Duke Ellington's Recording Era

Until the middle of the 1950’s “Jazz dance” was more commonly referred to as tap dance due to tap being performed to jazz music.

The album debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1943 with mixed reviews. This album speaks to the freedom struggle that African Americans faced at that time. By using his music, Duke Ellington is able to narrate the struggles, triumphs, and emergence of individual identity in early African American culture.

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was a phenomenal bandleader and composer, who rose to fame by pioneering jazz, a style of music that has stood the test of time today. It is evident that the theme of the biography, “Duke Ellington: Bandleader and Composer,” written by Ron Frankl, is that Duke Ellington has left behind with him a long lasting legacy on the musical style of jazz.

When the topic of jazz comes to mind , many famous musicians are thought of including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald ,Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis. Among these talented artists is a New Orleans native singer and extraordinary trumpet player named Louis Armstrong. Armstrong otherwise known as “Pops” or “Satchmo” is arguably one of the most influential, important, and greatest music figures of all time. From his expansive career to his captivating stage presence, Louis Armstrong carries the title of modernizing jazz and is responsible for impacting not only jazz but Frank Sinatra’s singing , popularizing scat singing, and inspiring Miles Davis through his trumpet.

Birthed in the Mississippi Delta, the blues would have un-denying roots from the South. However, long before any form of blues genre came about, slave music expressed the sorrows of the African American experience. At the turn of the 20th century black communities in the south continued the tradition of musical expression by performing in small shacks all around the Delta. It was in these juke joints, that famous artist such as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters first performed. With the cotton industry taking a turn for the worst many African Americans were living very undesirable. So, they decided to pack up and head North taking their musical traditions and talents with them.

The Harlem Renaissance was the development of African American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in the African American history. It started in the early 1920s and lasted up till the mid 1930s. During this time period, there was a lot of advancements in African American literacy, music, theatre and and visual arts. The African Americans became significant figures in the American society. The Harlem Renaissance was beneficial and had a positive impact on the African Americans because they became important figures with creativity in the American society.

Miles Davis, one of jazz’s most influential musicians with career that expanded six decades. Davis was known for his always changing style, from bebop to rock. He had been part of the bebop, cool jazz, hardbop, modal, rock-fusion movements, and shortly before his death working with hip-hop fusion. Throughout his entire career, Miles Davis preferred the audience recognize him for what he was doing then, not what he had done in the past. Over his sixty-year career he had earned several nicknames: The Sorcerer, the Prince of Darkness, and the man who walked on eggshells. In this paper, I plan to examine the influences that Miles Davis had on jazz. Starting with the bebop era, when his career first began, to his final collaboration released following his death.

Jazz was born in New Orleans about 100 years ago (early 20th century), but its roots can be found in the musical traditions of both Africa and Europe. Jazz is a form of improvisational art that rewards individual expression and demands self-collaboration. It is a rich tradition that reflects all Americans. It originated in one of the most cosmopolitan and musical places in America. New Orleans was the perfect city for all of these elements to come together, as it was a port city, a meeting place for people of different ethnic groups, and a city with nightlife where musicians had the opportunity to play together, learn from each other, and blend all of these elements. Each ethnic group in New Orleans contributed to the very active musical environment

Duke Ellington was a jazz author, conductor, and entertainer amid the Harlem Renaissance. During the developmental Cotton Club years, he explored different avenues regarding and built up the style that would rapidly bring him overall achievement. Ellington would be among the first to concentrate on melodic shape and sythesis in jazz. Ellington composed more than 2000 pieces in his lifetime.

In the 1920’s jazz greatly rose in popularity, due to the process of recordings. Jazz’s popularity directly correlates to how it personifies African-American culture. Many black musicians felt as though they weren’t getting the recognition they deserved. These musicians were upset about being ripped off by recording labels, and rightfully so. Apart from being upset about how they were being treated by record labels, white America did not feel comfortable with the music being solely from African-Americans. Jazz ended up becoming more of a commodity, and the most well-known artists were white. African-Americans were facing racism and random acts of violence against them, they took solace in their music as it was an essential part of their culture.

In the time WW1, a wild new popular culture emerged in the United States. In part, it was a hedonistic and extravagant reaction to the hardship and austerity experienced during the war. Some have referred to it as the Roaring Twenties, while others have called it the Jazz Age. When one speaks of the Jazz Age, what comes to mind is a decade of partying, of the Charleston and jazz bands, of female flappers and loose morals, of bathtub gin and speakeasies, all combined and intertwined into a celebration of American technology and ingenuity that, over the course of a decade, provided average U.S. families the materialistic conveniences of automobiles and modern appliances. A truly remarkable chapter of American history, Jazz was the soundtrack to it and came to embody the attitude of the burgeoning counterculture. One of the defining aspects of the Jazz Age was the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural explosion that took place in Harlem, New York. It was a movement wherein African-American writers, musicians, and intellectuals came together to celebrate their culture and create brilliant works of art that not only transformed black culture, but American culture at large. Jazz, being a predominantly black art form, played no small role. Composer William Grant Still was one of the most important musicians of the Harlem Renaissance movement. The values introduced by the

Firstly, even though Strayhorn was deeply influenced by Ellington and intentionally focused on the Ellington style, their approaches were bound to be different because of their musical background. Ellington was a self-taught musician who learned jazz by listening to ragtime and stride piano players. Thus, some of his work had unrelated blocks, in the stop-and-start tradition of the great stride pianist. Since Ellington 's goal was often to develop a piece of music by establishing the maximum contrast between its various sections, this approach suited him. By contrast, Strayhorn was classically trained and well-versed in classical harmony and repertoire by the time he met Ellington. For Strayhorn, melodic and harmonic development was most important. His famous song “Lush life” illustrated the composer’s early style. The whole song had a quite slow tempo, and vocal part was exaggerated. The chord progression of the piano accompanied the vocal which drifted smoothly up and down with the change of emotion, while the percussion and string sections were presented softly in the background. Remarkably, the leading position vocal in this song also illustrated the change of focus from band to vocalist in the late Swing era. Secondly, Staryhorn’s work often contained greater tenderness. As the saying of bassist Aaron Bell, a one time Ellingtonian, “There’s so much more sensitivity and complexity in Strayhorn’s composition than Ellington’s”. The lyrics of “Lush Life” demonstrated the born sensitivity of the song writer. They created a worldly despair so vivid and touching that it was hard to believe that the song was written by a 16-year-old teenager. Being a trio-minority-African American, gay, and open about his sexual orientation, Strayhorn lived under pressure and had his own

James Weldon Johnson’s excerpt argued that African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance were establishing themselves as active and important forces in society whom were also accomplishing great artistic achievements. Langston Hughes, a leading African American poet of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote literature about the pain and pride

The 1920s and 30s was a very important time period for African Americans. This was a period of enlightenment, opening up many new doors for talented African American musicians, poets, and artists. There were many artists during this time, but Aaron Douglas was special because not only did he incorporate African art in this work, his work was very inspirational to people of all cultures. His work was a wonderful example of the New Negro movement. He responded to the need for African American writers, artists, and intellectuals to embrace their cultural heritage and define their own collective personhood through the arts. Also known as the father of African American art, Aaron Douglass played one of the leading roles in the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. (Earle, Susan 2007)

Due to the reputation of Herbie Hancock, there are publications about him, ranging from books, journals, interviews to dissertations. Topics of these literatures cover almost everything about him from Herbie Hancock to his language of music.