Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: The King of American Jazz

DVD: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001FB4Z54?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&link... http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.... (April 29, 1899 -- May 24, 1974) was a composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions. In the words of Bob Blumenthal of the Boston Globe "In the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington."

A prominent figure in the history of jazz, Ellington's music stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular, and classical. His career spanned more than 50 years and included leading his orchestra, composing an inexhaustible songbook, scoring for movies, composing stage musicals, and world tours. Several of his instrumental works were adapted into songs that became standards. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. His reputation increased after his death, the Pulitzer Prize Board bestowing a special posthumous honor in 1999.

Ellington led his band from 1923 until his death in 1974. His son Mercer Ellington, who had already been handling all administrative aspects of his father's business for several decades, led the band until his own death in 1996. At that point, the original band dissolved. Paul Ellington, Mercer's youngest son and executor of the Duke Ellington estate, kept the Duke Ellington Orchestra going from Mercer's death onwards.

Tributes * Sathima Bea Benjamin - the South African vocalist wrote "Gift of Love", in memory of Duke Ellington, for her 1987 album Love Light. * Dave Brubeck - dedicated "The Duke" (1954) to Ellington and it became a standard covered by others, both during Ellington's lifetime (such as by Miles Davis on Miles Ahead, 1957) and posthumously (such as George Shearing on I Hear a Rhapsody: Live at the Blue Note, 1992). The album The Real Ambassadors has a vocal version of this piece, You Swing Baby (The Duke), with lyrics by Iola Brubeck, Dave's wife. It is performed as a duet between Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae. It is also dedicated to Duke Ellington. * Tony Bennett frequently altered the lyrics to "Lullaby of Broadway" in live performance, to sing, "You rock-a-bye your baby 'round/to Ellington or Basie," as a personal tribute to the two jazz masters. * Judy Collins - wrote "Song For Duke" in 1975, and included it on her album Judith. * Miles Davis - one month after Ellington's death, created his half-hour dedicated dirge "He Loved Him Madly" (1974) collected on Get Up with It. * The jazz-influenced band Steely Dan recorded a note-for-note version of an early Ellington standard, "East St. Louis Toodle-oo," on their album Pretzel Logic, released in 1974, using treated slide guitars to re-create the plunger-muted "jungle sound" of the original Ellington horns. * Stevie Wonder - wrote the song "Sir Duke" as a tribute to Ellington in 1976. * Charles Mingus - composed "Open Letter to Duke" and "Duke Ellington's Sound of Love" * Lorraine Feather - has composed lyrics to many of Ellington's instrumental compositions,recorded on CD's including "Dooji Wooji" and "Such Sweet Thunder." * The Modern Jazz Quartet composed two original Ellington tributes for their album For Ellington.

There are hundreds of albums dedicated to the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn by artists famous and obscure. The more notable artists include Sonny Stitt, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Tony Bennett, Claude Bolling, Oscar Peterson, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Dick Hyman, Joe Pass, Milt Jackson, Earl Hines, André Previn, World Saxophone Quartet, Ben Webster, Zoot Sims, Kenny Burrell, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, Martial Solal, Clark Terry and Randy Weston.

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[123must]

Wonderful upload !

A lot of thanks

[majarivic]

@paulbgo not in the jazz context but if you check out the emerging artists in the gypsy brass scene of serbia, some have started exploring jazz and modern classical music and are mixing it up with each (self thaught) individual having a specific way of playing. It is as duke's music had a lot of jazz overtones, so this music has a lot of gypsy overtones, but is going quite further. Give them a couple of years. :) check out Boban Markovic orkestar.

[EKflylo]

YEAH!

[cdubsoul]

This is killin'...thankz 4 the post!!

[paulbgo]

@1967mustanggta Such a band will never more exist - there are not any more individuals like the band members and a Duke to know how to get the best out of each and every man...

...and in the end, this rare moment of Billy Strayhorn playing Lush Life... cannot be decribed with words... Thank you!

[davidebottari]

My thank you "Cha cha cha" for this pearl ...

[95Galante]

Thankyou for posting the entire concert!!! This is a great one!!!!!

[1nightstorm]

Sir Duke was cool. Thanks for sharing this treasure.

[1967mustanggta]

Isn't Duke wonderful! Man I'd love to be able to go to a performance like this! But today such a band would demand such a price they'd have to fill a stadium to get them all paid.

Before my time. But I remember when the "King of all - Sir Duke" died.

[atavistos]

Awesome ! Thx again !