Word: ellington
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Duke Ellington...
Married. Pearl Bailey, 34, Negro blues singer; and Louis Bellson Jr., 28, white drummer in Duke Ellington's band; she for the fourth time ("All this is just crazy but oh my, we're happy"), he for the first; over the threats of Bellson Sr., owner of a music store in Moline, Ill.; in London's Caxton Hall registry, while hundreds of bebop fans waited outside...
...magazine had its eye on an anniversary coming up next month; it will be a quarter century since Duke Ellington moved into Harlem's high-kicking Cotton Club with a ten-man band and began to beat out jungle-style rhythms. Those were the days when Paul Whiteman's "symphonic jazz" was the rage and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue had just staggered
Manhattan's old Aeolian Hall, but the Duke stuck to his own style and rapidly built up a following. By 1935, most of the U.S. was humming such Ellington compositions as Mood Indigo, Sophisticated Lady and Solitude...
Since the Ellington method of making an arrangement consists of trying things out with the band by ear-a kind of group composition-his music strongly reflects the styles and strong points of his players at any given time. The Duke has had a phenomenal record for keeping his ' men with him (Harry Carney, the baritone sax, since the Cotton Club opening), but changes were bound to occur. New men have brought new musical styles, and the band has developed accordingly. "We haven't eliminated anything," the Duke says. "We just kept piling more sounds...