Duke Ellington

Composer, bandleader, and pianist, Born Edward Kennedy Ellington in Washington, D.C., Ellington developed his keyboard skills by listening to local black ragtime pianists; he composed his first piece, "Soda Fountain Rag," around 1915. A successful professional musician by the early 1920s, he left Washington in the spring of 1923 for New York, which was his home base for the rest of his life. Between December 1927 and 1931 his orchestra held forth at Harlem's Cotton Club, where regular …

…ballet and in the 1960s produced a series of sacred concerts combining his orchestra, choirs, vocalists, and dancers. Ellington was successful, as few others have been, in reconciling the practical function of a popular entertainer with the artistic aspirations of a serious composer. His rich legacy consists of hundreds of recordings, his many pieces that have entered the standard repertory, and his musical materials now preserved in the Duke Ellington Collection at the Smithsonian Institution.