Connery began bodybuilding at the age of 18 and from 1951 time trained heavily with Ellington, a former gym instructor in the British army.

At the age of seven, Ellington began taking piano lessons from Marietta Clinkscales.

Ellington ’ s childhood friends noticed that " his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, and his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman ", and began calling him Duke.

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

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 ).

In 1925, the infamous Tri-State Tornado began just northwest of Ellington.

He also began competing in some of NASCAR's lower divisions and in July 1985, car owner Hoss Ellington gave him his first chance to drive a Winston Cup car in the Talladega 500.

Its first outing on the following day began with visits to ' The Tubs ', a miners ' memorial made from tubs once used underground in Ellington Colliery, Northumberland, which honours the memory of all of the men and boys who lost their lives in the mines of Spennymoor and district, then went on to two war memorials, the main cenotaph outside the leisure centre and a smaller memorial in Tudhoe Cemetery.

That same year he began a relationship with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, directed by Duke ’ s son Mercer, a relationship that lasted more than15 years.

Later he began working as a blues singer in local bands, failing his first audition for Duke Ellington in 1935.

Ellington remained active in Democratic circles, and it was to the surprise of very few observers that he began in 1965 to position himself for another run for the governorship.

However, from the early 1930s, Australian dance musicians began to hear and absorb the work of black artists and leaders like Duke Ellington and Armstrong as well as English jazz influences.

The Newport Jazz Festival began in 1954 by George Wein and has been documented on recordings by Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters, Nina Simone, Ray Charles, John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.

He began the 1982 season with two top-ten finishes, but later began splitting time between his # 42 and the # 1 UNO / STP car owned by Hoss Ellington, and ended the season fifteenth in points.

Ellington wrote directions for Strayhorn to get to his house by subway, directions that began, " Take the A Train ".

Soon after forming the duo " The Slyde Brothers " with a fellow student, Jimmy " Sir Slyde " Mitchell, Slyde began touring with big bands in clubs throughout the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, performing regularly with both Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

She began her stage career on Broadway in 1921 in the chorus line of the Broadway musical Shuffle Along and went on to appear in a number of similar black musical shows including Runnin ' Wild on Broadway in 1923, Chocolate Kiddies in 1925 ( European tour ) that included songs written by Duke Ellington, My Magnolia on Broadway in 1926, Tan Town Topics with songs written by Fats Waller and in Desires of 1927 American tour in 1927.

The Left Bank Jazz Society, an organization dedicated to promoting live jazz, began holding a weekly series of concerts in 1965, featuring the biggest names in the field, including Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.

Day said: " During this long, boring period, I used to while away a lot of time listening to the radio, sometimes singing along with the likes of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller [...].

Ellington was also inspired by his first encounters with stride pianists James P. Johnson and Luckey Roberts.

Other notable jazz pianists who occasionally played the celesta include Meade " Lux " Lewis, Willie " The Lion " Smith, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Peterson, McCoy Tyner, Sun Ra, and Herbie Hancock.

Monk's stated influences included Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and other early stride pianists.

After the war he appeared on hundreds of recordings including sessions with Duke Ellington, jazz pianists Oscar Peterson, Michel Petrucciani and Claude Bolling, jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, jazz violinist Stuff Smith, Indian classical violinist L. Subramaniam, vibraphonist Gary Burton, pop singer Paul Simon, mandolin player David Grisman, classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin, orchestral conductor André Previn, guitar player Bucky Pizzarelli, guitar player Joe Pass, cello player Yo Yo Ma, harmonica and jazz guitar player Toots Thielemans, jazz guitarist Henri Crolla, bassist Jon Burr and fiddler Mark O ' Connor.

Johnson's musical legacy is present in the body of work of the more famous Fats Waller as well as scores of other pianists who were influenced by him, such as Art Tatum, Donald Lambert, Louis Mazetier, Pat Flowers, Joe Turner, Cliff Jackson, Hank Duncan, Claude Hopkins, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Don Ewell, Johnny Guarnieri, Dick Hyman, Dick Wellstood, Ralph Sutton, Neville Dickie, Mike Lipskin, Jim Turner, Bernd Lhotzky, Chris Hopkins and Butch Thompson.

For the next two years he played with such jazz greats as cornetist Rex Stewart, clarinetist-soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, pianists Earl Hines, Willie " The Lion " Smith, pianist Fats Waller, pianist James P. Johnson, pianist Duke Ellington and their various groups.

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 ".

Not until 1999 with the digital restoration supervised by jazz historian Phil Schaap was the actual concert not only released in its entirety but, thanks to the discovery of a Voice of America broadcast tape, in authentic stereo sound for the first time: Remastered 1999 CD: " Ellington at Newport " ( 1956 ) ( Complete ).

It was during this time that Ellington recorded his only album with Frank Sinatra, entitled Francis A.

Shortly after their marriage, on March 11, 1919 Edna gave birth to their only son, Mercer Kennedy Ellington.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook was the only Songbook on which the composer she interpreted played with her.

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 ).

Riverside Pavilion was the only venue for black Charlestonians to see musical legends like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, B.

The only two WB-57F aircraft used for atmospheric research and reconnaissance still flying in the world today are housed at Ellington.

Prior to the cessation of commercial air service, the route flown between Bush Intercontinental and Ellington Field was the shortest fixed-wing route flown in the United States at only.

The club not only gave Ellington national exposure through radio broadcasts originating there ( first through WHN, then over WEAF and after September 1929 through the NBC Red Network-WEAF was the flagship station for that network-on Fridays ), but enabled him to develop his repertoire while composing not only the dance tunes for the shows, but also the overtures, transitions, accompaniments, and " jungle " effects that gave him the freedom to experiment with orchestral colours and arrangements that touring bands rarely had.

The film Billy Elliot, set in the fictional County Durham town of ' Everington ', was mainly shot in Easington, though the film-makers had to go a long way north to Ellington to find the only working mine in the North East.

Ray directed his first and only Broadway production, the Duke Ellington musical Beggar's Holiday, in 1946.

Though he stayed with Ellington for only two years, Blanton made an incalculable contribution in changing the way the double bass was used in jazz.

Graham Potuer and Taylor Ellington were the only remaining players from the team's very good crop of players taken in the 1988-born WHL Bantam Draft that had marked the team's success during the previous three seasons.

David SERERO Records-DSM Prod French baritone David Serero produced and arranged on his own label the only Broadway musical by Duke Ellington: Beggar's Holiday.

Not only had the roadbuilders remembered their patron, but Ellington was also backed vehemently by the usually Republican Nashville Banner, the evening rival to the Tennessean, seemingly in part because Hooker was backed by the other paper, but also because he did seem to be the more conservative of the two major candidates.

No one qualified as a Republican candidate for governor of Tennessee in 1966 ( the last time to date that this has occurred ), and Ellington easily defeated a group of independent candidates which included two fairly well known East Tennessee Republicans who were independents in name only.

His hymn-like ballad " To You " was performed by the Basie band combined with the Duke Ellington Orchestra in their only recording together, and the recording Dance Along With Basie contains nearly an entire album of Jones ’ uncredited arrangements of standard tunes.

Twenty-three graduated on April 24, 1943, at the only Houston WASP graduation at Ellington Army Air Field.

They made a lot of records together, not only under the name of Duke Ellington, but built groups around Duke's side men who were great instrumentalists in their own right.

His first exposure to jazz came when he saw a concert by Duke Ellington and his 60-member orchestra at the Metropole Hotel in Karachi, West Pakistan in 1959 ; he and his brother were the only Pakistanis in attendance ( the rest of the audience was white ).

Working with Ellington was probably the most difficult commission there was, because most of the Ellington songs were really instrumental pieces whose singable potential only emerged after they had been played and recorded by one or another of the soloists in the Ellington orchestra.