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Duke Ellington

October 24, 1993 | Neil Tesser, Neil Tesser is the jazz columnist for Playboy magazine and a Chicago radio host. He authored the liner notes for the 1990 reissue of Ellington's award-winning "Far East Suite."
America can boast its true artistic geniuses and its media celebrities, but all too rarely do they coexist in the same individuals. But Edward Kennedy Ellington, whose childhood self-esteem led to his aristocratic nickname, was one of the rare ones. In him, genius and celebrity not only coexisted, they fed on each other.
April 30, 1986 | Associated Press
A 22-cent stamp honoring Duke Ellington, who died in 1974, was issued Tuesday on what would have been his 87th birthday. The Ellington Band, conducted by his son, Mercer, played "The 22-Cent Stomp" at a ceremony. Ellington, a jazz musician, composed "The 3-Cent Stomp" in 1943.
January 29, 1995
The California Afro-American Museum has opened a free multimedia exhibit chronicling the 55-year musical career of Duke Ellington. "Beyond Category: The Musical Genius of Duke Ellington" features a 5,000-square-foot exhibit of recorded music, photos, films, videos, interactive displays and manuscripts from the man many consider one of the country's greatest composers.
December 16, 2001
By dissing Duke Ellington, film music composer Michael Nyman revealed that he is profoundly ignorant of popular music history ("Composer of Contradictions," by Josef Woodard, Dec. 9). Nyman was quoted as saying he still likes the term "band," adding that "Duke Ellington called his band an orchestra. My title is sort of dumbing down a bit and his description was dumbing up, so to speak. He was trying to get a little more status, I'm going the other way." For Nyman's information, instrumental music organizations before, during and after the swing era, led by such names as Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Paul Whiteman and Woody Herman, were routinely listed on record labels and at venues as orchestras.
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