Duke Ellington was one of the vital composers of jazz music. He was also a band leader, and he gained his fame by managing to keep his band together for almost 50 years. He used his band as a testing unit to make his masterpieces. He also p composed film scores performed a lot of jazz music, leading to the adoption of his musicalsthat became very famous.

Ellington’s band appearedin the film ‘Check and Double Check’. With that score ‘Three Little Words’ whose vocals came from the Rhythm Boys, the band gained its fame in 1930s while in The Cotton Club. In 1940s, Ellington’s jazz music was used in several films such as ‘The Ink Spots’ whichwas used as ‘score’ with a vocal version (Ruhlmann, 2015).

After the revival of Ellington’s career in the 1950s, he appeared at the New Monterey Jazz Festival where he gained live exposure. In 1957, he produced ‘Such Sweet Thunder’ based on Shakespeare’s plays and characters, which created new appearance to his jazz music. In 1959, Ellington worked with Strayhorn, with whom they scored for films soundtracks such as ‘Anatomy of a Murder’ (Ruhlmann, 2015). The soundtrack of the movie ‘Anatomy of a Murder’ won Ellington three Grammy awards.

In 1961, Ellington had another score, ‘Paris Blues’, which led to his nomination for Academy Award. In 1966, Sinatra’s film ‘Assault on a Queen’ was produced with Ellington’s score, and it became very famous theaters. Ellington, movie score for ‘Change of Mind’ film performed in 1969. Ellington became one of the main writers ofjazzmusic in his years and helped it enteracademic realms in the 20^th century.

Reference

Ruhlmann, W. (2015). Duke Ellington: The greatest all-around musical figure of the 20^th Century.Canada: Allmusic.