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

In high school he was given his first oil paints and learned about his aunt Bessye Bearden's art salons, which stars like Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes attended.

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.

The halftime show was a tribute to American jazz composer, pianist and bandleader Duke Ellington, also featuring the Grambling State University Band along with Ellington's son Mercer.

Edward Kennedy " Duke " Ellington ( April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974 ) was an American composer, pianist, and big-band leader.

" These included many of the musicians who were members of his orchestra, some of whom are considered among the best in jazz in their own right, but it was Ellington who melded them into one of the most well-known jazz orchestral units in the history of jazz.

Edward Kennedy Ellington was born on April 29, 1899 to James Edward Ellington and Daisy Kennedy Ellington.

They lived with his maternal grandparents at 2129 Ida Place ( now Ward Place ), NW in the West End neighborhood of Washington, D. C. His father, James Edward Ellington, was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina on April 15, 1879 and moved to Washington, D. C. in 1886 with his parents.

Though Ellington took piano lessons, he was more interested in baseball.

" In his autobiography, Music is my Mistress ( 1973 ), Ellington said he missed more lessons than he attended, feeling at the time that playing the piano was not his talent.

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

When his drummer Sonny Greer was invited to join the Wilber Sweatman Orchestra in New York City, Ellington made the fateful decision to leave behind his successful career in Washington, D. C., and move to Harlem, becoming one of the figures of the Harlem Renaissance.

This was followed in September 1923 by a move to the Hollywood Club – 49th and Broadway – and a four-year engagement, which gave Ellington a solid artistic base.

Ellington was joined in New York City by his wife, Edna Thompson, and son Mercer in the late twenties, but the couple soon permanently separated.

As a bandleader, Ellington was not a strict disciplinarian ; he maintained control of his orchestra with a crafty combination of charm, humor, flattery, and astute psychology.

For agent Mills it was a publicity triumph, as Ellington was now internationally known.

Ellington called his music " American Music " rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as " beyond category.

The feature " Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue " comprised two tunes that had been in the band's book since 1937 but largely forgotten until Ellington, who had abruptly ended the band's scheduled set because of the late arrival of four key players, called the two tunes as the time was approaching midnight.

It includes one of Saul Bass's most celebrated title sequences, an innovative musical score by Duke Ellington ( who plays a character called Pie-Eye in the film ) and has been described by a law professor as " probably the finest pure trial movie ever made ".

The story is told in a flashback by an American called David Ellington.

As an eighteen year-old fresh out of Boys High School in Brooklyn, ( 1942 ) he was called to fill in for Sonny Greer, and play with the Duke Ellington Orchestra performing at the Paramount Theater.

The Cotton Club was the premier jazz venue in the country, and Calloway and his orchestra ( he had taken over a brilliant but failing band called " The Missourians " in 1930 ) were hired as a replacement for the Duke Ellington Orchestra while they were touring.

Wellman Braud, bass player with the Duke Ellington orchestra, once called Brown " the greatest of all " bass players.

During the 1960s, he rejoined Ellington for his Emancipation Proclamation Centennial stage production, My People in 1963, the motion picture soundtrack of Assault on a Queen in 1966, and A Concert of Sacred Music which is sometimes called The First Sacred Concert in 1965.

Ellington called these concerts " the most important thing I have ever done.

Mrs. Bellson, who is affectionately called " The Indomitable Mrs. B " by the many jazz-radio fans, recalled how Ellington explained to Louie that " in the beginning there was lightning and thunder and that's you!

" Louie Bellson dies at 84 ; Duke Ellington called him ' the world's greatest drummer '," Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, February 17, 2009.

Different strength training authors from Ellington Darden and Mike Mentzer to Dorian Yates and Gordon LaVelle have called their system HIT, with each individual having credited Arthur Jones for the formulation of its basic tenet principles.

Its author, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Edward Leonard Ellington, criticised the level of air safety observed in the RAAF, though his interpretation of statistics has been called into question.

The station employed a popular MOR ( what today would be called " adult standards ") music format featuring artists like Frank Sinatra, Patti Page, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mathis, Nat " King " Cole, Ray Charles, Artie Shaw, Pat Boone, Perry Como, Connie Francis, Bobby Vinton, and others.

The most famous Shaw native to emerge from this period — sometimes called the Harlem Renaissance — was Duke Ellington.

The series ' announcer, Wallace Greenslade, and musicians Max Geldray and Ray Ellington were occasionally called upon to act as minor characters, and their efforts were often derided on air by the other characters.

In addition to the development of aptamer-based therapeutics, many researchers such as the Ellington lab and independently another company SomaLogic ( Boulder, CO ) have been developing diagnostic techniques for aptamer based plasma protein profiling called aptamer plasma proteomics.

Mills was one of the first to record black and white musicians together, using twelve white musicians and the Duke Ellington Orchestra on a 12 " 78 rpm disc performing " St. Louis Blues " on one side and a medley of songs called " Gems from Blackbirds of 1928 " on the other side, himself singing with the Ellington Orchestra.

Duke Ellington summed it up by saying, " It's all music.

" Mercer Ellington picked up the reins of the orchestra immediately after Duke's death.

Mercer Ellington has stated that Juan Tizol invented the melody to " Caravan " in 1936 as a result of his days studying music in Puerto Rico ; where they couldn't afford much sheet music so the teacher would turn the music upside down after they had learned to play it right-side up.

Hearing Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Coleman Hawkins led him towards jazz and he picked up the saxophone and flute while in high school.

It was gonna have Duke Ellington and Fats Waller jazzing up the soundtrack.

Gordon was born and grew up in Los Angeles, where his father was a doctor who counted Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton among his patients.

Later, she teamed up with a 15-piece ' big band ', who performed a jazz repertoire covering Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington and Count Basie ; her vocal idols being Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee.

Miley's lifestyle eventually led to his breaking up with Ellington's band in 1929, but his influence on the Duke Ellington Orchestra lasted far longer.

Nanton, along with Lawrence Brown, anchored one of the outstanding jazz trombone sections of the swing era, their different, complementary talents and personalities opening up a wide range of trombone sounds and solos in the early Ellington bands.

The last track of the album is a spontaneous solo version of " Lotus Blossom " performed by Ellington, who sat at the piano and played for his friend while the band packed up after the formal end of the recording session ( they can be heard in the background ).

What Ellington contributed to the Cotton Club is priceless and is summed up perfectly in this 1937 New York Times excerpt: " So long may the empirical Duke and his music making roosters reign-and long may the Cotton Club continue to remember that it came down from Harlem ".

After the show, Ellington helped set up a recording session with Reprise Records: Duke Ellington presents The Dollar Brand Trio.

The first Jazz Fest lineup included artists Mahalia Jackson ( who was not booked, but simply heard about the Festival and showed up to sing ), The Preservation Hall Band, Duke Ellington, Pete Fountain, Al Hirt, Clifton Chenier, Fats Domino, The Meters, Snooks, and many others.

Today, Ellington is made up almost exclusively of private housing.

The Pacific Northwest Inlander wrote of this style, " atop the swing of the band's jazz you can hear strains of Parliament-Funkadelic, crumbs of barrelhouse rhythm and blues, snippets of ska, and huge whiffs of in-your-face punk rock ", likening the Daddies to " Cab Calloway-meets-Johnny Rotten, or the Duke Ellington Orchestra pumped up on steroids and caffeine ".

Ellington was brought up as a strictly Orthodox Jew and attended the South London Jewish School ( 1924 – 30 ), before entering show business at the age of twelve, when he appeared in an acting role on the London stage.

Her father, a noted Detroit Black activist, set up a meeting with Ellington.

Adam Grosowsky and Jeff Ellington started walking on loose chains and cables around Olympia, and quickly innovated the technique of stringing up 1 " flat climbing webbing and walking it, employing the dynamics and flexibility of the nylon webbing to develop tricks, including a three-pin tossing routine between two slackliners balanced simultaneously on the same line.

In 1983, Adam Grosowsky and Jeff Ellington set up a cable line at Yosemite's Lost Arrow Spire that was nearly high.

After The Heathertones broke up, Jean pursued a career in documentary film production with Robert Drew where she was involved with filming of Yehudi Menuhin, Duke Ellington and the opening of the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center.