The Duke

The DukeBorn in Washington, D.C. a century ago, Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington is a titanic figure in 20th century music. He was an ordained original in two distinct areas--as a composer whose thousands of enormously varied works range from classic songs to long-form suites of unprecedented ambition and scope, and as a bandleader who led one of the most inventive orchestras in jazz from the early Twenties to his death in 1974. Among the countless centennial tributes to Ellington has b...