News & Updates — Duke Ellington

Happy birthday to Al Hibbler, the uniquely gifted and underrated vocalist and civil rights activist who's career was disturbed by a near-blacklist recording ban due to his arrests in the movement. Born in Mississippi, he joined a choir at a school for the blind in Little Rock at age 12. He developed his baritone voice and started singing blues in the '30s. In the early '40s he sang in territory bands in the South and Midwest and also with Jay McShann (the same band with young Charlie Parker) where he made his first recorded appearance. In '43 he joined the...

Happy birthday to the great swing-jazz alto saxophonist John Cornelius Hodges!! A crucial member of Duke Ellington's band from 1928 until his death in 1970 (save for a few off-and-on years), Johnny Hodges was a Boston native. He also played with Sidney Bechet, Chick Webb, Billy Taylor and others, as well as a few records under his own leadership. Nicknamed "the Rabbit" and "Jeep", he played both soprano and alto and served as a mentor for many younger players coming through the orchestra. He supplied some seriously sultry sax that was just a perfect fit in the Ellington band. His...

Happy birthday to the greatest American composer, Duke Ellington!

When a pre-fame Fela Kuti took his Koola Lobitos band to the USA in 1969, they ended up stranded in Los Angeles, working nightclubs into 1970. There they took in the Black Power movement, and the politicized perspective being away from home helped radicalize Fela, who was just another black nobody in L.A. dealing with the struggle but trying to keep moving forward. But his drummer and future musical director, Tony Allen (the man who would co-create the Afrobeat sound), took even more back to Nigeria with him. He learned how to play with looser wrists, more touching than hitting...

Puerto Rican trombonist Juan Tizol contributed two of the great songs of the classic jazz repertoire, "Caravan" and "Perdido", both of which he co-wrote. He joined the Ellington band at 29 and a second trombonist in the band for the first time allowed Duke another sound for his palette. Some credit Tizol as a pioneer in both modal jazz and latin jazz. His career was mostly spent with Ellington and Harry James. "Caravan" happens to be one of my very favorite songs.