Duke Ellington

The Continuing Voice of the Monterey Jazz Festival

By • Sep 12, 2016
Jerry Stoll / Monterey Jazz Festival

You won’t find a blue-ribbon pie at this northern California fairground this weekend. But the place will be filled with multiple stages and wall-to-wall music. Here's Meridee Duddleston's take on the Monterey Jazz Festival.

This Song Re-Charged Duke Ellington's Career

By • Jul 28, 2016

In 1956, a groundbreaking performance at the Newport Jazz Festival changed the course of Duke Ellington's path in jazz. WRTI’s Susan Lewis has more. 


That Highly Distinctive Sound of Duke Ellington and His Band

By • Apr 4, 2016

It's Jazz Appreciation Month, and WRTI is celebrating the local and national jazz greats who have shaped the music we enjoy today. WRTI's Susan Lewis looks at bandleader, composer and pianist Duke Ellington, who wrote over 1700 songs, as well as longer orchestral suites and film scores.

Duke Ellington: The Influential, Elegant Genius

By • Feb 22, 2016

Duke Ellington wrote and performed hundreds of musical works, and changed the way people thought about jazz. And, as WRTI’s Susan Lewis reports, his contributions went beyond the music.

Terry Teachout's Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington is published by Gotham Books.

100 Years Of Billy Strayhorn, Emotional Architect Of Song

By Tom Vitale • Nov 29, 2015

In 1964, near the end of his career, Billy Strayhorn accompanied himself on a live recording of one of his best-known songs. It starts:

I used to visit all the very gay places

Those come-what-may places

Billy Strayhorn In Five Songs

By editor • Nov 29, 2015

Did the Cabaret Tax Kill Big Bands?

By • Feb 19, 2015

In 1944 big dance bands were all the rage. They were so popular that to gain additional revenue for World War II, the federal government enforced a 30 percent "cabaret tax" on the gross receipts of any "public place where music and dancing privileges... except instrumental or mechanical music alone, are afforded the patrons in connection with the serving or selling of food, refreshment, or merchandise."

Uncovered and More on Now Is the Time

By • Oct 3, 2014

Classical covers pop on Now Is the Time, Saturday, October 4th at 9 pm at wrti.org and WRTI-HD2. Cellist Maya Beiser's new CD Uncovered ranges over the landscape of hits with aggressive yet nuanced playing. The arrangements are by composer Evan Ziporyn; Led Zeppelin's Kashmir and Nirvana's Lithium get a workout here. Michael Daugherty brings a high-powered wind band to the house for Motown Metal.

The string quartet has its say in two works. Paul Schoenfeld imagined, in Four Music Videos, what MTV was all about, having admitted he'd never watched it, and creates magic. Jeremy Cohen's arrangement of Duke Ellington's The Mooche for his Quartet San Francisco makes you feel that the Duke wrote this just for them. Those slinky chords are so etched in our minds, all composers must wish they'd thought of them first.

Bob Perkins Tells The Story of Billy Strayhorn, Composer of "Take the 'A' Train"

By • May 22, 2014

He stood five feet, two inches tall, and his musical colleagues dubbed him “Swee’ Pea,” after the little character in the Popeye cartoons. But Billy Strayhorn ranked with the giants that composed enduring standard popular music. He was also nobody’s cartoon character. The handle was a reverent tease, applied by Strayhorn’s musical associates in the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

The Public School Where The Duke Lives On

By • Apr 29, 2014

Duke Ellington didn't consider himself a jazz musician.

He said he was a musician who played jazz. And what a musician: pianist, bandleader, composer of more than 1,000 songs including standards like "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)," "Satin Doll" and "Sophisticated Lady."

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