![]() ![]() Ellington started to play gigs in cafés and clubs in and around Washington, D.C. Later in New York he took advice from Will Marion Cook, Fats Waller, and Sidney Bechet. Johnson and Luckey Roberts, early jazz piano giants. ![]() Ellington was also inspired by his first encounters with James P. Duke ellington such sweet thunder rar professional#With the additional guidance of Washington pianist and band leader Oliver "Doc" Perry, Ellington learned to read sheet music, project a professional style, and improve his technique. Dunbar High School music teacher Henry Lee Grant gave him private lessons in harmony. Hearing the poolroom pianists play ignited Ellington's love for the instrument and he began to take the piano seriously.Įllington began listening, watching, and imitating ragtime pianists, not only in Washington, D.C., but also in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, where he vacationed with his mother during the summer months. Ellington started sneaking into Frank Holiday's Poolroom at 14. I was established as having my own repertory." In his autobiography, Music is my Mistress, (1973) Ellington comments he missed more lessons than he attended, feeling at the time that playing the piano was not his talent. "Listeners never knew it was the same piece. "I would play the Rag as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango, and fox trot," Ellington has recalled. ![]() In the summer of 1914, while working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Café he created his first composition, Soda Fountain Rag (also known as Poodle Dog Rag) by ear, because he had not yet learned to read and write music. ![]() So he called me Duke."Įllington went to Armstrong High School in Washington, D.C. "I think he felt that in order for me to be eligible for his constant companionship, I should have a title. Ellington credited his "chum" Edgar McEntree, "a sharp dresser himself," with the nickname. Ellington’s childhood friends noticed that "his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, and his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman", and began calling him Duke. From his father, he absorbed self-confidence. Daisy surrounded her son with dignified women who reinforced his manners and taught him to live elegantly. The Clinkscales address is often, but erroneously, given as Ellington's childhood home. Marietta Clinkscales who lived at 1212 Street NW. were both piano players, she playing parlor songs and he operatic airs, and at the age of seven Ellington began taking piano lessons from Mrs. Cuthbert, a prominent white physician, and he also worked occasionally as a White House caterer.ĭaisy and J.E. James Edward Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy he was a butler for Dr. Posthumous recognition of his work include a special award citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board.Įllington was to James Edward Ellington and Daisy Kennedy Ellington who lived in the home of his maternal grandparents at 2129 Ward Place, NW in Washington, D.C. As a composer and a band leader, Ellington's reputation has increased since his death. Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (Ap– May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and band leader who became one of the most influential figures in jazz. ![]()
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