Word: ellington
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...Duke Ellington Jazz Society would be just another fan club if any one else were its hero. But the Duke exudes the kind of grandeur that makes a simple fan feel like a servant of history, and the society's members cheerfully devote themselves to such quiet works as assembling the world's greatest archive of Ellingtonia. Such attention suggests that the Duke has become a precious cultural heritage, but the honor has not begun to slow him down. As he has been for most of the past 40 years, the Duke continues to be the busiest...
...Ellington and his 15-piece orchestra began a blitzkrieg visit to California last week. After five days' residence at Disneyland and another few days of concerts around the state, the boys will strike out for a three-week tour of Japan-their first overseas venture since they came home from a six-week European tour in March. In the past 100 days, the Duke has given 25 concerts, made an LP, and taped four television shows, all while working on a new musical called Sugar City that is scheduled for Broadway this fall...
Sometimes the Duke descends to dismayingly unctuous moments on the bandstand; "I love you madly," he will coo, "and the fellows love you madly too." But such lapses do not deter the musician from his work. When 500 fans gathered at Columbia University last month for the Ellington Society's annual tribute to the maestro, the Duke himself appeared to present the musical offering. "I will now rehearse," he said softly, and with that the aging Duke sat down at the piano for an hour of the finest Ellington anyone had heard in years...
...took Monk only a year to discover that the pianists he really admired were not in the books?such players as Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, James P. Johnson. By the time he was 14, Monk was playing jazz at hard-times "rent parties" up in Harlem. He soon began turning up every Wednesday for amateur night at the Apollo Theater, but he won so often that he was eventually barred from the show. He was playing stride piano?a single note on the first and third beats of the bar, a chord on the second and fourth. Unable to play...
...after all, not a Count Basie or a Duke Ellington, but an honest-to-God Baroness; seeing her pull up in her Bentley with a purse crammed with Chivas Regal, the musicians took enormous pride in her friendship...