Billy Strayhorn was an arranger of great renown in the Duke Ellington orchestra beginning in 1938.

Strayhorn, originally hired as a lyricist, began his association with Ellington in 1939.

Nicknamed " Swee ' Pea " for his mild manner, Strayhorn soon became a vital member of the Ellington Organization.

Ellington showed great fondness for Strayhorn and never failed to speak glowingly of the man and their collaborative working relationship, " my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine ".

Strayhorn, with his training in classical music, not only contributed his original lyrics and music, but also arranged and polished many of Ellington's works, becoming a second Ellington or " Duke's doppelganger ".

Three-minute masterpieces flowed from the minds of Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Ellington's son Mercer Ellington, Mary Lou Williams and members of the Orchestra.

In this, he was helped by Strayhorn, who had enjoyed a more thorough training in the forms associated with classical music than Ellington.

While his music had been featured on screen for years and sometimes the whole orchestra in film shorts, Ellington ( with Strayhorn ) now began to work directly on music for movies, contributing scores for Anatomy of a Murder ( 1959 ) and Paris Blues ( 1961 ).

Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker concludes that the work of Billy Strayhorn and Ellington in Anatomy of a Murder, the trial court drama film directed by Otto Preminger in 1959, is " indispensable,.

There are hundreds of albums dedicated to the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn by artists famous and obscure.

Duke Ellington and his longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn both appeared on exactly half the set's 38 tracks and wrote two new pieces of music for the album: " The E and D Blues " and a four-movement musical portrait of Fitzgerald ( the only Songbook track on which Fitzgerald does not sing ).

* Arrangers: Van Alexander, Ralph Burns, Toots Camarata, Benny Carter, Buck Clayton, Ray Conniff, Eddie Durham, Duke Ellington, Bill Finegan, Jerry Gray, Bob Haggart, Buster Harding, Lennie Hayton, Neal Hefti, Fletcher Henderson, Horace Henderson, Gordon Jenkins, Billy May, Jimmy Mundy, Sy Oliver, Nat Pierce, Johnny Richards, Edgar Sampson, Eddie Sauter, Billy Strayhorn

William Thomas " Billy " Strayhorn ( November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967 ) was an American composer, pianist and arranger, best known for his successful collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington lasting nearly three decades.

Ellington was impressed enough to invite other band members to hear Strayhorn.

Strayhorn worked for Ellington for the next quarter century as an arranger, composer, occasional pianist and collaborator until his early death from cancer.

As Ellington described him, " Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine.

Strayhorn's relationship with Ellington was always difficult to pin down: Strayhorn was a gifted composer and arranger who seemed to flourish in Duke's shadow.

Ellington was somewhat of a father figure and the band, by and large, was affectionately protective of the diminutive, mild-mannered, unselfish Strayhorn, nicknamed by the band " Strays ", " Weely ", and " Swee ' Pea ".

Ellington may have taken advantage of him, but not in the mercenary way that others had taken advantage of Ellington ; instead, he used Strayhorn to complete his thoughts, while giving Strayhorn the freedom to write on his own and enjoy at least some of the credit he deserved.

Though Duke Ellington took credit for much of Strayhorn ’ s work, he did not maliciously drown out his partner.

Ellington always spent lavishly and although he drew a respectable income from the Orchestra's operations, the band's income often just covered expenses.

Like Haydn and Mozart, Ellington conducted his orchestra from the piano – he always played the keyboard parts when the Sacred Concerts were performed.

Jerome finds the collapsed Ellington and sadly explains that the inability to recognize the devil has always been Man's great weakness.

Merican ", their first overtly political song, addresses positive and negative aspects of American history, celebrating cultural figures such as Otis Redding, Duke Ellington, and Walt Whitman while condemning slavery, Joseph McCarthy, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Vietnam War .< ref name =" Luerssen "> Stevenson wrote " One More Day " about the death of his father, who he had taken in and cared for throughout the last year of his life: " He and I always had a terrible relationship.

Ellington always wrote for the personnel he had at the time, showcasing both the personalities and sound of soloists such as Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Ben Webster, Lawrence Brown and Jimmy Blanton, and drawing on the contrasts between players or sections to create a new sound for his band.

Merican ", their first overtly political song, addresses positive and negative aspects of American history, celebrating cultural figures such as Otis Redding, Duke Ellington, and Walt Whitman while condemning slavery, Joseph McCarthy, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Vietnam War .< ref name =" Luerssen "> Stevenson wrote " One More Day " about the death of his father, who he had taken in and cared for throughout the last year of his life: " He and I always had a terrible relationship.

Irving thought that he should ensure that the Ellington Orchestra always had top musicians and protected himself by forming the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, using them as a sort of relief band at the Cotton Club.

Moyes was reluctant as he was driving from Preston to Bristol on a scouting mission, he was looking at Nathan Ellington.

Duke Ellington's and Billy Strayhorn's arrangements for the Duke Ellington big band were usually new compositions, and some of Eddie Sauter's arrangements for the Benny Goodman band and Artie Shaw's arrangements for his own band were new compositions as well.

In 1996 Charlie Ellington at Cambridge University showed that vortices created by many insects ’ wings and non-linear effects were a vital source of lift ; vortices and non-linear phenomena are notoriously difficult areas of hydrodynamics, which has made for slow progress in theoretical understanding of insect flight.

He also designed album covers for artists such as Duke Ellington and Coleman Hawkins.

Brubeck personally found this accolade embarrassing since he considered Duke Ellington more deserving of it and was convinced that himself being Caucasian as opposed to Ellington being African American was a factor for why he was favored.

Notable jazz bassists from the 1940s to the 1950s included bassist Jimmy Blanton ( 1918 – 1942 ) whose short tenure in the Duke Ellington Swing band ( cut short by his death from tuberculosis ) introduced new melodic and harmonic solo ideas for the instrument ; bassist Ray Brown ( 1926 – 2002 ), known for backing Beboppers Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum and Charlie Parker, and forming the Modern Jazz Quartet ; hard bop bassist Ron Carter ( born 1937 ), who has appeared on 3, 500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, including LPs by Thelonious Monk and Wes Montgomery and many Blue Note Records artists ; and Paul Chambers ( 1935 – 1969 ), a member of the Miles Davis Quintet ( including the landmark modal jazz recording Kind of Blue ) and many other 1950s and 1960s rhythm sections, was known for his virtuosic improvisations.

* 1943 – Duke Ellington plays at Carnegie Hall in New York City for the first time.

In 2001, Carter collaborated with Black Star and John Patton to record " Money Jungle " for the Red Hot Organization's compilation album, Red Hot + Indigo, a tribute to Duke Ellington.

** Duke Ellington plays at New York City's Carnegie Hall for the first time.

" Ellington recorded for many American record companies, and appeared in several films.

His son Mercer Ellington, who had already been handling all administrative aspects of his father's business for several decades, led the band until his own death in 1996.

James Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy.

Ellington credited his " chum " Edgar McEntree for the nickname.

Through his day job, Duke's entrepreneurial side came out: when a customer would ask him to make a sign for a dance or party, he would ask them if they had musical entertainment ; if not, Ellington would ask if he could play for them.

Ellington played throughout the Washington, D. C. area and into Virginia for private society balls and embassy parties.

In 1927, King Oliver turned down a regular booking for his group as the house band at Harlem's Cotton Club ; the offer passed to Ellington.

In 1929, when Ellington conducted the orchestra for Show Girl, he met Will Vodery, Ziegfeld ’ s musical supervisor.

The band reached a creative peak in the early 1940s, when Ellington and a small hand-picked group of his composers and arrangers wrote for an orchestra of distinctive voices who displayed tremendous creativity.