duke ellington
...f the band, which was when a composer put one section of the band against the other. Ellington’s band played everywhere from the USA to Cairo and performed songs with some of jazz’s greats like Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong just to name a couple. Ellington’s bands also played for some the worlds greatest leaders like Queen Elizabeth 2 to president Richard Nixon. Ellington’s band never fell into one specific category of jazz play (early jazz, swing, or modern) while they were playing. The reason for that was Ellington created his own style of play and he never named it or anyone affiliated with the band. Ellington had two bands the earlier band he had were called The Duke’s Serenaders they were assembled from late 1917 to 1919 and was the bands own booking agent which allowed Ellington to sign his band to play anywhere he wanted to play. The piano style Ellington used to play with was a stride and his own original style he made up, which was like a stride style but was more percussive and sparser than the stride style. Ellington wrote many songs in collaboration with his sidemen. Some of the people Ellington looked up to growing up were Harvey Brooks who was a ragtime pianists back when Ellington was growing up. So one day while Ellington and his mom were vacationing in Philadelphia Duke went to see this famous pianists and Harvey taught Ellington some tricks and key things for Ellington to know if he wanted to be a great pianists also Ellington was taught how to read music, and improve his playing by Oliver “Doc’’ Perry and Louis Brown. Ellington never finished High School he dropped out three months before his graduation to start is professional jazz career. Some of Ellington’s accomplishments were the Presidents Gold Medal on behalf of two different U.S. presidents Lyndon Johnson in 1966 and Richard Nixon in 1969. Ellington won Grammy awards on thirteen different occasions. The most recent were in 2000 he won two Grammy’s for jazz best historical album, which was The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition-, The complete RCA Victor Recordings (1927-1973). The other one was in pop traditional pop vocal performances for Bennett Sings Ellington - Hot and Cool which was done by Tony Bennett. Ellington was even honored by the French Government’s highest honor, which is the Le...