ATLANTA -- For the centennial celebration of the birth of Duke Ellington -- arguably America's greatest composer and easily the most prolific in the history of jazz -- let's light 100 candles: one for each quote and curiosity, anecdote and appreciation, collected here. From the jazz age through the swing era until his death in 1974, Ellington encompassed a range of moods and modes, textures and timbres, that all but define the best of American music.
Happy birthday to Duke. Happy listening for us.1. He composed "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" in 1932, pre-dating the swing craze by at least three years (and the current swing revival by more than 60).
2. He composed "Rockin' in Rhythm" a year earlier, decades before the rise of either rhythm & blues or rock 'n' roll.
3. In 1936, his was the first black orchestra to perform at the University of Texas in Austin.
4. Nat "King" Cole said, "Duke will always be 25 years ahead."
5. Born on April 29, 1899, in Washington, D.C., Edward Kennedy Ellington was known as "Duke" before he became a musician or even entered high school. He was polite and dapper, an American aristocrat, in his early teens.
6. He was, however, not much of a student, getting C's or below in almost all of his classes, and a D the only semester he took music.
7. A gifted visual artist, he won a poster contest sponsored by the NAACP in 1916 and was offered a scholarship by Brooklyn's Pratt Institute of Applied Arts, but he decided to pursue a musical career instead.
8. He later explained that it was easier to write music in the back of a taxicab than it was to paint.
9. "Pop ran his business like a family and his family like a business," said son Mercer Ellington.
10. His band members called him "the governor." Or "maestro."
11. They were paid weekly in cash, by a road manager who carried a pistol to protect the payroll.
12. His catalog includes at least 1,500 compositions, though some estimates extend to four times that many. His performances over a 50-year career numbered nearly 20,000.
13. While audiences demanded the standards from decades past -- he could rarely get away without performing "Sophisticated Lady" or "Caravan" -- Ellington was always more excited about where his music was heading next.
14. Trumpeter Clark Terry said that Duke wanted "life and music to be always in a state of becoming."
15. Duke said, "To stand still musically is equivalent to losing ground."
16. Asked were he got his ideas, Duke replied, "Ideas? Oh, man, I've got a million dreams. That's all I do is dream, all the time."
17. He could last for days without sleep, and when he did fall asleep, it often wasn't until dawn.
18. Duke said, "You go home expecting to go right to bed. But then, on the way, you go past the piano and there's a flirtation. It flirts with you. So, you sit down and try a couple of chords, and when you look up, it's 7 a.m."
19. He asked, "What do people do who rest?"
20. He reportedly composed "Solitude" in 20 minutes, while standing up waiting for a recording session.
21. He said, "There has never been a serious musician who is as serious about his music as a serious jazz musician," but he disliked being considered a jazz musician.
22. He resisted all categories.
23. And most criticism. "I don't appreciate analysts," he explained. "If you're busy analyzing, you can't listen."
24. How would Ellington classify Ellington? "My own music, if you wish a succinct definition, is 'screwy.' "
25. He warned Dizzy Gillespie not to let critics call his music "bebop," because once you name it, you date it.
26. He said, "There are only two kinds of music: good and bad."
27. Duke was a ladies' man.
28. Maybe the ultimate ladies' man.
29. "I may be a heel," he said. "But I would hate for people to think so."
30. One of his favorite pickup lines: "My mother always told me to gravitate toward beauty, so I had to come and see you."
31. Another: "I'm so jealous of your frock, because it's closer to you than I will ever be."
32. Such lines worked better for Duke than they would for you or me.
33. Duke said, "I have two careers, and they must not be confused, though they almost always are. I am a band leader, and I am a composer."
34. He was mistaken. His roles as band leader and composer were inextricable, his orchestra the crucial component of his compositions.
35. Explained composer Billy Strayhorn, Ellington's collaborator and musical alter ego, "Ellington plays the piano, but his real instrument is his band."
36. He called his orchestra "an expensive toy" and kept it going for decades after most of the other big bands disbanded. He loved being able to write a piece in the morning and then hear it performed that evening.
37. Duke said, "It's a matter of whether you want to play music or make money. . . . A musical profit can put you way ahead of a financial loss."
38. He drew so deeply upon the talents of his band that, for many listeners, the sound of Duke Ellington is most distinctively the warmth of Johnny Hodges' alto saxophone, the passionate purr of Ben Webster's tenor.
39. Or maybe the growl of Harry Carney's baritone sax.
40. Or, early on, the gut-bucket rasp of Bubber Miley's trumpet.
41. Succeeded by the signature sound of trumpeter Cootie Williams.
42. Though there were occasional complaints that Ellington received credit for contributions that should have gone to his musicians, the stars of the Ellington orchestra rarely shined as brightly in any other context.
43. He hated to fire anyone.
44. Duke said, "There is no such thing as a 'replacement' in my band. A new musician means for us a new sound and the creation of new music, which he, and he alone, can properly express."
45. When a musician left his band, Duke would say, "He'll be back."
46. Almost invariably, he was. Sometimes in a matter of months, or maybe a matter of decades.
47. The most underrated instrumentalist in the Duke Ellington Orchestra? Pianist Duke Ellington.
48. As evidence, consider his trio recordings, particularly 1962's "Money Jungle," where he holds his own with the ferocious rhythm section of drummer Max Roach and bassist Charles Mingus.
49. And then return to the orchestra recordings with renewed appreciation for the subtle virtuosity of Ellington's piano.
50. As a composer, he disdained "indiscriminate jamming," calling it "the great banality of modern jazz." Many of the solos most strongly associated with his musicians were written for them by Ellington.
51. Strayhorn said of Ellington, "He felt that there are many ways that one can do things, but one way that you can do it."
52. At a time when gay musicians almost invariably kept their sexuality a secret, Ellington's patronage proved crucial for Strayhorn: "We all hid, every one of us, except Billy," said one of Strayhorn's friends. "He wasn't afraid. We were. And you know what the difference between us was? Duke Ellington."
53. The earliest of Ellington's recorded classics was 1926's "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo." Though the title remains one of Ellington's better-known, it was actually a typographical error by the publisher. Duke's original title was "East St. Louis Toddle-O."
54. He enjoyed his first performing prominence from 1928-30 at Harlem's gangster-owned Cotton Club, where only white customers were admitted.
55. The mobsters initially suspected that Ellington's music was "too weird" for the nightclub crowd, though the style of what was widely described as "jungle music" found popular favor.
56. Polite society wasn't unanimously convinced of the music's value. "Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?" asked the Ladies' Home Journal.
57. As biographer John Edward Hasse writes, "At the same time that white society was soaking in his music, leading magazines were hailing him, and the entertainment world was eagerly embracing his work, he could not eat in most American restaurants or secure a room in most hotels."
58. Duke's response, "I took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues."
59. When Ellington introduced "Mood Indigo" on a 1930 radio broadcast, the piece was titled "Dreamy Blue."
60. After he played a triumphant concert in Chicago on Feb. 13, 1931, the superstitious Ellington decided that Friday the 13th was his lucky day.
61. Duke said, "I'm not worried about writing for posterity. I just want it to sound good right now."
62. Wrote critic Ralph J. Gleason, "It is not necessary to equate Ellington with Bach to observe that one can listen to both almost indefinitely."
63. Orson Welles once said that Ellington was the only genius he'd ever known, other than himself.
64. When the first biography of Ellington was published in 1946, the 47-year-old subject said, "I'm not old enough to be historical, and I'm too young to be biographical. Biographies are like tombstones."
65. He disliked being in the country, where the grass reminded him of graves.
66. And he wouldn't wear clothes that were green, the color of grass.
67. Known for impeccable timing in his music, he was almost always late in his personal habits. His Christmas cards characteristically arrived no earlier than February.
68. Wrote critic Albert Murray, "I don't think anybody has achieved a higher aesthetic synthesis of the American experience than Duke Ellington expressed in his music. Anybody who achieved a literary equivalent of that would be beyond Melville, Henry James and Faulkner."
69. "Such Suite Thunder" translates Shakespeare into musical Ellingtonia.
70. "Suite Thursday" does the same for John Steinbeck.
71. Proclaimed French poet Blaise Cendrars during Ellington's 1939 tour of Europe: "Such music is not only a new art form but a new reason for living."
72. Another French critic said that the music revealed "the very secret of the cosmos."
73. In 1965, the Pulitzer Prize committee rejected the recommendation of its music jury to give Ellington a special award, opting that year to give no music award at all.
74. In response to the slight, the 65-year-old Duke said, "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young."
75. He later told interviewer Nat Hentoff, "I'm hardly surprised that my kind of music is still without, let us say, official honor at home. Most Americans still take it for granted that European music -- classical music, if you will -- is the only really respectable kind."
76. He added, with a touch of anger, "What we do, what other black musicians do, has always been like the kind of man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with."
77. This year's Pulitzers attempted to make belated centennial amends by giving Ellington a special citation. Duke was unavailable for comment.
78. Duke said, "I'm a telephone freak, the greatest invention since peanut brittle."
79. Despite his reputation for refined elegance, Ellington was a man of legendary appetite. His typical dinner might start with two steaks.
80. Then a lobster in butter.
81. Followed by a salad, a bowl of tomatoes and coffee.
82. Dessert: slices of three different cakes, scoops of three different varieties of ice cream, each set off with a different topping.
83. His appetite whetted, he might then proceed directly into a breakfast of pancakes, waffles, ham and eggs, and biscuits.
84. At lunch, he was once reported to have eaten 32 hot dogs.
85. Somehow, his weight rarely exceeded 210 pounds.
86. Duke said, "I'm a hotel man. I'd like to live in the best hotel I can live in, in the best suite, and just live there and order food and never eat in the dining room."
87. Said photographer Gordon Parks, "At his performances we young blacks sat high in our seats, wanting the whites to see us, to know that this handsome, elegant, sharply dressed man playing that beautiful, sophisticated music, was one of us."
88. In the mid-'60s, he was accused of not being a sufficiently vocal advocate of civil rights. Duke said, "People who think that of me haven't been listening to our music. . . . We've been talking about what it is to be a negro in this country for a long time."
89. The most ambitious work of Ellington's career was "Black, Brown and Beige," which he debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1943.
90. Ellington envisioned the 44-minute, three-movement suite as the history of black America set to music.
91. It was poorly received by critics, who felt that Duke had reached beyond his musical grasp, that his strength was the short-form melody rather than the longer conceptual piece.
92. In response, he shelved the suite and never again performed it in its entirety, though he continued to tinker with it and record selections from it.
93. "Black, Brown and Beige" subsequently has been widely hailed as Ellington's peak musical achievement.
94. He was once stepping into an elevator of a Paris hotel when he ran into Hubert Humphrey, who said, "Cab! How good to see you!"
95. The vice president and former Minnesota senator thought that Duke Ellington was Cab Calloway.
96. Ellington's signature response to appreciative audiences was, "We love you madly."
97. He performed with his band until March 1974, when he was hospitalized in New York for lung cancer.
98. He died of pneumonia two months later, on May 24.
99. More than 65,000 fans came to mourn him at the mortuary, which kept its doors open around the clock to accommodate the throng.
100. Right before he died, he supposedly said, "Kisses, kisses, kisses."