was the kind of piece the museum hoped to restore.

Next to it was the original penciled score of ''Solitude,'' with all the parts written out in a delicate hand that the manager of the collection, Fitzroy Thomas, said had been described as feathery by Ellington's sister, Ruth.

         The manuscript was included in a large binder, evidently in the ''S'' section because ''Solitude'' was followed by ''Someone,'' ''Stomp - Look & Listen,'' ''Stompy Jones'' and ''Stroll.'' The pieces in the binder are in good condition, Mr. Thomas said, because they were held in the office of Ellington's lawyer, Lisk Wyckoff, instead of the warehouse, where cold and damp have taken a toll.
       The Smithsonian's Ellington collection was paid for with $800,000 in appropriations by Congress. Of that, $300,000 is for the Ellington estate to pay for the material, which consists of 200,000 pages, and the rest is for the establishment of an Ellington archives at the American History Museum and the salaries of archivists and conservationists. For Study and Display
       Some of the material will be studied by jazz scholars and musicians, while some of it will be put on display, with Roger G. Kennedy, director of the museum, stressing that aspect.

 An article about what will go in museums like the Smithsonian, One day!

WORK CITED: Irvin Molotsky, Special to the New York Times. "Smithsonian Acquires Duke Ellington Trove Of Scores and Papers." The New York Times [New York, New York] 27 Apr. 1988, Arts sec. Print.

A New York Times Article About Me!

Duke Ellington's Centennial

             One hundred years ago today, Duke Ellington was born in Washington D.C., and if every city or town where he and his band performed during his lifetime were to commemorate him by hearing a song f his again, the earth would resonate with music. It should not be possible, today of all days, to walk down Broadway or look out over the rooftops of Harlem without hearing in the streets the sound of an Ellington composition. But even if you have to listen in your own mind, you will hear, if you listen closely, the echo of a pulse he memorialized again and again in music.        

               Ellington was partial to giving brief verbal accounts of the moods his songs captured. Reading those accounts is like looking deep into the background of an old photo of New York and noticing the lost and almost unaccountable details that gave the city its character during Ellington's heyday, which began in 1927 when his band made the Cotton Club its home. ''The memory of things gone,'' Ellington once said, ''is important to a jazz musician,'' and the stories he sometimes told about his songs are the record of those things gone. But what is gone returns, its pulse kicking, when Ellington's music plays, and never mind what past it is, for the music itself still carries us forward.
      
               Ellington's body of work is enormous, and enormously influential. For many years he was so prolific that you cannot help wondering whether he got down even a fraction of what he heard in his head. If you judge his ambition by the contours of his recorded music, then he was a vastly ambitious man, always probing outward, across genres, from the last musical outpost he inhabited, without ever abandoning the blues, which he helped transform. His personal stature was stately, almost diplomatic in later years, and there was a curious irony in the way he would introduce, with a precise, unlocalized diction, a song that he and his band would use to scorch the room. This is a good day to remember the uprising in the heart that a big band could cause, and especially the big band led by Duke Ellington.

WORK CITED: "Duke Ellington's Centennial." New York Times [New York, New York] 29 Apr. 1999. Print.

Duke Ellington - C Jam Blues (1942)

The 'C' Jam Blues!

WORK CITED: Duke Ellington Orchestra. "The 'C' Jam Blues." Rec. 1942. Duke Ellington - C Jam Blues (1942). R.C.M Productions Inc., 1942. MIDI.

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