On today's date in 1899, Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in Washington, DC.
The son of a former White House butler, Elllington was born into a comfortable middle-class African-American household. After some piano lessons from an aptly named Miss Klinkscales, Ellington composed his first original piece, "The Soda Fountain Rag." As early mentors, Ellington credited a local dance bandleader, Oliver "Doc" Perry and a high school music teacher named Henry Grant, who introduced him to contemporary classical masters like Debussy.
"I had a kind of harmony inside me," Ellington later recalled. "a harmony which is part of my race, but I needed harmony that has no race at all but is universal. So you see, from both these men I received freely and generously. I repaid them as I could, by playing piano for Mr. Perry, and by learning all I could from Mr. Grant."
Always a stylish dresser, Ellington was nicknamed "The Duke" by friends, and after a stint with Doc Perry's band, while still in his teens, he took a five-man dance band to New York. That ensemble grew to 11 men by 1930 and to an orchestra of 19 by 1946. It was an ensemble of jazz virtuosos, and for them Ellington would compose some 2000 original compositions, a body of work extensively documented in public and private recordings, and now regarded as one of the most astonishing musical accomplishments of the 20th century.
Courtesy of Composers Datebook.
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