Duke

Duke PDF

Author: Terry Teachout

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2013-10-17

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 0698138589

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A major new biography of Duke Ellington from the acclaimed author of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was the greatest jazz composer of the twentieth century—and an impenetrably enigmatic personality whom no one, not even his closest friends, claimed to understand. The grandson of a slave, he dropped out of high school to become one of the world’s most famous musicians, a showman of incomparable suavity who was as comfortable in Carnegie Hall as in the nightclubs where he honed his style. He wrote some fifteen hundred compositions, many of which, like “Mood Indigo” and “Sophisticated Lady,” remain beloved standards, and he sought inspiration in an endless string of transient lovers, concealing his inner self behind a smiling mask of flowery language and ironic charm. As the biographer of Louis Armstrong, Terry Teachout is uniquely qualified to tell the story of the public and private lives of Duke Ellington. A semi-finalist for the National Book Award, Duke peels away countless layers of Ellington’s evasion and public deception to tell the unvarnished truth about the creative genius who inspired Miles Davis to say, “All the musicians should get together one certain day and get down on their knees and thank Duke.”

Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington PDF

Author: Steven Brower

Publisher: Rizzoli Publications

Published: 2016-03-22

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0847848132

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Beautifully illustrated and unparalleled in scope, this is an elegant visual celebration befitting the life and work of the "prince of the piano." Duke Ellington was the undisputed father of the American songbook. A prolific writer and consummate performer, Ellington was the author of such standards as "Solitude," "Prelude to a Kiss," and "It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing)." With a career that spanned five decades, he is one of the defining composers of the Jazz Age. With unprecedented access to the Ellington family archives, this long overdue book illuminates the life and work of an icon of twentieth-century music from his humble beginnings to his long-lasting success. Every stage of Ellington’s career is brought to life, from sepia photographs of his early days in Washington, DC, to colorful playbills from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, his triumphant tours of Europe in the 1930s, and his pioneering explosion of form and genre in the 1940s and beyond. Alongside more than two hundred stunning images, contributions from peers such as Dave Brubeck, Cornel West, Quincy Jones, and Tony Bennett shed light on Ellington’s musical legacy, while the voice of his granddaughter Mercedes reveals the character behind the charisma, and the man behind the piano.

Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis

Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis PDF

Author: Aaron Lefkovitz

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-06-20

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1498567525

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book examines Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis as distinctively global symbols of threatening and nonthreatening black masculinity. It centers them in debates over U.S. cultural exceptionalism, noting how they have been part of the definition of jazz as a jingoistic and exclusively American form of popular culture.

Riding on Duke's Train

Riding on Duke's Train PDF

Author: Mick Carlon

Publisher: Leapkids

Published: 2011-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781935248064

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Hitch a ride with Duke Ellington and his band as they play their music across America and Europe in 1939.

Duke Ellington's America

Duke Ellington's America PDF

Author: Harvey G. Cohen

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-05-15

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13: 0226112659

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Few American artists in any medium have enjoyed the international and lasting cultural impact of Duke Ellington. From jazz standards such as “Mood Indigo” and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” to his longer, more orchestral suites, to his leadership of the stellar big band he toured and performed with for decades after most big bands folded, Ellington represented a singular, pathbreaking force in music over the course of a half-century. At the same time, as one of the most prominent black public figures in history, Ellington demonstrated leadership on questions of civil rights, equality, and America’s role in the world. With Duke Ellington’s America, Harvey G. Cohen paints a vivid picture of Ellington’s life and times, taking him from his youth in the black middle class enclave of Washington, D.C., to the heights of worldwide acclaim. Mining extensive archives, many never before available, plus new interviews with Ellington’s friends, family, band members, and business associates, Cohen illuminates his constantly evolving approach to composition, performance, and the music business—as well as issues of race, equality and religion. Ellington’s own voice, meanwhile, animates the book throughout, giving Duke Ellington’s America an intimacy and immediacy unmatched by any previous account. By far the most thorough and nuanced portrait yet of this towering figure, Duke Ellington’s America highlights Ellington’s importance as a figure in American history as well as in American music.

Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism

Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism PDF

Author: Thomas David Brothers

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2014-02-03

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 0393065820

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The definitive account of Louis Armstrong—his life and legacy—during the most creative period of his career. Nearly 100 years after bursting onto Chicago’s music scene under the tutelage of Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong is recognized as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. A trumpet virtuoso, seductive crooner, and consummate entertainer, Armstrong laid the foundation for the future of jazz with his stylistic innovations, but his story would be incomplete without examining how he struggled in a society seething with brutally racist ideologies, laws, and practices. Thomas Brothers picks up where he left off with the acclaimed Louis Armstrong's New Orleans, following the story of the great jazz musician into his most creatively fertile years in the 1920s and early 1930s, when Armstrong created not one but two modern musical styles. Brothers wields his own tremendous skill in making the connections between history and music accessible to everyone as Armstrong shucks and jives across the page. Through Brothers's expert ears and eyes we meet an Armstrong whose quickness and sureness, so evident in his performances, served him well in his encounters with racism while his music soared across the airwaves into homes all over America. Louis Armstrong, Master of Modernism blends cultural history, musical scholarship, and personal accounts from Armstrong's contemporaries to reveal his enduring contributions to jazz and popular music at a time when he and his bandmates couldn’t count on food or even a friendly face on their travels across the country. Thomas Brothers combines an intimate knowledge of Armstrong's life with the boldness to examine his place in such a racially charged landscape. In vivid prose and with vibrant photographs, Brothers illuminates the life and work of the man many consider to be the greatest American musician of the twentieth century.

Medieval and Early Modern Murder

Medieval and Early Modern Murder PDF

Author: Larissa Tracy

Publisher: Boydell Press

Published: 2021-03-19

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 9781783275922

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Drawing on a wealth of sources from different disciplines, the essays here provide a nuanced picture of how medieval and early modern societies viewed murder and dealth with murderers.

The Chronicle of the Good Duke Louis II Bourbon

The Chronicle of the Good Duke Louis II Bourbon PDF

Author: Jean d' Orronville

Publisher: Freelance Academy Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781937439545

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Duke Louis of Bourbon was a descendant of the French King Louis IX (Saint Louis, d. 1270) and of the first Duke of Bourbon (a position created in 1327). As a royal cousin of Kings Charles VI and Charles VII, and the ruler of a key French duchy, Louis was a major player in the Hundred Years' War; a general, diplomat, and mediator, successful warlord, first in his campaigns against the English, then later in the campaigns launched by the French into the Baltic region, Muslim North Africa, and the Iberian peninsula. A man of war, he was also considered a pious Christian, who moderated the worst excesses of the French royal dukes in the latter years of the 14th century, making him a rare figure: A leader in every aspect of a blood war, from battlefield to high level politics, who came out of it as a hero. At least, that is how his friends saw it. What they thought of him is preserved in The Chronicle of the Good Duke Louis II, which not only gives us a dramatic account of Louis as prince and warlord, but also shows his friends observing him in action. The resulting Chronicle is as much a portrait of Louis' circle of friends as it is of Louis himself. The book, very like a collection of legends, gives modern readers a striking picture of the Hundred Years' War, provides a vivid picture of the war camps, courts, and battlefields of the late fourteenth century. Historian Steven Muhlberger renders his translation, the first of the Chronicle into any modern language, in crisp modern language that conveys the excitement of vivacity readers would have experienced six centuries ago.