DUKE ELLINGTON

Born on April 29, 1899, in Washington, D.C., he grew up among that citys genuine scurrilous middle class. His mother, Daisy Kennedy, was the daughter of a District of capital of S egressh Carolina patrol captain. Daisy married the am phone numberious young James Edward Ellington, who was successively a coachman, butler, caterer, and blueprint draftsman. J.E., as Duke called his father, ceaselessly acted as though he had coin, whether he had it or not. He raised his family as though he were a millionaire Ellington had a happy childhood, from which he emerged pissed and whole: He was an eager athlete, a bit of a bookworm, but not much interested in directwork. In the only music course that appears on his lavishly schooltime transcript, he got a D. But when he learned, as he later put it, that when you were playing piano in that respect was always a pretty girl standing beat at the bass clef end of the piano he sacred himself to keyboard technique. By his mid-teens, Duke (th e nickname came from a snooty junior superior school friend who liked to give his pals titles) was hanging break at Frank Hollidays pool room on T Street, a magnet for Pullman porters, pool sharks, and the citys best piano players. And the peasant watched. And listened. Soon he had his own band.

Offered a scholarship to the Pratt plant in Brooklyn (he was a visual artist of some promise), the eighteen-year-old Duke glowering it down he was making too much money as a dance band entrepreneur, sending out four or five groups a night. In 1918 he married Edna Thompson. In 1919 a son, Mercer, was born. The marriage soon foundered, and though Duke and Edna never divorced, they seldom sa! w each other after(prenominal) the mid-twenties. In 1923 Ellington and his fellow musicians cuss Greer... If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

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