1929

Edward Kennedy 'Duke' Ellington (1899-1974)

You can't overestimate the power of music: during the Great Depression, which took a hold in the United States from 1929 (the Wall Street crash in October launched the country off a cliff) and lasted for much of the 1930s, it was music - jazz music - that got people dancing.

Of course the country was still in freefall - but listening to, and dancing to, this surgent musical uprising (often during 24 hour Dance Marathons) was what got a lot of Americans though one of the bleakest periods in modern history.

They'd be throwing shapes to stuff like this. Duke Ellington's band would often go by a string of aliases. This was one of them.

The Whoopee Makers - Flaming Youth (1929)

Chelsea Bridge

We stopped in a lovely little hotel on Sunday night in Leeds called The New Ellington. Tucked away in the legal quarter of the city and only a five minute walk from the station, it ticked all the boxes and much of the ground floor bar and dining area was adorned with classic black and white photographs of jazz greats. No prizes for guessing whose image took pride of place weighing in at, as it did, six feet square. Edward Kennedy 'Duke' Ellington is probably one of only a handful of musicians who, in the twentieth century, continually evolved, never stood still, and took their art form in ever far reaching new directions.

But even geniuses need sidemen. And Ellington had the very best; Ellington, it's probably fair to say, owed much of his early success to composer, arranger, lyricist and pianist Billy Strayhorn. He wrote Take The A Train and Lush Life and many other classics. He also penned Chelsea Bridge - around the time saxophone colossus (and one of my favourite players) Ben Webster was in Ellington's band. When Webster went solo he still dropped it in his set. Interestingly Strayhorn wrote the tune after seeing a Turner painting of Battersea bridge and misnamed it. Maybe if he'd known the mnemonic for remembering the order in which London bridges cross the Thames, he'd have nailed it.

Duke Spirit

On 30 September 1947, in his Hollywood recording studios, Duke Ellington and his band (which at the time included jazz luminaries Billy Strayhorn, Johnny Hodges and Oscar Pettiford) knocked out a track which must be a record (no pun intended).

With the help of vocalist Ray Nance, Ellington recorded a tune with, surely, one of the longest words in the Oxford English Dictionary:

You're Just An Old Antidisestablishmentarianismist



And no, Pepsi's strapline from the 1970s Lipsmackinthirstquenchinacetastinmotivatingoodbuzzincooltalkinhighwalkinfastlivinevergivincoolfizzin doesn't count!