Duke Ellington Research Paper

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Duke Ellington: A 20th Century Musical Genius Nicholas J. Marlatt Indiana Wesleyan University Abstract This written report about Duke Ellington focuses in depth about his early life and his career. This paper shows What Duke Ellington has done and the Jazz innovator that he is. This written report will also focus in depth on his compositions “C-Jam Blues” and “Such Sweet Thunder” and will talk a little about his life before he became famous; his background, childhood, his early career, and how he became famous. This written report goes a little bit in depth about Ellington’s death and funeral. The world was never the same when Edward Kennedy Ellington, known as Duke Ellington, was born on April twenty-ninth, eighteen eighty-nine in Washington D.C., US. Ellington was a talented pianist, famous jazz composer, and bandleader who was also known as the greatest Jazz musician of all-time. Ellington changed music and helped evolve music into that we know and love in the twenty-first century. If Duke Ellington’s music never became famous, the music that we love in twenty-first century would either be very different or non-existent. Ellington grew in an upper middle-class African-American family in Washington D.C., US. His family…show more content…
Those residencies inspired Ellington to expand his band from 10 musicians to 14 musicians to and increase his compositional scope. He selected musicians for their expressive uniqueness. With all of these gifted musicians, who stayed with him through out the thirties. Ellington started to become famous during this season of his career. While in Harlem, he gained recognition and fame for his music. He composed hundreds of recordings, one of which includes C-Jam Blues. Duke Ellington and his band also appeared in many films, on the radio, and they even toured Europe in nineteen thirty-three and nineteen
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