Looking for resources on Duke Ellington

[MarioP79]

Hello all,

A friend of mine, who happens to be a huge jazz lover, referred me to this forum.  I'm looking for resources about Duke Ellington for a college course I'm taking.  My textbook describes his composing style this way (emphasis mine):

"European classical music has taught us to think of composers as working in isolation, scribbling music on manuscript paper for others to perform.  Ellington could work this way.  Whenever he traveled, he carried with him a pad of paper and a pencil in his pocket.  At odd moments throughout the day, and in the unlikeliest places, he jotted down ideas as they came to him.  But the real business of composition - turning his musical ideas into actual pieces - was social.  Ellington liked collaborating with his musicians.  Rather than present them with a score, he would invite the band to work with him: explaining the mental picture that inspired it, playing parts, and assigning musicians roles."

I liked Ellington's "freestyle" approach to composing, and decided to focus on it for my research paper.  I hoped someone here would be able to point me toward some reference material that goes more in-depth about Ellington and his unique approach.  Thanks!

[JSngry]

The World Of Duke Ellington by Stanley Dance gives you a good feel/portrait/etc for what it was to be in that world in real time.

[l p]

13 hours ago, MarioP79 said:

But the real business of composition - turning his musical ideas into actual pieces - was social.  Ellington liked collaborating with his musicians.  Rather than present them with a score, he would invite the band to work with him: explaining the mental picture that inspired it, playing parts, and assigning musicians roles."

 

this doesn't sound correct. i think that the compositions were pretty much done by the time he brought them to the band to rehearse/record. he already knew which parts were to be played by which musician/soloist.

[shostokovich]

Ellington did not have a freestyle approach to composing. Rather, when writing a piece whether it was an extended suite like work or a song, he had specific musicians in mind as he wrote the work. He was as meticulous and fully formed in what he wrote before the musicians saw it as a (modern) classical composer.

[Chuck Nessa]

The Ellington chapter in Schuller's Early Jazz might be a good starting point.

[alankin]

I also recommend Eddie Lambert's "Duke Ellington: A Listener's Guide" (see pages 3-4, 28-29, 95, 320-22, 323).  He has some thoughtful insight into Ellington's use of collaboration in his approach to composing.  Duke did not have everything on paper before he brought a new piece of music to the band.