#whatever my career is fat liberation will be a part of it

[fatliberation]

fat studies are your career?

y r u so obsessed w me

[nomanwalksalone]

ALTERNATIVE STYLE ICON: JIMMY WANG YU IN THE MAN FROM HONG KONG

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

There are things we always want to reclaim from our past, even from its most confused, bittersweet moments. In my case, the thoughtful moments driving home late at night down Santa Monica Boulevard decades ago from an essay-writing extension class at UCLA. With the top down on my coincidentally Australian-built convertible (a deathtrap, a future girlfriend would call it, and refuse to get in), those summer evenings seemed flower-scented, ripe with potential that would go wasted, still and quiet and beautiful in a city that was not mine.

I was taking this after-work class after feeling like I was losing my marbles, wanting to find a way to collect myself after college. College had beaten any confidence in my ability to write for personal expression out of me. I would not rediscover that in that class, in fact not for decades until blogs like No Man Walks Alone reached out to me and I could process and piece back together parts of myself, those disjointed, uncalm, uncollected pieces of myself. At the time, I was young and unmoored, and the station at the lower end of the dial I’d listen to on those drives back reflected that feeling of unreality and detachment. It played everything, ironically or not, everything from the Laverne and Shirley theme to what would have at the time been cutting-edge electronica. And one-hit wonder Jigsaw’s strange “Sky High”, whose refrain “You’ve blown it all sky high” was sung altogether too casually for someone to be expressing the upheaval of their entire life.

I was pleased to rediscover the song playing as the main theme to 1975’s The Man From Hong Kong, whose star Jimmy Wang Yu is today’s Alternative Style Icon. The song’s strangely flip attitude towards destruction works perfectly in this bizarre, bizarrely interesting movie, which ends on the climax of Wang Yu blowing former James Bond George Lazenby and an entire floor of Lazenby’s apartment building to kingdom come. After setting Lazenby (yes, Lazenby himself, in a practical effect that actually did leave him with burns) on fire by kicking him into his open-plan 1970s fireplace…

Lazenby had blown his own career sky high by walking away from a multi-picture Bond film deal to instead star in 1971’s Universal Soldier, a confounding mashup of Easy Rider and The Dogs of War whose chief point of interest is that feminist writer Germaine Greer plays a minor role. Lazenby claims that his friend Bruce Lee was set to star with him in The Man From Hong Kong until Bruce met his mysterious end at the hands of either a Dim Mak death touch or a medication allergy. Jimmy Wang Yu stepped into the role and Lee’s vacant shoes and acquits himself well in all respects except the unfair and unwinnable one of being in the shadow of a deceased legend, deceased so very much larger than life.

The Man From Hong Kong showed how exploitation films could be strangely liberating, indeed subversive. It was a so-called Ozploitation film by dint of its Australian production, going so far as to have its first scene a fight atop sacred landmark Ayers Rock, where a future Mad Max actor actually beats legendary martial artist and fight choreographer Sammo Hung. It also exploited many other period trends:  the Kung Fu, international thriller, and loose cannon cop fads, with Wang Yu a polished Hong Kong police inspector able to charm very white Australian beauties out of their hang-gliding pants and bikinis. Nearly a half century later, moviemaking still is rightfully criticized for emasculating Asian men, yet in this 1970s exploitation film an Asian man got to carry out the old seduction tropes of the regressive, lily-white British spy movie, even if (as Alice Caldwell-Kelly has observed) the characters do engage in racist banter about it.

This is very much a Jimmy Wang Yu showcase. It’s certainly not Lazenby’s fits that stand out in this movie. As my friend Matt Spaiser of The Suits of James Bond has pointed out, Lazenby has to dress the part of a playboy bigwig villain, and wears old playboy clichés like gold-buttoned blazers with draggy 1970s long collars and fat ties, all in combination with the long sideburns and Zapata ‘stache that make him look like a more butch Peter Wyngarde. Wang Yu, instead, makes a deep blue his theme color, first in a rollneck with light salt-and-pepper tweed jacket in his suave arrival scenes in Australia, then as the color of the jumpsuit he wears in a viciously violent car chase and final fight where, as agent of the most chaotic good, he smashes through the windows of Laz’s penthouse apartment. That jumpsuit could have been iconic, were it not eclipsed by the yellow jumpsuit that would turn up in Bruce’s boss fights in Game of Death, released infamously long after Lee had died. In the shadow of the legend, shadows of legend. In contrast, Wang Yu’s dark green corduroy suit that he wears for his first confrontation with Lazenby is iconic and uneclipsed. Despite its 1970s exaggerations of style and details, its material, color and dash are very much contemporary, corduroy being one of the casual materials in which suit designers are trying to lure us out, even if might wear a bit warm for hot girl summer or whatever the current name of this current uncertain, tentative summer is. Perhaps hang gliding should make a comeback, although not in Sydney airspace.

Uncertain and tentative, you do what you can to collect yourself, invest at the time in what you can of yourself, and decades later maybe, maybe, you get somewhere, even if you can never stop looking back.

[possibilistfanfiction]

im really interested in what you have to say about deconstructing the education system as we know it! im currently in school for teaching but i obviously see issues with the entire system and have seen first hand the harm that it does. im curious how i as a teacher one day can exist within a system that is upholding white supremacy and imperialism etc while being anti all those things. obviously you dont have to but if you have any resources or advice i’d really appreciate it

well the bleak answer is that you can’t — you’re going to be a part of that system; you get paid because of that system, etc. i’m certainly not saying i’m exempt from that either, just to be clear; i’ve done so much harm as a teacher, especially at the beginning of my career.

the more nuanced answer is that ur gonna have to a) be REALLY good at teaching, which u probably won’t be right away bc it’s so hard & genuinely just takes practice; b) once u get rly good, u can cause a Lot of drama w ur admin abt policies that are shitty bc they’ll listen (bc of ur data).

but yah. there’s no way to fully live up to ur ideals of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist liberation as an educator. u can be honest w kids abt the actual way the world works, u can prioritize restorative practices & not penalize kids for stuff, but u still are going to have to administer tests, not Always use UDI, track literacy, fight for actual IEP accommodations & minutes, etc. bc the system is how it is, there’s rly no escape bc you are being paid to help it.

i’m trying to get out of the classroom for those reasons, but lots of ppl stay to try to make things better too. at the end of the day i think we’re all obviously within systems & it seems relatively impossible to fully live up to radical ideals; i think for me i’m unwilling, at this point, to continue to harm young people directly. i love my kids so much & it matters to me that i don’t hurt them — but i’m also not gonna save them from the Big Bads. i hope i equip them w liberatory frameworks & love when those things happen (i’m always talking abt body liberation & imagining indigenous land back, etc etc etc) but teaching, for me, has been more traumatic than it has been anything else.

there are some cool young teachers of color & queer teachers trying to do rly great work, so if it’s smth ur truly passionate abt, i would say to at least give it a shot. we’re all living in capitalism hell so u gotta make a living somehow, & we all have to compromise. fanon & hooks are some classic writers abt education, but i find the frameworks that help me most are just activists in other fields talking abt their liberatory work. i’ve been doing a ton of personal work of my own in learning abt fat liberation, which has changed how i talk abt wellness! it’s great, bc it’s super awesome to talk to kids abt — they’re always intuitive ppl, i’ve found, & full of empathy for each other, if not themselves. so whatever ur passionate abt in terms of liberation, & whatever informs ur personal identity politic toward abolition & radicalism, u can definitely take that into ur classroom to inform ur personal pedagogy — which is probably the most important thing.

i would be less concerned w curriculum than i would be UDI scaffolds + behavior responses. kids can discern curriculum they agree with pretty well, & also flat out so many kids can’t read the way the state™️ expects them to. so making ur classroom a generative, radical community that’s overwhelmingly & thoughtfully accessible is the most important thing

anyway that’s so long lol hmu off anon if u want :)

[blackestnight]

♥⌛♠ all the kids!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--

hanami.

♥ do they have more muscles or more fat on their body?

she has a lot of muscle mass, and is built like a tiny, scaly brick shithouse. (she’s not nearly as waifish as the in-game models; girl’s got capital-S Shoulders, and thighs to match, because you don’t make a career out of swinging around a sword as big as you are without them.) which isn’t to say she has no body fat; she has plenty of padding, especially around her stomach, hips, and thighs, because...that’s just how bodies work? she eats a lot and stays hydrated and is therefore squish-able if she’s not actively tensing her muscles. (squishing is not advised, because she’ll maim you for touching her.) she actually lost weight recently, but not in a good way: at the end stages of her light corruption, her body was pretty much eating itself to keep going. she’s gaining it back, thankfully.

⌛ do they go shopping for clothes often? how long do they usually need?

nope. she wears her clothes until they wear out and then replaces them. she usually buys ‘off the rack’ (assuming the npc gear merchants indicate that that’s a thing in-universe) from clothiers she knows and trusts to make decent-quality stuff, makes whatever modifications she has to for her tail, and calls it a day. since doma’s liberation she’s made a point of going home to buy most of her clothes, because they’re familiar and comfortable and she believes in supporting local artisans and businesses, plus the fact that the layers mean she can adapt more easily to whatever climate she happens to be in for the day.

♠ any ‘weird’ characteristics on their body? one leg/arm longer than the other?

well, she does have a metal horn, which is pretty unusual, and exists in her mind as a bizarre quasi part/not-part of her body, depending on how The Trauma(TM) is treating her on any given day. the fingers and knuckles of her right hand are much thicker and more knobby than her left; she’s cracked and broken them a lot, since she didn’t wear proper gauntlets in her coliseum days and her sword didn’t have a guard. the inside of her mouth is also blue-gray, which isn’t something she considers weird (why!! do male au ra models!!! get the cute blue tongue!!! and the ladies don’t!!! SQUARE ENIX!!!) because in my zero-cowards-allowed universe it’s just A Thing with all au ra, but she does get people in eorzea trying (and failing) to sneak second looks if they notice.

haruki.

♥ do they have more muscles or more fat on their body?

same deal as hanami! he’s very densely muscled, but also has plenty of fat (just distributed differently). haruki is actually slightly less bulky than his sister, because he’s built for speed rather than raw strength, although given how much bigger he is size-wise it’s hard to notice if you don’t know to look for it.

⌛ do they go shopping for clothes often? how long do they usually need?

surprisingly, he doesn’t go shopping that often. haruki hit his growth spurt early, takes good care of his clothing, and is a handy guy with a needle and thread; this combined with the fact that his fashion sense hasn’t changed much since he was twelve means he usually rips apart and reconstructs old clothes when they start to wear out (as opposed to hanami, who just rips hers apart for cleaning rags). if he does need new clothing, he’ll usually just buy fabric and make it himself, unless he needs something formal or specialized that he doesn’t have the skill level to make on his own. (all of this makes him sound like a much more reasonably-dressed person than he is: his wardrobe looks like doctor frankenstein took up tailoring and got really into floral prints.)

♠ any ‘weird’ characteristics on their body? one leg/arm longer than the other?

he has a big lump on the left side of his collarbone, and a limited range of motion with that shoulder (old injury--not combat, just teenage idiocy). a’dewah keeps bringing up his bone-mending magic (that he perfected on zaya ‘i break my body parts because limits are for boring people’ qestir), but since it doesn’t bother haruki much on the day-to-day he hasn’t accepted the offer. his chest, in the right light, seems to shimmer with a scale pattern--sort of like white tattoo ink on pale skin, only it’s a little blue. his skin is also noticeably cooler than most people’s, even when he’s been out in the sun, which isn’t visible but is definitely unusual.

elysa.

♥ do they have more muscles or more fat on their body?

very muscular, but she has a puffy tummy and bangin’ thighs. she uses a style of polearm combat more similar to in-game drg mechanics and is therefore a little slower and harder-hitting than haruki’s speed-style; she doesn’t have as much upper-body strength as some of her peers because her preferred form of exercise has always been running, rather than weightlifting or body-weight workouts, so she has more fat on her arms and back. she’s been training with the revamped fist of rhalgr and learning on how to direct all those leg muscles into some devastating leaps and kicks.

⌛ do they go shopping for clothes often? how long do they usually need?

she loves to plan all-day ‘shopping’ trips, but actually spends most of the day zipping around window-shopping instead of buying things. she’s also a foodie fiend, and will pop into every cafe and bakery she passes to buy something, either to snack on while she’s walking or to gift to friends. at the end of the day she’ll have a bag or two of clothing and an armload of pastry boxes.

♠ any ‘weird’ characteristics on their body? one leg/arm longer than the other?

her right foot is just over half a shoe size bigger than her left, which is why she goes to a cobbler for custom footwear rather than buying shoes from storefronts...when she can afford it. (adventuring isn’t very lucrative, and there were several years where she just had to buy the bigger size and layer her left foot with extra socks.) she also has a clan mark in red on her right cheek, which isn’t strictly ‘weird’ but which she did cover with her hair until recently--she got it much earlier than most ala mhigan youths, in (well-meaning but misguided) solidarity with addie, and covered it while she was in her self-imposed exile.

addie. 

♥ do they have more muscles or more fat on their body?

definitely more fat. she’s not nearly as physically active as the rest of her friends, and isn’t capable of much in the way of heavy lifting or strenuous workouts, so she hasn’t ever built up muscle the way elysa has (addie swims, but for recreation and physical therapy, not to bulk up or trim down). so, as opposed to hanami and elysa, what ‘figure’ addie has is all fat--she’s a pudgy lady. elysa says it just makes her better for hugging.

⌛ do they go shopping for clothes often? how long do they usually need?

again, no. she’s spent most of her life in uniforms of some kind: first the conjurers’ guild robes, then the arcanists’ guild, and now the twin adders. she gets to wear more civilian clothes now that she’s semi-permanently transferred to the resistance-alliance irregulars stationed in ala mhigo, but even that is mostly leggings and thin shirts under sweaters and dresses. elysa drags her out on shopping trips every once in a blue moon, which is why she owns a few slightly-fancier dresses and waistcoats.

♠ any ‘weird’ characteristics on their body? one leg/arm longer than the other?

she has a tattoo over her right eye: golden-brown leaves sprouting from a vine, a shade lighter than her skin. she hates it; it was forced on her as a preteen by the hearers in stillglade fane, who were convinced that her swelling joints and chronic pain were some kind of proof of the elementals’ touch, not arthritis. the tattoo was meant to be part of a ritual to strengthen her bond with the elementals--one which, obviously, didn’t work, and which was performed without her consent. she hasn’t been able to find makeup or glamours that cover it completely (magic tattoo, whoop-de-fucking-doo) and gets so visibly uncomfortable when people ask about it that they let it drop. she also runs a low-grade fever almost constantly, and often appears flushed; her knees and finger joints are swollen most of the time, but that’s less noticeable.

sjanna.

♥ do they have more muscles or more fat on their body?

chubby bunny! she’s a total glass cannon and has pretty much zero muscle mass, but plenty of fat. she’s in good shape and surprisingly active, for a career book nerd, and often goes exploring in ancient ruins or chasing down rare monsters, she’s just...got a lot of body fat. when she was younger and more reckless, she was also more skinny, by which i mean ‘skin and bones,’ because she made a regular habit of overexerting herself with magic to the point that she would empty her aetheric reserves and start to eat away at her living aether...which was extraordinarily unhealthy, and myrrh mistral singlehandedly saved her life by (tenderly, lovingly) bopping her over the head with ginnungagap until she learned how to recognize her limits--and then blow past them, but safely, this time, using techniques honed from ancient mhach and amdapor. (no soul crystals, though, she’s just that badass and also...a little cursed. but it’s fine!)

⌛ do they go shopping for clothes often? how long do they usually need?

sjanna doesn’t go shopping, she sends fashion plates to her favorite tailor in radz-at-han and has all of her outfits custom-made. she goes in for fittings as needed and maintains an impeccable wardrobe of gowns, robes, and tunics, with a variety of fabrics and embellishments that makes them suitable for citywear or traveling gear. much of her combat gear is enchanted, which she does herself. her closet is the envy of fashionistas everywhere.

♠ any ‘weird’ characteristics on their body? one leg/arm longer than the other?

her left eye is deep wine red, as opposed to her right eye, which is such a dark purple that it almost looks black. they’re hard to notice without getting up in her face, but the red eye almost seems backlit--it’s not natural, and is actually a product of a curse the green word inflicted on her when she was cast out of golmore. she has permanent aether-vision in the same style as y’shtola, although sjanna can’t turn hers off, and maintains normal eyesight in her right eye. her front teeth also grow constantly, and while she can file them down manually (and does, most of the time) she has been known to chew absentmindedly on pencils to help keep them manageable.

irey.

♥ do they have more muscles or more fat on their body?

she’s always been muscular: she joined the temple knights as a teenager, then enlisted in the maelstrom after leaving ishgard, and currently works full-time as a blacksmith with some mercenary jobs on the side. her history as an archer combined with her smithing means she is ripped, and has even broader shoulders than the in-game elezen models. girl’s got arms and abs like whoa. her lower body is comparatively pudgy, and she also maintains a healthy amount of fat around the stomach and waist, although she’s more gangly than the other members of the squad.

⌛ do they go shopping for clothes often? how long do they usually need?

she has an eye for the finer things in life, clothing included: she was born into a minor noble house in ishgard and was frequently dressed up in all the finest fashions on offer. now, however...she is Looking Away. She Does Not See It. she’d rather wear her coveralls every day. even her casual clothing looks like work clothing, though with fewer burn marks and grease stains. she does the absolute minimum amount of clothes shopping that she can get away with.

♠ any ‘weird’ characteristics on their body? one leg/arm longer than the other?

the pinky and ring fingers of her right hand are both cut off past the third knuckle (accident from her early days with naldiq & vymelli’s). in theory she could get prosthetic replacements, but since it doesn’t hamper her ability to work or shoot, she’s not worried about it. she also has a scar over her left eye from a piece of shrapnel that hit her during bahamut’s rampage. careful observers might note especially prominent eyeteeth, and what appears to be a thin film over her eyes, like dunesfolk gloss lite--it’s a trait some highland elezen have developed over the centuries to deal with the sun.

[argylemnwrites]

Traditions

Pairing: Seth Levine x MC (Jessica Parker)

Book: Red Carpet Diaries (about one year after Book 3)

Word Count: ~1100

Rating: PG-13 (some adult language)

Summary: Seth gets to experience “holiday” Jessica when Hanukkah rolls around.

Author’s Note: Happy Hanukkah to all those who celebrate! Thought I’d write a little fic about my favorite Jewish character in Choices in honor of the first night of Hanukkah. This piece is for Day 22 of both the Choices December Challenge (Hanukkah) and 41 Days of Cheer (Holiday).

“Here, taste these,” Jessica said, shoving a plate of latkes across the kitchen island.

Seth glanced up from the script he was flipping through. Ethan Blake had been sending him a lot of scripts lately, but honestly, none of them had resonated with Seth. He knew he should have capitalized on his increased name recognition after Ninradell, but he just wasn’t sure what he’d wanted to focus on for his career. Should he be trying for more big-franchise blockbuster type roles, even though that wasn’t really his passion? Should he be looking at the comedic parts, even though those tended to be more supporting roles? Should he stick to movies, or would television be a better fit? Or should he return to his roots, focusing on his standup now that more people might be interested in him?

Unsure of what he truly wanted, he’d only taken a couple of recurring guest spots in some TV shows and a highly billed supporting role in an action comedy over the past year. Instead of acting, he’d spent more time focused on his writing, much to Ethan’s chagrin. Oh well, that had meant that he’d been able to travel with Jessica when she’d been filming on location in Australia, which had been much nicer than when they were both frantically busy throughout their entire engagement, barely seeing each other when they lived in the same city. Plus, he’d gotten to host SNL, so as far as he was concerned, that alone made the year since the release of Ninradell a professional success.

However, if Jessica kept feeding him fried food, his career options might be a moot point, as he was going to put on so much weight and would only get hired as the fat funny friend. Growing up, his mom had only made special foods for the first night of Hanakkuh, the rest of the nights often consisting of lighting the menorah and him and Caleb quickly opening their gifts between homework and clubs and sports. But Jessica had been frying and baking for five nights straight at this point, and that was in addition to the dozens of Christmas cookies she’d been baking and stocking the freezer with over the past few weeks. If he only gained 10 pounds over December, it would be a miracle.

Sighing, he grabbed the fork off the plate and started in on yet another batch of latkes. They were tasty - Jessica’s cooking always was - but he was getting a little tired of having to serve as her Jewish food critic. He felt like an ass for even having thoughts like that, but after four nights of latkes and sufganiyot and fritters and donuts, Seth just wanted a damn salad. But he couldn’t complain about his wife’s cooking, particularly when it was all for his holiday, so he dug in dutifully.

After a couple of bites, he looked over at Jessica, standing behind the stove top, staring at him expectantly.

“They’re good, Iowa,” he said between bites.

“Are they better than yesterday’s? I’m trying to get them crispier.”

“They were both good. They’ve all been good.”

Jessica sighed heavily at that. Apparently, that was the wrong answer.

“Jessica, I don’t know what to tell you. You know you’re a great cook. Literally everything you’ve made for Hanukkah has been amazing.”

“But these are the foods you grew up with, and I’ve never made them before.”

“And I’m telling you, you did an awesome job. What else do you want me to say?”

“I just want to be sure I’m replicating your childhood Hanukkahs.”

“Jessica, I love you, but that is an insane goal.”

She scowled at him, so he pressed on, trying to explain himself before things devolved into a fight.

“First, I was raised in a very liberal Reform home. My parents essentially transformed Hanukkah into Jewish Christmas, so you could serve me eggnog and some of those cookies you’ve been baking and it would feel normal to me. Second, unless you want to fly my brother out so he and I can get in a fight before he leaves for a shift at Jungle Jims and you drive me to the Y for swim class, you won’t be able to truly capture the essence of my childhood Decembers. Third, and most importantly, the day I compare any aspect of you to my mother is the day you should file for divorce. So please, Jessica, do not make me compare your latkes to my mother’s.”

Jessica bit her lip and smiled at that, pausing for a few moments before she spoke up.

“I know how important holiday traditions are, and I just… I just want our kids to look back on my holiday meals with fond memories.”

Ah, well that explained a lot. They had been talking about trying to get pregnant starting sometime in the new year. And while the thought both simultaneously excited and scared the shit out of Seth, Jessica was clearly viewing this holiday season as a trial run for the future. A future where she obviously envisioned herself as some Hallmark movie version of a mother.

“Jessica, they will love your holiday meals because you’ll be the one making them. You could serve them frozen pizza and they would love it. Whatever you want to serve, that will be our tradition, okay? Or if you want me to handle the Jewish crap, that’s fair too. We’ll figure it out year by year, alright?”

“No way are you allowed to cook any holiday meals, Jewish or otherwise.”

“I’m a decent cook!” Seth retorted, but Jessica just cocked an eyebrow at him. “Fine, I’m an adequate cook,” he amended.

“The Valentine’s dinner debacle of 2018 says otherwise.”

“The steaks were just a little overly charred.”

“And the rolls were not cooked through and the vegetables were beyond rubbery and you forgot about dessert in the oven so the sprinklers went off-”

“Alright, alright, I concede that meal did not turn out well. Are you ever gonna let me live that down?”

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head as she flipped the rest of the latkes onto another plate, walked around the island, and joined Seth on the stool next to his. And while he knew that it was just in Jessica’s nature to go a little nuts about this sort of thing, that she would always be the type to go all out for the holidays, well sitting here, enjoying a home-cooked meal with her was more than festive enough for him. Whatever the future held for them and their family, spending it together would always matter more than what was on the menu.

Tags: @mfackenthal @octobereighth​ @choicesbyjade​ @jlpplays1-41daysofcheerchallenge​ @choicesdecemberchallenge​

[monaedroid]

She rose to fame as an endlessly inventive pop android. Now, she's finally revealing the real person waiting inside

Janelle Monáe is crying in her spacesuit. It's early April in Atlanta, and she's in one of the basement studios of her Wondaland Records headquarters, surrounded by computer monitors and TV screens, one of them running a screensaver that displays images of her heroes: Prince, Martin Luther King Jr., Pam Grier, Tina Turner, Lupita Nyong'o, David Bowie. She's about to reveal, for the first time, something the world has long guessed, something her closest friends and family already know, something she's long been loath to say in public. As she sings on a song from her new album, Dirty Computer,"Let the rumors be true." Janelle Monáe is not, she finally admits, the immaculate android, the "alien from outer space/The cybergirl without a face" she's claimed to be over a decade's worth of albums, videos, concerts and even interviews – she is, instead, a flawed, messy, flesh-and-blood 32-year-old human being.

And she has another rumor to confirm. "Being a queer black woman in America," she says, taking a breath as she comes out, "someone who has been in relationships with both men and women – I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker." She initially identified as bisexual, she clarifies, "but then later I read about pansexuality and was like, ‘Oh, these are things that I identify with too.' I'm open to learning more about who I am."

It's a lovely spacesuit she's wearing, a form-fitting white NASA artifact complete with a commander patch on one arm and an American flag on the other. She's put it on for no reason at all – there are no cameras in sight – as she lounges around Wondaland. The outfit is a remnant, perhaps, of the android persona, known as Cindi Mayweather, that she fed us all these years: a messianic, revolutionary robot who fell in love with a human and vowed to free the rest of the androids.

Early in her career, Monáe was insecure about living up to impossible showbiz ideals; the persona, the androgynous outfits, the inflexible commitment to the storyline both on- and offstage, served in part as protective armor. "It had to do with the fear of being judged," she says. "All I saw was that I was supposed to look a certain way coming into this industry, and I felt like I [didn't] look like a stereotypical black female artist."

She is also a perfectionist, a tendency that's helped her career and hindered her emotional life; portraying a flawless automaton was also a bit of wish fulfillment. It's one of the many reasons she thought she had a "computer virus" that needed cleaning, which led her to years of therapy, starting before the 2010 release of her debut, The ArchAndroid. "I felt misunderstood," she says. "I was like, ‘Before I self-destruct, before I become a confused person in front of the world, let me seek some help.' I was afraid for anybody to see me not at the top of my game. That obsession was too much for me."

So she overcompensated, as she puts it, leaving fans to puzzle over the sight and sound of a dark-skinned, androgynously dressed black woman creating Afro-futuristic fantasias as trippy as the Parliament-Funkadelic soundscapes she grew up hearing. She became a pop anomaly, a sometimes incongruous interloper in the universes of her earliest supporters, Big Boi and Puff Daddy, the latter having signed her to a partnership with Bad Boy Records in 2008. The ArchAndroidwas a buzzy introduction, and 2013's Electric Lady – certainly the first progged-out concept album in the history of Bad Boy – established her as one of the 21st century's most inventive voices. Years before Frank Ocean, Solange, Beyoncé and SZA pushed arty, alternative R&B to the mainstream, Monáe was already there, bridging the gap between neo-soul and all that was to come, unafraid to fuse rock, funk, hip-hop (when she feels like it, as on her recent single "Django Jane," she's a top-flight rapper), R&B, electronica and campy, drama-kid theatricality.

She always ducked questions about her sexuality ("I only date androids" was a stock response) but embedded the real answers in her music. "If you listen to my albums, it's there," she says. She cites "Mushrooms & Roses" and "Q.U.E.E.N.," two songs that reference a character named Mary as an object of affection. In the 45-minute film accompanying Dirty Computer, "Mary Apple" is the name given to female "dirty computers" taken captive and stripped of their real names, one of whom is played by Tessa Thompson. (The actress has been rumored to be Monáe's girlfriend, though Monáe won't discuss her dating life.) The original title of "Q.U.E.E.N.," she notes, was "Q.U.E.E.R.," and you can still hear the word on the track's background harmonies.

Monáe is the CEO of her own label, a CoverGirl model and a movie star, appearing in the Oscar-winning Moonlight and the Oscar-nominated Hidden Figures, two hits led by black casts. In both films, she tackles black American stories that don't typically get the big-screen treatment. "Our stories are being erased, basically," she says of her attachment to those scripts, which made her "want to tell my story." Monáe does worry that the human behind her masks may not be enough. She has asked aloud, including in therapy, "What if people don't think I'm as interesting as Cindi Mayweather?" She'll miss the freedom of being the android. "I created her, so I got to make her be whatever I wanted her to be. I didn't have to talk about the Janelle Monáe who was in therapy. It's Cindi Mayweather. She is who I aspire to be." On Dirty Computer, the only hints of sci-fi are in the title and the storyline of the accompanying film. The lyrics are flesh-and-blood confessions of both physical and emotional insecurity, punctuated with sexual liberation. They're the unfiltered desires of an overthinker letting herself speak without pause, for once. And she wants to help listeners gain the courage to be dirty computers too. "I want young girls, young boys, nonbinary, gay, straight, queer people who are having a hard time dealing with their sexuality, dealing with feeling ostracized or bullied for just being their unique selves, to know that I see you," she says in a tone befitting the commander patch on her arm. "This album is for you. Be proud."

Monáe grew up in a massive, devoutly Baptist family in Kansas City, Kansas, or as she likes to put it, "I got 50 first cousins!" Not all of them know details of her romantic life, but they have almost certainly seen her wear sheer pants and share a lollipop with Thompson in the "Make Me Feel" video. "I literally do not have time," she says, laughing, "to hold a town-hall meeting with my big-ass family and be like, ‘Hey, news flash!' " She worries that when we visit Kansas City tomorrow, they'll bring it up: "There are people in my life that love me and they have questions, and I guess when I get there, I'll have to answer those questions."

Over the years, she's heard some members of her family, mostly distant ones, say certain upsetting things. "A lot of this album," she says, "is a reaction to the sting of what it means to hear people in my family say, ‘All gay people are going to hell.' "

She began questioning the Bible and her family's Baptist faith early on. Now, she says, "I serve the God of love" – love, she's determined, is the common factor among all religions, an idea Stevie Wonder expanded on in a Dirty Computer interlude.

When we arrive in the flat, industrial Kansas side of Kansas City, her family doesn't actually have any questions – or anything unkind to say, for that matter. There's just a whole lot of love for their homegrown superstar.

Janelle Monáe Robinson was born here on December 1st, 1985, to a mom who worked as a janitor and a dad who was in the middle of a 21-year battle with crack addiction. Her parents separated when Monáe was less than a year old, and her mother later married the father of Janelle's younger sister, Kimmy.

Monáe's loving warnings about the sheer size of her family ring true as soon as we step into her old neighborhood. On one street, her maternal grandmother owned several homes in a row that housed cousins, aunts, uncles and Monáe herself. A few minutes away is her paternal great-grandmother's pastel-coated house. Monáe spent a significant portion of her time there – it was her main connection to her dad and his family as he went in and out of prison; their relationship was rocky until he got sober 13 years ago. Another short car ride away is her maternal Aunt Glo's home, where we meet her mom. "She's my favorite slice of pie," her Auntie Fats says, referring to Monáe's familial nickname of "pun'kin."

Monáe was raised in a working-class community called Quindaro. It started as a settlement established by Native Americans and abolitionists just prior to the Civil War, and became a refuge for black Americans escaping slavery via the Underground Railroad. A few weeks before our visit, vandals painted swastikas and "Hail Satan" on a statue of abolitionist John Brown in the neighborhood. It's since been repainted. "I know nobody in this neighborhood did that," her great-grandmother says, shaking her head. "Outsiders."

On the Missouri side of the bridge, Kansas City is predominately white, but Monáe's community is overwhelmingly black. "I would read about where I was from," she says, "and understand who's really disadvantaged coming from these environments. It sucks. It's like that for brown folks." It's hard to miss her family's religiosity – they hardly get a sentence out without a mention of God's blessings. At 91, Monáe's great-grandma still monitors the halls at the local vacation Bible school with a switch in hand. During our visit, she sits behind a piano to lead a gospel singalong. Monáe, beside an aunt and a cousin, joins in, belting "Call Him Up and Tell Him What You Want" and "Savior, Do Not Pass Me By."

Monáe is never more relaxed during our time together than when she's in Kansas City. Her Midwestern drawl comes back as she screams and sings while running into the arms of her cousins, aunts and uncles, many of whom she gets to see only during the holidays or tour stops nearby. At one point, she curls up into her mom's lap while they look at a homemade poster full of sepia-toned childhood pics. "She was a delightful baby," Auntie Fats recalls.

Monáe's family members all share different versions of the same story: She was born to be a star, and she made that clear as soon as she gained motor skills. There was that time she got escorted out of church for insisting on singing Michael Jackson's "Beat It" in the middle of the service. There were the talent shows for Juneteenth where she covered "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" three years in a row and won each time. She was the star of the school musicals, except for The Wiz her senior year, when she lost the role of Dorothy because she had to leave the audition early to pick up her mom at work. She's still a bit miffed about not getting that part.

Monáe soon passed a bigger audition, for the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and headed to New York. She studied musical theater and shared a small apartment with a cousin where she didn't even have a bed to herself. When she wasn't in class, she was working.

Meanwhile, an old friend was having the college experience Monáe desired, in Atlanta, so she relocated. The rest is well-trod history in the myth-building of Monáe: She was an Afro'd neo-soul singer strumming her guitar on college quads and working at Office Depot. She was fired from that job for using one of the company's computers to respond to a fan's e-mail, an incident that inspired the song "Lettin' Go."

That song caught the attention of Big Boi, who put her on Outkast's Idlewild and helped connect her with Sean Combs. "I'm-a be honest with you," her dad says, recalling an invite to one of Monáe's shows in Atlanta, where Combs was supposed to be in the house. "I was like, ‘Yeah, right.' I didn't think Puff Daddy was coming."

Skepticism aside, Michael Robinson was proud of the invite. He'd recently gotten sober, and the two were repairing their relationship. He spent much of Janelle's childhood hearing about her immense talents from the more-present members of their family. He was honored that they had come far enough for Monáe to want him to be there for such an important concert. But he still didn't believe Puffy would be there.

"I go down there with my two cousins, and she says, ‘Dad, everyone's gonna know you're not from here. Your jeans are creased.' " Fashion faux pas aside – he insists he hasn't creased his jeans since – Robinson was in for a pleasant surprise when one of his cousins spotted Combs and Big Boi in the back. It was the beginning of his daughter's new life, and he was just in time to be along for the journey. "I remember thinking, ‘This is what the big time is like,' " he muses. "They had all the cameras, all the lights. It was all about Janelle."

Wondaland Arts Society's headquarters feels like a utopian synthesis of Monáe's past lives in Kansas City and Manhattan. It sits inconspicuously in the midst of suburban Atlanta and looks like every other neighborhood home, with its two floors and brick exterior. Inside is much more ostentatious, with vintage clocks wallpapering the foyer, pristine white couches in the communal living spaces, and books and records everywhere.

It mimics the close-knit, constant accessibility of her childhood in Kansas City, with all its artists popping in and out of the space throughout each day to record new music, rehearse for shows and present the final product to the rest of the collective. At one point, the singer-rapper Jidenna shows up, having recently returned from a trip to Africa – everyone immediately starts teasing him about his newly buff physique.

Simultaneously, Chuck Lightning, seemingly the more extroverted half of two-man funk act Deep Cotton, who make their own music as well as work with Monáe, grabs a bowl of quinoa from the kitchen as Monáe doles out decisions on which version of the "Pynk" video will be released (they settle on the one without the spoken-word love poem that appears within the song in the film).

Monáe recorded most of Dirty Computer here, in a small studio with Havana-inspired decor. Guests and collaborators ranged from Grimes to Brian Wilson, who added harmonies to the title track. The album's liner notes cite Bible verses and a recent Quincy Jones interview alongside Monica Sjöö's The Great Cosmic Mother and Ryan Coogler's Black Panther.

But she was particularly close to one inspiration. Monáe was good friends with Prince, who personally blessed the album's glossy camp tone and synthed-out hooks. "When Prince heard this particular direction, he was like, ‘That's what y'all need to be doing,' " Lightning says. "He picked out that sound as what was resonating with him." Prince gave highly specific music and equipment recommendations from the era they were drawing on, including Gary Numan, whom he loved. "The most powerful thing he could do was give us the brushes to paint with," Lightning says.

Rumors spread that Prince co-wrote the single "Make Me Feel," which features a "Kiss"-like guitar riff. "Prince did not write that song," says Monáe, who sorely missed his advice during the production process. "It was very difficult writing this album without him." Prince was the first person to get a physical copy of The ArchAndroid – she presented the CD to him with a flower and the titles written out by hand. "As we were writing songs, I was like, ‘What would Prince think?' And I could not call him. It's a difficult thing to lose your mentor in the middle of a journey they had been a part of."

Stevie Wonder was another early fan of Monáe, and a conversation between them – Wonder insisted she record it – appears as an interlude on Dirty Computer. At one point, years ago, her budding friendships with both legends collided: She had to choose between playing with Prince at Madison Square Garden or with Wonder in Los Angeles. Prince encouraged her to pick Stevie.

On election night in 2016, Monáe found herself experiencing an unfamiliar emotion. "For the first time," she says, "I felt scared." Overnight, she went from living in a country whose president loved her music and had her perform on the White House lawn to one where it felt like her right to exist was threatened. "I felt like if I wake up tomorrow," she says, "are people going to feel they have the right to just, like, kill me now?"

Monáe had already been a committed activist. In 2015, with members of Wondaland, she created "Hell You Talmbout," which demands we say the names of black Americans who have been victims of racial violence and police brutality. Before #MeToo and Time's Up, Monáe created an organization, Fem the Future, which stemmed from her frustrations about opportunities for women in the music industry. She was called on to perform at the 2017 Women's March and to speak about Time's Up while introducing Kesha at the Grammys. "We come in peace, but we mean business," she told the cheering crowd.

That sums up Monáe's mindset in the Trump era. She hopes not to destroy the oppressors but to change their minds. "The conversations might not happen with people in the position of power," she says, "but they can happen through a movie, they can happen through a song, they can happen through an album, they can happen through a speech on TV. Most of them will probably turn off their TVs, but . . ."

She's in a New York hotel now, two weeks before the album's release. "There's some anxiety there, but I feel brave," she says, teetering between her typical sternness and a bit of vulnerable shakiness. No tears will be shed today. "My musical heroes did not make the sacrifices they did for me to live in fear." Her activism isn't the focus of Dirty Computer, but it's there, hovering above every note. She ended band rehearsal in Atlanta by asking the musicians to reflect on how American this album is. Monáe's America is the one on the fringes; it accepts the outsiders and the computers with viruses, like the ones she thought she had.

She understands the significance of now making her personal life a bigger, louder part of her art. She cites the conversation around one of her films as an example of how she might use her own story to engage with more-conservative listeners. "When I did Hidden Figures, there were some Republican white men tweeting about it and how they just felt bad. You could feel through their tweets that they were just like, ‘These black women did help us get to space. How could we treat them like that?' "

Meanwhile, she's again anticipating questions from her family back in Kansas. She seems more worried about them than what anyone else has to say. Still, Dirty Computer is meant to be a celebration, and if she loses a few people along the way, Monáe seems OK with that risk.

"Through my experiences, I hope people are seen and heard," she says, sitting at a hotel-room desk, dressed up from a day of promo in a puffy black-and-red jacket, matching red pants and terry-cloth hotel slippers. "I may make some mistakes. I may have to learn on the go, but I'm open to this journey." She sighs, voice confident and stare unfaltering. "I need to go through this. We need to go through this. Together. I'm going to make you empathize with dirty computers all around the world."

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/cover-story-janelle-monae-prince-new-lp-her-sexuality-w519523

[ghostofatree]

Private Moments in the Depths of Dorset (sketchbook 11) had, aside from the designs for Upward Spiral, what I can only describe as a selection of terribly weird shit going on. Because it was not toward any particular project it was totally liberated to be whatever it was and I found that very creative. The first of these was a kind of Social Realist Policeman drawn in response to Heather’s blinding insight at a very early age. It is even more true these days. (From the mouths of babes...) An avenging angel in the same pose is next, a real policeman leaking, a topless queer punk rioter having fun in chaos, a large hardboard painting of the Aztec Callander I had done toward O level work during a stint at the Crawford Arts Centre, a fat naked lad with an inexplicable aura, the back of Steve Marley’s neck as I imagined it in my sketchbook, two opposite pages to prove a heterophobic world view with a picture of unseemly intimacy in public opposite a picture of the lovely Stephen Twigg ruining Michael Portillo’s night and career on the feast day of Things Can Only Get Better. To be fair this binary opposition was without my admittance that dreadful Portillo was also gay -(which was unforgivable to be gay and a Tory minister as part of the government of Clause 28). Apologies to any of you who may be struggling with heterosexuality. It must be difficult and I have more compassion these days. The last of these is of a genuinely horrendous thing about the most nightmarish fatal accident imaginable. I saw it in a newspaper and it scarred me so much I had to put it in the book just to prove it was real. #sketchbook #journaling #archive #nostalgia #memories #labourlandslide #90s #queerartist #injustice #heterophobia #liverpoolartist (at Toxteth, L8) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb0Xvhzsp_Q/?utm_medium=tumblr

[blackkudos]

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy (Duke) Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and bandleader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death in a career spanning over fifty years.

Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward, and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. In the 1930s, his orchestra toured in Europe. Though widely considered to have been a pivotal figure in the history of jazz, Ellington embraced the phrase "beyond category" as a liberating principle, and referred to his music as part of the more general category of American Music, rather than to a musical genre such as jazz.

Some of the musicians who were members of Ellington's orchestra, such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, are considered to be among the best players in jazz. Ellington melded them into the best-known orchestral unit in the history of jazz. Some members stayed with the orchestra for several decades. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington often composed specifically to feature the style and skills of his individual musicians.

Often collaborating with others, Ellington wrote more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, with many of his works having become standards. Ellington also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, for example Juan Tizol's "Caravan", and "Perdido", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. After 1941, Ellington collaborated with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed many extended compositions, or suites, as well as additional short pieces. Following an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, in July 1956, Ellington and his orchestra enjoyed a major career revival and embarked on world tours. Ellington recorded for most American record companies of his era, performed in several films, scoring several, and composed stage musicals.

Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and charisma, Ellington is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other more traditional musical genres. His reputation continued to rise after he died, and he was awarded a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize for music in 1999.

Early life

Ellington was born on April 29, 1899, to James Edward Ellington and Daisy (Kennedy) Ellington in Washington, D.C. Both his parents were pianists. Daisy primarily played parlor songs and James preferred operatic arias. They lived with his maternal grandparents at 2129 Ida Place (now Ward Place), NW, in the West End neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Duke's father was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, on April 15, 1879, and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1886 with his parents. Daisy Kennedy was born in Washington, D.C., on January 4, 1879, the daughter of a former American slave. James Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy. When Ellington was a child, his family showed racial pride and support in their home, as did many other families. African Americans in D.C. worked to protect their children from the era's Jim Crow laws.

At the age of seven, Ellington began taking piano lessons from Marietta Clinkscales. Daisy surrounded her son with dignified women to reinforce his manners and teach him to live elegantly. Ellington's childhood friends noticed that his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, and his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman, and began calling him "Duke." Ellington credited his chum Edgar McEntree for the nickname. "I think he felt that in order for me to be eligible for his constant companionship, I should have a title. So he called me Duke."

Though Ellington took piano lessons, he was more interested in baseball. "President Roosevelt (Teddy) would come by on his horse sometimes, and stop and watch us play", he recalled. Ellington went to Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D.C. He gained his first job selling peanuts at Washington Senators baseball games.

In the summer of 1914, while working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Café, Ellington wrote his first composition, "Soda Fountain Rag" (also known as the "Poodle Dog Rag"). He created the piece by ear, as he had not yet learned to read and write music. "I would play the 'Soda Fountain Rag' as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango, and fox trot", Ellington recalled. "Listeners never knew it was the same piece. I was established as having my own repertoire." In his autobiography, Music is my Mistress (1973), Ellington wrote that he missed more lessons than he attended, feeling at the time that playing the piano was not his talent.

Ellington started sneaking into Frank Holiday's Poolroom at the age of fourteen. Hearing the poolroom pianists play ignited Ellington's love for the instrument, and he began to take his piano studies seriously. Among the many piano players he listened to were Doc Perry, Lester Dishman, Louis Brown, Turner Layton, Gertie Wells, Clarence Bowser, Sticky Mack, Blind Johnny, Cliff Jackson, Claude Hopkins, Phil Wurd, Caroline Thornton, Luckey Roberts, Eubie Blake, Joe Rochester, and Harvey Brooks.

Ellington began listening to, watching, and imitating ragtime pianists, not only in Washington, D.C., but in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, where he vacationed with his mother during the summer months. Dunbar High School music teacher Henry Lee Grant gave him private lessons in harmony. With the additional guidance of Washington pianist and band leader Oliver "Doc" Perry, Ellington learned to read sheet music, project a professional style, and improve his technique. Ellington was also inspired by his first encounters with stride pianists James P. Johnson and Luckey Roberts. Later in New York he took advice from Will Marion Cook, Fats Waller, and Sidney Bechet. Ellington started to play gigs in cafés and clubs in and around Washington, D.C. His attachment to music was so strong that in 1916 he turned down an art scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Three months before graduating he dropped out of Armstrong Manual Training School, where he was studying commercial art.

Working as a freelance sign-painter from 1917, Ellington began assembling groups to play for dances. In 1919 he met drummer Sonny Greer from New Jersey, who encouraged Ellington's ambition to become a professional musician. Ellington built his music business through his day job: when a customer asked him to make a sign for a dance or party, he would ask if they had musical entertainment; if not, Ellington would offer to play for the occasion. He also had a messenger job with the U.S. Navy and State departments, where he made a wide range of contacts. Ellington moved out of his parents' home and bought his own as he became a successful pianist. At first, he played in other ensembles, and in late 1917 formed his first group, "The Duke's Serenaders" ("Colored Syncopators", his telephone directory advertising proclaimed). He was also the group's booking agent. His first play date was at the True Reformer's Hall, where he took home 75 cents.

Ellington played throughout the Washington, D.C. area and into Virginia for private society balls and embassy parties. The band included childhood friend Otto Hardwick, who began playing the string bass, then moved to C-melody sax and finally settled on alto saxophone; Arthur Whetsol on trumpet; Elmer Snowden on banjo; and Sonny Greer on drums. The band thrived, performing for both African-American and white audiences, a rarity in the segregated society of the day.

Music career

Early career

When his drummer Sonny Greer was invited to join the Wilber Sweatman Orchestra in New York City, Ellington made the fateful decision to leave behind his successful career in Washington, D.C., and move to Harlem, ultimately becoming part of the Harlem Renaissance. New dance crazes such as the Charleston emerged in Harlem, as well as African-American musical theater, including Eubie Blake's Shuffle Along. After the young musicians left the Sweatman Orchestra to strike out on their own, they found an emerging jazz scene that was highly competitive and hard to crack. They hustled pool by day and played whatever gigs they could find. The young band met stride pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith, who introduced them to the scene and gave them some money. They played at rent-house parties for income. After a few months, the young musicians returned to Washington, D.C., feeling discouraged.

In June 1923, a gig in Atlantic City, New Jersey, led to a play date at the prestigious Exclusive Club in Harlem. This was followed in September 1923 by a move to the Hollywood Club – 49th and Broadway – and a four-year engagement, which gave Ellington a solid artistic base. He was known to play the bugle at the end of each performance. The group was initially called Elmer Snowden and his Black Sox Orchestra and had seven members, including trumpeter James "Bubber" Miley. They renamed themselves The Washingtonians. Snowden left the group in early 1924 and Ellington took over as bandleader. After a fire, the club was re-opened as the Club Kentucky (often referred to as the Kentucky Club).

Ellington made eight records in 1924, receiving composing credit on three including "Choo Choo". In 1925, Ellington contributed four songs to Chocolate Kiddies starring Lottie Gee and Adelaide Hall, an all-African-American revue which introduced European audiences to African-American styles and performers. Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra grew to a group of ten players; they developed their own sound by displaying the non-traditional expression of Ellington's arrangements, the street rhythms of Harlem, and the exotic-sounding trombone growls and wah-wahs, high-squealing trumpets, and sultry saxophone blues licks of the band members. For a short time soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet played with them, imparting his propulsive swing and superior musicianship to the young band members.

Cotton Club engagement

In October 1926, Ellington made an agreement with agent-publisher Irving Mills, giving Mills a 45% interest in Ellington's future. Mills had an eye for new talent and published compositions by Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Fields, and Harold Arlen early in their careers. After recording a handful of acoustic titles during 1924–26, Ellington's signing with Mills allowed him to record prolifically, although sometimes he recorded different versions of the same tune. Mills often took a co-composer credit. From the beginning of their relationship, Mills arranged recording sessions on nearly every label including Brunswick, Victor, Columbia, OKeh, Pathê (and its Perfect label), the ARC/Plaza group of labels (Oriole, Domino, Jewel, Banner) and their dime-store labels (Cameo, Lincoln, Romeo), Hit of the Week, and Columbia's cheaper labels (Harmony, Diva, Velvet Tone, Clarion) labels which gave Ellington popular recognition. On OKeh, his records were usually issued as The Harlem Footwarmers, while the Brunswick's were usually issued as The Jungle Band. Whoopee Makers and the Ten Black Berries were other pseudonyms.

In September 1927, King Oliver turned down a regular booking for his group as the house band at Harlem's Cotton Club; the offer passed to Ellington after Jimmy McHugh suggested him and Mills arranged an audition. Ellington had to increase from a six to eleven-piece group to meet the requirements of the Cotton Club's management for the audition, and the engagement finally began on December 4. With a weekly radio broadcast, the Cotton Club's exclusively white and wealthy clientele poured in nightly to see them. At the Cotton Club, Ellington's group performed all the music for the revues, which mixed comedy, dance numbers, vaudeville, burlesque, music, and illegal alcohol. The musical numbers were composed by Jimmy McHugh and the lyrics by Dorothy Fields (later Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler), with some Ellington originals mixed in. (Here he moved in with a dancer, his second wife Mildred Dixon). Weekly radio broadcasts from the club gave Ellington national exposure, while Ellington also recorded Fields-JMcHugh and Fats Waller–Andy Razaf songs.

Although trumpeter Bubber Miley was a member of the orchestra for only a short period, he had a major influence on Ellington's sound. As an early exponent of growl trumpet, Miley changed the sweet dance band sound of the group to one that was hotter, which contemporaries termed Jungle Style. In October 1927, Ellington and his Orchestra recorded several compositions with Adelaide Hall. One side in particular, "Creole Love Call", became a worldwide sensation and gave both Ellington and Hall their first hit record. Miley had composed most of "Creole Love Call" and "Black and Tan Fantasy". An alcoholic, Miley had to leave the band before they gained wider fame. He died in 1932 at the age of 29, but he was an important influence on Cootie Williams, who replaced him.

In 1929, the Cotton Club Orchestra appeared on stage for several months in Florenz Ziegfeld's Show Girl, along with vaudeville stars Jimmy Durante, Eddie Foy, Jr., Ruby Keeler, and with music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Gus Kahn. Will Vodery, Ziegfeld's musical supervisor, recommended Ellington for the show, and, according to John Hasse's Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, "Perhaps during the run of Show Girl, Ellington received what he later termed ' valuable lessons in orchestration from Will Vodery.' In his 1946 biography, Duke Ellington, Barry Ulanov wrote:

From Vodery, as he (Ellington) says himself, he drew his chromatic convictions, his uses of the tones ordinarily extraneous to the diatonic scale, with the consequent alteration of the harmonic character of his music, its broadening, The deepening of his resources. It has become customary to ascribe the classical influences upon Duke – Delius, Debussy and Ravel – to direct contact with their music. Actually his serious appreciation of those and other modern composers, came after his meeting with Vodery.

Ellington's film work began with Black and Tan (1929), a nineteen-minute all-African-American RKO short in which he played the hero "Duke". He also appeared in the Amos 'n' Andy film Check and Double Check released in 1930. That year, Ellington and his Orchestra connected with a whole different audience in a concert with Maurice Chevalier and they also performed at the Roseland Ballroom, "America's foremost ballroom". Australian-born composer Percy Grainger was an early admirer and supporter. He wrote "The three greatest composers who ever lived are Bach, Delius and Duke Ellington. Unfortunately Bach is dead, Delius is very ill but we are happy to have with us today The Duke". Ellington's first period at the Cotton Club concluded in 1931.

The early 1930s

Ellington led the orchestra by conducting from the keyboard using piano cues and visual gestures; very rarely did he conduct using a baton. By 1932 his orchestra consisted of six brass instruments, four reeds, and a four-man rhythm section. As a bandleader, Ellington was not a strict disciplinarian; he maintained control of his orchestra with a combination of charm, humor, flattery and astute psychology. A complex, private person, he revealed his feelings to only his closest intimates and effectively used his public persona to deflect attention away from himself.

Ellington signed exclusively to Brunswick in 1932 and stayed with them through late 1936 (albeit with a short-lived 1933–34 switch to Victor when Irving Mills temporarily moved him and his other acts from Brunswick).

As the Depression worsened, the recording industry was in crisis, dropping over 90% of its artists by 1933. Ivie Anderson was hired as their featured vocalist in 1931. She is the vocalist on "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" (1932) among other recordings. Sonny Greer had been providing occasional vocals and continued to do in a cross-talk feature with Anderson. Radio exposure helped maintain Ellington's public profile as his orchestra began to tour. The other records of this era include: "Mood Indigo" (1930), "Sophisticated Lady" (1933), "Solitude" (1934), and "In a Sentimental Mood" (1935)

While the band's United States audience remained mainly African-American in this period, the Ellington orchestra had a significant following overseas, exemplified by the success of their trip to England and Scotland in 1933 and their 1934 visit to the European mainland. The British visit saw Ellington win praise from members of the serious music community, including composer Constant Lambert, which gave a boost to Ellington's interest in composing longer works.

Those longer pieces had already begun to appear. He had composed and recorded Creole Rhapsody as early as 1931 (issued as both sides of a 12" record for Victor and both sides of a 10" record for Brunswick), and a tribute to his mother, "Reminiscing in Tempo", took four 10" record sides to record in 1935 after her death in that year. Symphony in Black (also 1935), a short film, featured his extended piece 'A Rhapsody of Negro Life'. It introduced Billie Holiday, and won an Academy Award as the best musical short subject. Ellington and his Orchestra also appeared in the features Murder at the Vanities and Belle of the Nineties (both 1934).

For agent Mills the attention was a publicity triumph, as Ellington was now internationally known. On the band's tour through the segregated South in 1934, they avoided some of the traveling difficulties of African-Americans by touring in private railcars. These provided easy accommodations, dining, and storage for equipment while avoiding the indignities of segregated facilities.

Competition was intensifying though, as swing bands like Benny Goodman's, began to receive popular attention. Swing dancing became a youth phenomenon, particularly with white college audiences, and danceability drove record sales and bookings. Jukeboxes proliferated nationwide, spreading the gospel of swing. Ellington's band could certainly swing, but their strengths were mood, nuance, and richness of composition, hence his statement "jazz is music, swing is business".

The later 1930s

From 1936, Ellington began to make recordings with smaller groups (sextets, octets, and nonets) drawn from his then-15-man orchestra and he composed pieces intended to feature a specific instrumentalist, as with "Jeep's Blues" for Johnny Hodges, "Yearning for Love" for Lawrence Brown, "Trumpet in Spades" for Rex Stewart, "Echoes of Harlem" for Cootie Williams and "Clarinet Lament" for Barney Bigard. In 1937, Ellington returned to the Cotton Club which had relocated to the mid-town Theater District. In the summer of that year, his father died, and due to many expenses, Ellington's finances were tight, although his situation improved the following year.

After leaving agent Irving Mills, he signed on with the William Morris Agency. Mills though continued to record Ellington. After only a year, his Master and Variety labels, the small groups had recorded for the latter, collapsed in late 1937, Mills placed Ellington back on Brunswick and those small group units on Vocalion through to 1940. Well known sides continued to be recorded, "Caravan" in 1937, and "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart" the following year.

Billy Strayhorn, originally hired as a lyricist, began his association with Ellington in 1939. Nicknamed "Swee' Pea" for his mild manner, Strayhorn soon became a vital member of the Ellington organization. Ellington showed great fondness for Strayhorn and never failed to speak glowingly of the man and their collaborative working relationship, "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine". Strayhorn, with his training in classical music, not only contributed his original lyrics and music, but also arranged and polished many of Ellington's works, becoming a second Ellington or "Duke's doppelganger". It was not uncommon for Strayhorn to fill in for Duke, whether in conducting or rehearsing the band, playing the piano, on stage, and in the recording studio. The 1930s ended with a very successful European tour just as World War II loomed in Europe.

Ellington in the early to mid-1940s

Some of the musicians who joined Ellington at this time created a sensation in their own right. The short-lived Jimmy Blanton transformed the use of double bass in jazz, allowing it to function as a solo/melodic instrument rather than a rhythm instrument alone. Terminal illness forced him to leave by late 1941 after only about two years. Ben Webster, the Orchestra's first regular tenor saxophonist, whose main tenure with Ellington spanned 1939 to 1943, started a rivalry with Johnny Hodges as the Orchestra's foremost voice in the sax section.

Trumpeter Ray Nance joined, replacing Cootie Williams who had defected to Benny Goodman. Additionally, Nance added violin to the instrumental colors Ellington had at his disposal. Recordings exist of Nance's first concert date on November 7, 1940, at Fargo, North Dakota. Privately made by Jack Towers and Dick Burris, these recordings were first legitimately issued in 1978 as Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940 Live; they are among the earliest of innumerable live performances which survive. Nance was also an occasional vocalist, although Herb Jeffries was the main male vocalist in this era (until 1943) while Al Hibbler (who replaced Jeffries in 1943) continued until 1951. Ivie Anderson left in 1942 after eleven years: the longest term of any of Ellington's vocalists.

Once again recording for Victor (from 1940), with the small groups recording for their Bluebird label, three-minute masterpieces on 78 rpm record sides continued to flow from Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Ellington's son Mercer Ellington, and members of the Orchestra. "Cotton Tail", "Main Stem", "Harlem Airshaft", "Jack the Bear", and dozens of others date from this period. Strayhorn's "Take the "A" Train" a hit in 1941, became the band's theme, replacing "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo". Ellington and his associates wrote for an orchestra of distinctive voices who displayed tremendous creativity. Mary Lou Williams, working as a staff arranger, would briefly join Ellington a few years later.

Ellington's long-term aim though was to extend the jazz form from that three-minute limit, of which he was an acknowledged master. While he had composed and recorded some extended pieces before, such works now became a regular feature of Ellington's output. In this, he was helped by Strayhorn, who had enjoyed a more thorough training in the forms associated with classical music than Ellington. The first of these, "Black, Brown, and Beige" (1943), was dedicated to telling the story of African-Americans, and the place of slavery and the church in their history. Ellington debuted Black, Brown and Beige in Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1943, beginning an annual series of concerts there over the next four years. While some jazz musicians had played at Carnegie Hall before, none had performed anything as elaborate as Ellington's work. Unfortunately, starting a regular pattern, Ellington's longer works were generally not well received.

A partial exception was Jump for Joy, a full-length musical based on themes of African-American identity, debuted on July 10, 1941, at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles. Hollywood luminaries such as actors John Garfield and Mickey Rooney invested in the production, and Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles offered to direct. At one performance though, Garfield insisted Herb Jeffries, who was light-skinned, should wear make-up. Ellington objected in the interval, and compared Jeffries to Al Jolson. The change was reverted, and the singer later commented that the audience must have thought he was an entirely different character in the second half of the show.

Although it had sold-out performances, and received positive reviews, it ran for only 122 performances until September 29, 1941, with a brief revival in November of that year. Its subject matter did not make it appealing to Broadway; Ellington had unfulfilled plans to take it there. Despite this disappointment, a Broadway production of Ellington's Beggar's Holiday, his sole book musical, premiered on December 23, 1946. under the direction of Nicholas Ray.

The settlement of the first recording ban of 1942–43, leading to an increase in royalties paid to musicians, had a serious effect on the financial viability of the big bands, including Ellington's Orchestra. His income as a songwriter ultimately subsidized it. Although he always spent lavishly and drew a respectable income from the Orchestra's operations, the band's income often just covered expenses.

Early post-war years

World War II brought about a swift end to the big band era as musicians went off to serve in the military and travel restrictions made touring difficult. When the war ended, the focus of popular music shifted towards crooners such as Frank Sinatra and Jo Stafford, so Ellington's wordless vocal feature "Transblucency" (1946) with Kay Davis was not going to have a similar reach. With inflation setting in after 1945, the cost of hiring big bands went up and club owners preferred smaller jazz groups who played in new styles such as bebop. Dancing in clubs also subjected club owners to a new wartime tax which continued for many years after, which made small bands more cost-effective for club owners.

Ellington continued on his own course through these tectonic shifts. While Count Basie was forced to disband his whole ensemble and work as an octet for a time, Ellington was able to tour most of Western Europe between April 6 and June 30, 1950, with the orchestra playing 74 dates over 77 days. During the tour, according to Sonny Greer, the newer works were not performed, though Ellington's extended composition, Harlem (1950) was in the process of being completed at this time. Ellington later presented its score to music-loving President Harry Truman. Also during his time in Europe, Ellington would compose the music for a stage production by Orson Welles. Titled Time Runs in Paris and An Evening With Orson Welles in Frankfurt, the variety show also featured a newly discovered Eartha Kitt, who performed Ellington's original song "Hungry Little Trouble" as Helen of Troy.

In 1951, Ellington suffered a significant loss of personnel: Sonny Greer, Lawrence Brown, and most importantly Johnny Hodges left to pursue other ventures, although only Greer was a permanent departee. Drummer Louie Bellson replaced Greer, and his "Skin Deep" was a hit for Ellington. Tenor player Paul Gonsalves had joined in December 1950 after periods with Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie and stayed for the rest of his life, while Clark Terry joined in November 1951.

During the early 1950s, Ellington's career was at a low point with his style being generally seen as outmoded, but his reputation did not suffer as badly as some artists. André Previn said in 1952: "You know, Stan Kenton can stand in front of a thousand fiddles and a thousand brass and make a dramatic gesture and every studio arranger can nod his head and say, Oh, yes, that's done like this. But Duke merely lifts his finger, three horns make a sound, and I don’t know what it is!" However, by 1955, after three years of recording for Capitol, Ellington lacked a regular recording affiliation.

Career revival

Ellington's appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, 1956 returned him to wider prominence and introduced him to a new generation of fans. The feature "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" comprised two tunes that had been in the band's book since 1937 but largely forgotten until Ellington, who had abruptly ended the band's scheduled set because of the late arrival of four key players, called the two tunes as the time was approaching midnight. Announcing that the two pieces would be separated by an interlude played by tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, Ellington proceeded to lead the band through the two pieces, with Gonsalves' 27-chorus marathon solo whipping the crowd into a frenzy, leading the Maestro to play way beyond the curfew time despite urgent pleas from festival organizer George Wein to bring the program to an end.

The concert made international headlines, led to one of only five Time magazine cover stories dedicated to a jazz musician, and resulted in an album produced by George Avakian that would become the best-selling LP of Ellington's career. Much of the music on the vinyl LP was, in effect, simulated, with only about 40% actually from the concert itself. According to Avakian, Ellington was dissatisfied with aspects of the performance and felt the musicians had been under rehearsed. The band assembled the next day to re-record several of the numbers with the addition of artificial crowd noise, none of which was disclosed to purchasers of the album. Not until 1999 was the concert recording properly released for the first time. The revived attention brought about by the Newport appearance should not have surprised anyone, Johnny Hodges had returned the previous year, and Ellington's collaboration with Strayhorn had been renewed around the same time, under terms more amenable to the younger man.

The original Ellington at Newport album was the first release in a new recording contract with Columbia Records which yielded several years of recording stability, mainly under producer Irving Townsend, who coaxed both commercial and artistic productions from Ellington.

In 1957, CBS (Columbia Records' parent corporation) aired a live television production of A Drum Is a Woman, an allegorical suite which received mixed reviews. His hope that television would provide a significant new outlet for his type of jazz was not fulfilled. Tastes and trends had moved on without him. Festival appearances at the new Monterey Jazz Festival and elsewhere provided venues for live exposure, and a European tour in 1958 was well received. Such Sweet Thunder (1957), based on Shakespeare's plays and characters, and The Queen's Suite (1958), dedicated to Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, were products of the renewed impetus which the Newport appearance helped to create, although the latter work was not commercially issued at the time. The late 1950s also saw Ella Fitzgerald record her Duke Ellington Songbook (Verve) with Ellington and his orchestra—a recognition that Ellington's songs had now become part of the cultural canon known as the 'Great American Songbook'.

Ellington at this time (with Strayhorn) began to work directly on scoring for film soundtracks, in particular Anatomy of a Murder (1959), with James Stewart, in which Ellington appeared fronting a roadhouse combo, and Paris Blues (1961), which featured Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier as jazz musicians. Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker concludes that the work of Billy Strayhorn and Ellington in Anatomy of a Murder a trial court drama film directed by Otto Preminger, is "indispensable, [although] . . . too sketchy to rank in the top echelon among Ellington-Strayhorn masterpiece suites like Such Sweet Thunder and The Far East Suite, but its most inspired moments are their equal."

Film historians have recognized the soundtrack "as a landmark – the first significant Hollywood film music by African Americans comprising non-diegetic music, that is, music whose source is not visible or implied by action in the film, like an on-screen band." The score avoided the cultural stereotypes which previously characterized jazz scores and rejected a strict adherence to visuals in ways that presaged the New Wave cinema of the '60s". Ellington and Strayhorn, always looking for new musical territory, produced suites for John Steinbeck's novel Sweet Thursday, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt.

In the early 1960s, Ellington embraced recording with artists who had been friendly rivals in the past, or were younger musicians who focused on later styles. The Ellington and Count Basie orchestras recorded together. During a period when he was between recording contracts, he made records with Louis Armstrong (Roulette), Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane (both for Impulse) and participated in a session with Charles Mingus and Max Roach which produced the Money Jungle (United Artists) album. He signed to Frank Sinatra's new Reprise label, but the association with the label was short-lived.

Musicians who had previously worked with Ellington returned to the Orchestra as members: Lawrence Brown in 1960 and Cootie Williams in 1962.

"The writing and playing of music is a matter of intent.... You can't just throw a paint brush against the wall and call whatever happens art. My music fits the tonal personality of the player. I think too strongly in terms of altering my music to fit the performer to be impressed by accidental music. You can't take doodling seriously."

He was now performing all over the world; a significant part of each year was spent on overseas tours. As a consequence, he formed new working relationships with artists from around the world, including the Swedish vocalist Alice Babs, and the South African musicians Dollar Brand and Sathima Bea Benjamin (A Morning in Paris, 1963/1997).

Ellington wrote an original score for director Michael Langham's production of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada which opened on July 29, 1963. Langham has used it for several subsequent productions, including a much later adaptation by Stanley Silverman which expands the score with some of Ellington's best-known works.

Last years

Ellington was a Pulitzer Prize for Music nominee in 1965 but no prize was awarded that year. Then 66 years old, he said: "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be famous too young." In 1999 he was posthumously awarded a special Pulitzer Prize (not the Music prize), "commemorating the centennial year of his birth, in recognition of his musical genius, which evoked aesthetically the principles of democracy through the medium of jazz and thus made an indelible contribution to art and culture."

In September 1965, he premiered the first of his Sacred Concerts. He created a jazz Christian liturgy. Although the work received mixed reviews, Ellington was proud of the composition and performed it dozens of times. This concert was followed by two others of the same type in 1968 and 1973, known as the Second and Third Sacred Concerts. These generated controversy in what was already a tumultuous time in the United States. Many saw the Sacred Music suites as an attempt to reinforce commercial support for organized religion, though Ellington simply said it was "the most important thing I've done". The Steinway piano upon which the Sacred Concerts were composed is part of the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Like Haydn and Mozart, Ellington conducted his orchestra from the piano – he always played the keyboard parts when the Sacred Concerts were performed.

Despite his advancing age (he turned 65 in the spring of 1964), Ellington showed no sign of slowing down as he continued to make vital and innovative recordings, including The Far East Suite (1966), New Orleans Suite (1970), Latin American Suite (1972) and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971), much of it inspired by his world tours. It was during this time that he recorded his only album with Frank Sinatra, entitled Francis A. & Edward K. (1967).

Although he made two more stage appearances before his death, Ellington performed what is considered his final full concert in a ballroom at Northern Illinois University on March 20, 1974.

The last three shows Ellington and his orchestra performed were one on March 21, 1973 at Purdue University's Hall of Music and two on March 22, 1973 at the Sturges-Young Auditorium in Sturgis, Michigan.

Personal life

Ellington married his high school sweetheart, Edna Thompson (d. 1967), on July 2, 1918, when he was 19. The next spring, on March 11, 1919, Edna gave birth to their only son, Mercer Kennedy Ellington.

Ellington was joined in New York City by his wife and son in the late twenties, but the couple soon permanently separated. According to her obituary in Jet magazine, she was "homesick for Washington" and returned. In 1928, Ellington became the companion of Mildred Dixon, who traveled with him, managed Tempo Music, inspired songs at the peak of his career, and reared his son Mercer.

In 1938 he left his family (his son was then 19) and moved in with Beatrice "Evie" Ellis, a Cotton Club employee. Their relationship, though stormy, continued after Ellington met and formed a relationship with Fernanda de Castro Monte in the early 1960s. Ellington supported both women for the rest of his life.

Ellington's sister Ruth (1915–2004) later ran Tempo Music, his music publishing company. Ruth's second husband was the bass-baritone McHenry Boatwright, whom she met when he sang at her brother's funeral. As an adult, son Mercer Ellington (d. 1996) played trumpet and piano, led his own band, and worked as his father's business manager.

Ellington died on May 24, 1974, of complications from lung cancer and pneumonia, a few weeks after his 75th birthday. At his funeral, attended by over 12,000 people at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Ella Fitzgerald summed up the occasion, "It's a very sad day. A genius has passed." He was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx, New York City.

Legacy

Memorials

Numerous memorials have been dedicated to Duke Ellington, in cities from New York and Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles. Ellington is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

In Ellington's birthplace, Washington, D.C., the Duke Ellington School of the Arts educates talented students, who are considering careers in the arts, by providing intensive arts instruction and strong academic programs that prepare students for post-secondary education and professional careers. Originally built in 1935, the Calvert Street Bridge was renamed the Duke Ellington Bridge in 1974.

In 1989, a bronze plaque was attached to the newly named Duke Ellington Building at 2121 Ward Place, NW. In 2012, the new owner of the building commissioned a mural by Aniekan Udofia that appears above the lettering "Duke Ellington".

In 2010 the triangular park, across the street from Duke Ellington's birth site, at the intersection of New Hampshire and M Streets, NW was named the Duke Ellington Park. Ellington's residence at 2728 Sherman Avenue, NW, during the years 1919–1922, is marked by a bronze plaque.

On February 24, 2009, the United States Mint launched a new coin featuring Duke Ellington, making him the first African American to appear by himself on a circulating U.S. coin. Ellington appears on the reverse (tails) side of the District of Columbia quarter. The coin is part of the U.S. Mint's program honoring the District and the U.S. territories and celebrates Ellington's birthplace in the District of Columbia. Ellington is depicted on the quarter seated at a piano, sheet music in hand, along with the inscription "Justice for All", which is the District's motto.

Ellington lived for years in a townhouse on the corner of Manhattan's Riverside Drive and West 106th Street. After his death, West 106th Street was officially renamed Duke Ellington Boulevard. A large memorial to Ellington, created by sculptor Robert Graham, was dedicated in 1997 in New York's Central Park, near Fifth Avenue and 110th Street, an intersection named Duke Ellington Circle.

A statue of Ellington at a piano is featured at the entrance to UCLA's Schoenberg Hall. According to UCLA Magazine:

When UCLA students were entranced by Duke Ellington's provocative tunes at a Culver City club in 1937, they asked the budding musical great to play a free concert in Royce Hall. 'I've been waiting for someone to ask us!' Ellington exclaimed.

On the day of the concert, Ellington accidentally mixed up the venues and drove to USC instead. He eventually arrived at the UCLA campus and, to apologize for his tardiness, played to the packed crowd for more than four hours. And so, "Sir Duke" and his group played the first-ever jazz performance in a concert venue.

The Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival is a nationally renowned annual competition for prestigious high school bands. Started in 1996 at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the festival is named after Ellington because of the large focus that the festival places on his works.

Tributes

After Duke died, his son Mercer took over leadership of the orchestra, continuing until his own death in 1996. Like the Count Basie Orchestra, this "ghost band" continued to release albums for many years. Digital Duke, credited to The Duke Ellington Orchestra, won the 1988 Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. Mercer Ellington had been handling all administrative aspects of his father's business for several decades. Mercer's children continue a connection with their grandfather's work.

Gunther Schuller wrote in 1989

Ellington composed incessantly to the very last days of his life. Music was indeed his mistress; it was his total life and his commitment to it was incomparable and unalterable. In jazz he was a giant among giants. And in twentieth century music, he may yet one day be recognized as one of the half-dozen greatest masters of our time.

Martin Williams said: "Duke Ellington lived long enough to hear himself named among our best composers. And since his death in 1974, it has become not at all uncommon to see him named, along with Charles Ives, as the greatest composer we have produced, regardless of category."

In the opinion of Bob Blumenthal of The Boston Globe in 1999: "[i]n the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington."

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Duke Ellington on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

While his compositions are now the staple of the repertoire of music conservatories, they have been revisited by artists and musicians around the world both as a source of inspiration and a bedrock of their own performing careers.

Dave Brubeck dedicated "The Duke" (1954) to Ellington and it became a standard covered by others, both during Ellington's lifetime (such as by Miles Davis on Miles Ahead, 1957) and posthumously (such as George Shearing on I Hear a Rhapsody: Live at the Blue Note, 1992). The album The Real Ambassadors has a vocal version of this piece, "You Swing Baby (The Duke)", with lyrics by Iola Brubeck, Dave Brubeck's wife. It is performed as a duet between Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae. It is also dedicated to Duke Ellington.

Miles Davis created his half-hour dirge "He Loved Him Madly" (on Get Up with It) as a tribute to Ellington one month after his death.

Stevie Wonder wrote the song "Sir Duke" as a tribute to Ellington in 1976.

Joe Jackson interpreted Ellington's work on The Duke (2012) in new arrangements and with collaborations from Iggy Pop, Sharon Jones and Steve Vai.

There are hundreds of albums dedicated to the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn by artists famous and obscure. Sophisticated Ladies, an award-winning 1981 musical revue, incorporated many tunes from Ellington's repertoire. A second Broadway musical interpolating Ellington's music, Play On!, debuted in 1997.

Wikipedia

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‘Watchmen’ Recap: The Greatest American Hero In a staggering episode that upends the ‘Watchmen’ universe — and the wider world of superhero lore — Hooded Justice is unmasked

A review of this week’s Watchmen, “This Exceptional Being,” coming up just as soon as I read Action Comics #1 for the first time…

Many of the most distinct and beloved American art forms were invented by black artists who were then quickly eclipsed in the public imagination by their white imitators. Elvis Presley borrowed liberally from Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, among many others. When they were starting out, white rappers like the Beastie Boys and Eminem often found it easier to get radio play than more established black hip-hop veterans. A large chunk of Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning aesthetic was modeled on blaxploitation films whose own directors of color didn’t get nearly the same level of acclaim.

If cultural appropriation is woven into the fabric of American music, movies, and life, why not superheroics? What if the first costumed hero of them all was an African American man who inspired a wave of white heroes? What if that hero had to hide his true identity not for all the corny comic-book reasons about protecting his loved ones, but because he knew the color of his skin would get him lynched for daring to put himself above the law?

That Hooded Justice, the O.G. costumed vigilante of the Watchmen universe, was secretly black — was, in fact, Angela’s grandfather, Will Reeves — is the big idea at the center of this episode, and of the series as a whole. When I interviewed Damon Lindelof (who co-wrote “This Exceptional Being” with Cord Jefferson) before the show premiered, he alluded to “the idea that made me want to do this take on Watchmen” as one coming up later in the season. And now it’s here. And it is, well, exceptional.

It takes a while to get to this huge revelation, which is at the heart of a trippy, time- and mind-bending episode that evokes The Leftovers‘ “International Assassin,” Lost‘s “The Constant,” and various other sci-fi drama classic installments (say, “The Inner Light” from Star Trek: The Next Generation) where the hero finds him or herself in a place, time, and sometimes body where they do not belong.

By swallowing Will’s entire stash of Nostalgia pills, Angela’s mind is cast back to the start of his police career in 1939, and to the events that inspired him to become Hooded Justice. At first, it seems we’ll be getting a Quantum Leap-style trip through time, where the other characters see Will Reeves while we in the audience see Angela wearing his clothes and living his life. Quickly, though, the image of her is replaced by the genuine article, played as a young man by Jovan Adepo(*). Angela briefly reappears at crucial, pointed intervals — say, when Will insists that he isn’t having problems with his memory — but for the most part, we are immersed in his world just as much as she is.

(*) On The Leftovers, Adepo played Regina King’s son. Here, he’s her grandfather. Between Jack Ryan, Sorry For Your Loss, and this, he’s among the busier actors on television this fall, but I look forward to another family reunion with King down the road.

Even before Angela’s mind slides back 80 years into the past, we are being primed for the reveal. The episode opens not with the familiar Watchmen logo, but with the same font (now in purple) spelling out Minutemen, before we dive into the latest installment of show-within-the-show American Hero Story. As two FBI agents grill Hooded Justice — played, of course, by a white actor (30 Rock‘s Cheyenne Jackson), because how could the American Hero Story producers even imagine otherwise? — about his affair with Captain Metropolis, my eyes kept being drawn to his costume. I’ve read the Watchmen comic at least a dozen times over the last three and a half decades, yet it felt like this was the first time I was really looking at Hooded Justice’s outfit. The name, the noose around the neck, and the hood to me had always evoked a royal executioner — a man who conceals his face as part of the process of meting out rough justice. Seeing it in the context of a series whose first episode opened with Klansmen slaughtering black people and ended with Judd Crawford dangling from a mighty oak tree, all I could now think of was Klan hoods and lynching. Was Hooded Justice, I wondered, just another closet white supremacist?

Following the American Hero Story clip, Laurie tries to warn Angela about what the Nostalgia will do to her — how, to borrow Lindelof’s own words in our aforementioned interview, nostalgia is literally toxic. The product was developed to help Alzheimer’s patients, but quickly found a more illicit market, because, as Laurie puts it, “Who wants to live in the present when you can be in the past?” Later, the young Will tells his girlfriend June (Danielle Deadwyler) — who is a reporter, because of course a superhero has to have a reporter girlfriend — that he has moved past the horrific events that killed both of their families. “That was a long time ago,” he insists. “I don’t want to live in the past.”

Living in the past is dangerous, Watchmen argues again and again, in part because the past is never quite what we remember it as. White supremacists, whether they’re wearing Klan robes or MAGA hats, want to take us back to a version of America that never really existed — or at least never existed that way for everyone. In the case of “This Exceptional Being,” though, the past is inverted in a different way. Racism is still rampant, especially in the corridors of power — the commissioner of the NYPD won’t even stop to look at Will at the graduation ceremony, much less shake his hand — but the episode tells the story of a black man who seized power for himself in this difficult time, and who motivated a host of white people to follow his example, even if they had no idea who was really leading the way.

Remember what Laurie said back in the third episode about heroes’ masked identities being shaped by childhood trauma? The last good memory of Will Reeves’ childhood before his world was destroyed — with the parallel to Superman and Krypton made clearer than ever when a news vendor shows Will a copy of Action Comics #1 — was of him watching Trust in the Law. He has modeled his whole life on Bass Reeves — taken on his name, even — become a cop because that’s what the real Reeves did. But while Reeves is still a U.S. Marshal in the film, he also wears a hood to conceal his identity(*).

(*) This was something the real-life Reeves did sometimes to maintain a low profile in a territory where a black lawman would attract too much attention — much of it dangerous attention. As we’ve discussed, his story was appropriated too, as he became the white Lone Ranger, whose own (very Captain Metropolis-esque) mask is less essential to protecting his life.

So when Will’s white colleagues conduct a near-fatal lynching to discourage him from looking into the activities of their secret racist organization, Cyclops, Will staggers away with the noose still around his neck and the hood they’d slipped over him in his hands. He impulsively puts it back on to conceal his identity while rescuing a white couple from a mugging(*). But in the aftermath of that event, he and June realize that he can reclaim the hood and the noose, using them against their persecutors in a manner not that far removed from the way oppressed minority groups turn slurs against them into slogans of pride. To make it work, though, June argues, Will has to conceal not just his face, but his entire racial identity, using makeup to lighten the skin around his eyes (the only part of him visible under the mask and elaborate head-to-toe costume they cook up).

(*) It’s not quite saving Bruce Wayne’s parents from being murdered (this couple doesn’t have a kid with them, and there’s more than one attacker), but the scene is evocative enough to dovetail nicely with the early Superman discussion.

It’s an inspired choice — by June and by the series. The makeup (which looks convincing enough in the episode’s black-and-white photography) allows the TV show to remain largely faithful to the comic, which kept Hooded Justice’s true identity a mystery. Who’s to say he wasn’t a black man who held himself apart from the rest of the Minutemen (other than their leader, that is) because he was afraid of having his race exposed to the world? And the makeup creates the appearance of an inversion of the Lone Ranger’s mask — and, for that matter, of the very dark makeup that Angela puts around her own eyes when she’s operating as Sister Night. Grandfather and granddaughter are both cops who dress up on the side, but under very different circumstances. He’s operating wholly outside the law, while she is mostly trying to operate within it. He has to keep his race hidden; she wears hers proudly, in open defiance of the Seventh Kavalry.

But whatever the reason and the context, Watchmen — both comic and TV series — repeatedly insists that wearing a mask is as unhealthy as nostalgia. Will wears his as a way to channel his rage at a racist world — and perhaps at the world that forces him to keep his sexuality as secret as his skin color — but over time, it only makes him angrier. Nelson Gardner wears the Captain Metropolis mask less out of a desire to battle injustice than a more adolescent wish for adventure, mixed in with it being a kink. (Like Agent Petey, he likes to wear it in bed.) The episode doesn’t even get into the pathologies of the other Minutemen — they’re blurs in the background of the group photo we see being taken — but we know that Laurie’s father was an attempted rapist. The longer that Will wears his interlocking masks (the hood and the makeup), and the clearer it becomes that his lover Nelson won’t do anything to help fight Cyclops, the more the fires of his rage are stoked. After discovering that Cyclops is using subliminal images and other forms of mesmerism to trick black people into hurting themselves, he decides to attack the group’s headquarters on his own, wearing both his NYPD uniform and his superhero hood. Like his granddaughter, he is playing cop and vigilante at the same time, and it has long since ceased to be fun and games (if it ever was for him). He’s just shooting racists in the head, and then, once the bullets in his service revolver run out, strangling the last one and lighting all the bodies on fire.

Even that action doesn’t burn the rage from his soul, and instead he winds up taking it out on his poor son (Angela’s father), whom he finds putting on the white makeup — a little boy just trying to imitate the dad he loves and respects so much. He chases his wife and son away in the process, and while there was little healthy about the relationship — which began with Will literally caring for June when she was the crying baby in the field outside Tulsa — it leaves Will once again alone, unable to get back to the only family he knows. From here, the Nostalgia trip leaps ahead to 2019, so that Angela can witness the murder of Judd — who hangs himself, with some coaxing from the Cyclops device that Will hung onto — which means we don’t know what he’s been doing over the decades in between. But based on the look on his face as he clutches that old noose to his midsection while waiting for Judd, it doesn’t seem to have been a happy life for him. After the unexplained glimpse of an old woman promising to take someone — Will? Angela? — home with her, Angela finally wakes up as herself in one of Lady Trieu’s labs, perhaps not far away from the man whose life she just got to know with great, horrifying intimacy.

Thematically, it’s easy to understand why Lindelof was so excited by the idea of the first superhero being black. It recontextualizes a lot of what’s in the comic book without unfairly altering any of it, and it ties in beautifully to the ideas percolating in the show’s vision of 2019 America. Given that Hooded Justice’s sexuality is now public knowledge, 7K probably doesn’t have much use for him as an icon; their own inspiration, Rorschach, was an avowed homophobe. But it would still probably rock their worldview to find out that it was a black man who inspired Rorschach, and, by proxy, them to don masks in pursuit of their own interpretation of the law(*). They’re concealing their identities in indirect tribute to him, even as they’re continuing the vile traditions of all the people Hooded Justice put on his own masks to fight. It transforms everything we’ve seen (and, for some of us, read) before in this world, and unlocks a deeper meaning to the whole series. Now it’s not just incidental that there’s a superhero race war in the show’s 2019; it’s history painfully repeating itself again and again, just as it has in our America.

(*) Or maybe they’d just compartmentalize? The whole thing conjures up memories of that great scene in Do the Right Thing where Mookie points out to his racist coworker Pino that all of Pino’s favorite celebrities are black, forcing Pino to contort himself to explain why Magic Johnson, Eddie Murphy, and Prince are “more than black.”  Never underestimate human beings’ capacity for cognitive dissonance.

Beyond a thematic stroke of brilliance, the episode — directed by Lost and Leftovers vet Stephen Williams — is a technical marvel. The black-and-white photography (by Greg Middleton) and big band soundtrack neatly take us back to the late Thirties, even as other production choices keep reminding us that this is a memory and not a time machine. As a tribute to Steven Spielberg’s use of the girl in the red coat in Schindler’s List Pale Horse, there are occasional splashes of color, particularly whenever Will’s mother is seen playing the movie theater piano. Certain aspects of the production design, like the precinct doors, are presented as completely false stage sets, as further evidence of the artificiality of Angela’s presence here. When June asks Will to again tell her the plot of Trust in the Law, the movie irises open on the wall behind them. The transitions between Adepo and King appear seamless, I’m told, because they were: As the camera spun around the other actor in those scenes, Adepo quickly stepped out and King in (or vice versa). It’s a special effects technique almost as old as Trust in the Law. And though she’s not in the episode a lot, Regina King does amazing physical work at evoking both Adepo and then Lou Gossett Jr. in the scene with Judd; the way her posture mimics Gossett’s in the wheelchair left my jaw on the floor.

The edits feel more purposeful — like the cut from June (who appears to have some suspicions about her man’s sexuality) telling Will “No!” about joining the Minutemen, followed immediately by Nelson screaming “YES!” while in bed with Will — as does the absence of them in certain spots. The fight in the American Hero Story clip again looks like a Zack Snyder parody, but most of the real Hooded Justice fight scenes are presented as continuous takes, with Will a relentless whirling dervish who nonetheless does only things within the realm of what’s physically possible for an ordinary (if very strong and angry) man. We get an inversion of the American Hero Story clip from episode two, where instead of Hooded Justice crashing into a store to save the shopkeeper from some dastardly robbers, he is instead leaping out of the window because the shopkeeper himself is the criminal. (It’s only as he smashes through the glass that the Snyder/bullet-time effects come back, but as a way to illustrate Laurie and Cal’s failed attempt to pull Angela out of this dangerous trip.)

Even for a series that is already a huge departure from the source material, “This Exceptional Being” is an enormous gamble. It barely features any of the regular cast. It largely makes do without that hypnotic Reznor/Ross score (which comes roaring back as old man Will prepares to deal with Judd), and is told in a completely different visual language from the previous five chapters. And it completely recontextualizes all that’s happened before.

But it’s a gamble that pays off spectacularly, in one of the best hours of television that Damon Lindelof’s ever been involved in. When you consider the peaks of Lost and The Leftovers, that is a very exceptional being, indeed.

Some other thoughts, several of them comic book-related:

* With most of the regular cast on the bench or limited to cameos, we got a bunch of familiar guest stars besides Jackson as the TV version of Hooded Justice, including ER alum Erik Palladino as one of the two homophobic FBI agents from the American Hero Story scene, TV’s Jake McDorman (recently seen as Murphy Brown’s son in the short-lived revival) as Captain Metropolis, and ubiquitous HBO player Glenn Fleshler (Boardwalk Empire, True Detective, Barry) as Fred the racist shopkeeper.

* A Veidt interlude would have felt even more out of place here than it did in last week’s Looking Glass spotlight, where at least he was connected to the plot down on Earth. So we don’t bother going to Europa at all. But Will arranging the Cyclops corpses in a tableau before lighting them on fire very much evokes what Veidt did last week with all the clones — which in turn was was an homage to the scene in the pirate comic within the original comic, where the hero has to build a raft out of the bodies of his dead comrades. (Like Veidt, he chose to use corpses to escape exile.)

* The episode’s title comes from a line in Under the Hood, the memoir of the original Nite Owl, Hollis Mason, that ran as bonus material at the end of the comic book’s first few issues. It’s part of Mason’s description of Hooded Justice, who inspired Mason — himself a member of the NYPD — to put on tights and a mask. Mason is interesting as an outlier to the psychological dysfunction of almost every other costumed character in the comic (and now in the show). He’s just a well-adjusted, morally upright guy who adopts a costumed identity because he sees how effective Hooded Justice is and wants to help people in the same way.

* That group photo, by the way? It’s one of the more famous images from the comic, where both Mason and Laurie’s mother Sally have framed copies in their homes. (And it literally accompanies the Snyder film’s title.) It’s also an important plot point, because Edward Blake’s attempted rape of Sally happens a few minutes after the photo is taken.

* Beyond largely sidelining the usual synth pieces of Reznor and Ross’ score, the episode’s soundtrack naturally leans on vintage songs, even if some of them are anachronistic. The Eartha Kitt cover of “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” that plays over Will’s assault on the warehouse, for instance, was recorded in 1952 — in the same session where she sang the version of “Santa Baby” that played during the White Night flashback from Episode Two, further linking Will to Angela. (And linking both of them to one of the performers who famously played Catwoman.) There’s also an original song, “Used to Be,” with music and lyrics by Reznor and Ross, that plays as the cops abduct Will and hang him from the tree, and reprises as the older Will makes Judd hang himself.

* Finally, this isn’t exactly Watchmen-related, but Hooded Justice’s new origin story reminded me of perhaps my favorite DC Comic since Watchmen came out: New Frontier, written and drawn by the late, great Darwyn Cooke. Set mostly in the 1950s as Green Lantern, Flash, Martian Manhunter, and more battle the paranoia of the era as much as they do aliens and supervillains, the miniseries also includes a new hero named John Henry. Inspired by the steel-driving African American folk hero of the same name, both his origin and his costume have several things in common with Hooded Justice. This is a coincidence — Lindelof had never heard of New Frontier until I mentioned it to him — but anyone who liked this episode might want to give it a read.

[rapfornication]

A List of a Bunch of Songs We Liked by Siya Mbatha & Norman

2016, what a year. Included in this list are the emotions and memories that came with these songs. Here is a list that attempts to consolidate a most uniquely strange year .Fuck Donald Trump and enjoy the links to other pieces we thought you might enjoy too. And also fuck Donald Trump. 

Danny Brown – When It Rain 

Produced By Paul White Album: Atrocity Exhibition

One of the more left field songs that still somehow has an underlying jitty foot-light feel to it. It sounds like ‘Dip’ if it grew up in a dark basement and suffered from crippling anxiety. Danny Brown matches the atmosphere with some of his most vivid, impressive writing to date as he describes Detroit as a city that sees no change but gentrification, grannies getting robbed and more guns than necessary. Unforgettable.

Kendrick Lamar - untitled 02 | 06.23.2014.

Produced By Yung Exclusive & Cardo Album: untitled unmastered.

Cornrow Kenny brought out the circus tricks without losing his seriousness. The build-up is one captivating performance but once his voice swings into high pitched, the stunting and trumpets go into overdrive and you’re left pleasantly stunned. Get God on the phone.

Fat Joe & Remy Ma Feat. French Montana & Infa Red - All The Way Up

Produced By Cool & Dre & Edsclusive Album: Plata O Plomo

They say regionalism is dead but this all NY affair begs to differ. Cool and Dre provide the bass and unforgettable horns and the legends (plus Montana) rip it apart like a swaggier version of The Avengers. Remy Ma came back and ignited desperately needed fire.

Fat Joe & Remy Ma Feat. Infa-Red, Jay Z & French Montana -  All The Way Up (remix)

Produced By Cool & Dre & Edsclusive

 Lean Back left a lasting legacy, even for the millennials like my whack self who remembers slogans like Terror Squad, before Khaled was Billy Ocean, back when Fat Joe had the red parka in the video

"Lemonade is a popular drink and it still is". Lemonade the album that I still haven't listened to has just dropped and every beyhive fan on Twitter was up in arms mad that Jay Z was getting his lemonade from a woman named Becky -if you're into that kinda thing. And that’s all Hov was gonna do in terms of speaking on it. One more time, let it sink in. Lemonade is a popular drink and it still is. He pretty much ethered Beyoncé if you think about it.

Rihanna – Needed Me

Produced By Kuk Harrell & DJ Mustard Album: ANTI

For the first time in her long career, Rihanna sounded liberated. ‘Needed Me’ amplifies the dark, sexual charisma she always displayed in ways that feel less put-on (Rated-R, basically) and more like self-expression. A fantastic wonky Mustard beat gives her room to remind her past flame who really was doing who a favour. Savagery personified in one song. Oh, that shot of Robyn in a lacy blue dress, gun in hand, looking out to the beach? Iconic

BBNG Feat. Samuel T. Herring – Time Moves Slow

Produced By BADBADNOTGOOD Album: IV

It’s been great watching BBNG grow into their own. The legendary Sam Herring lends his heartfelt voice to this perfectly crafted number. Personally, it got me through a messy situationship. Unreciprocated love makes it feel like time is moving slow.

Kid Cudi Feat. Travis Scott - Baptized In Fire

Produced By Mike Dean & Plain Pat Album: Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin'

This is the most Kid Cudi Kid Cudi has sounded for a long time. And it's scary to figure that your preference for an artist is derived in their articulation of their personal pain and struggles, I mean it's why we fuck with a Basquiat right? But here, here it's like Cudi just wanted to make his number one fan Travis Scott happy. The reserved role that La Flame takes in this feels like that, like he's soaking the moment in. The production overall sound is very reminiscent of Man On The Moon, if not a remake considering Plain motherfucking Pat, Mike Dean, La Flame and Cudder were all on this, SQUAD.

Schoolboy Q – JoHn Muir

Produced By Sounwave Album: Blank Face LP

Deadly basslines and triumphant horns score Q’s coming of age tale to churn out one of the best songs on ‘.Blankface’. Can’t help but poorly crip walk when this album cut comes on.

Kemba – Already

Produced By Frank Drake Album: Negus

Honestly, one could have chosen any song on Kemba’s often brilliant LP, ‘Negus’ but ‘Already’ takes the cake for two reasons: it’s Frank Duke’s hardest beat since ‘Fuckin’ Up The Count’ and the artist sounds angry, dissatisfied and wounded by the awful recurring problems surrounding race. Isn’t that how we all felt in this bizarre year?

Samiyam Feat. Earl Sweatshirt - Mirror

Produced By Samiyam Album: Animals Have Feelings

This song was supposed to come right after Faucet but looking in this in totality it's fitting that it only dropped in 2016, a year later. A resolute Earl spits his way through his insecurities and imperfections "despite how they praising your face I'mma make do!". Earl's raps are never really about us, mans just telling his story and again we find ourselves in it. Looking in the mirror, seeing the only the nigga we wanted to be. It's not angry, it's aggressively encouraging.

Isaiah Rashad – Park

Produced By Park Ave. & D. Sanders Album: The Sun's Tirade

Trying to follow the topics Rashad dives into is genuinely exciting. In lesser hands, it just wouldn’t work but he’s always saved by the mere fact that he’s a compelling writer. Over fluttering hi hats and knocking sparse bass, he compares himself to Nicki Minaj and Guwop, reveals sexual infidelity while denouncing his savagery and still sneaks in discerning bars about fatherhood and religion. What really trips one out is how effortless it all sounds.

Noname – Freedom Interlude

Produced By Phoelix & Saba Album: Telefone

Out the shadows, Noname took her spot as one the more talented rappers of her generation. ‘Freedom Interlude ‘  is all her strengths wrapped in one warm song. Her intricate soliloquies spill over some steady drums and calming chords as she wanders and aches about Bill Cosby, perception, motherhood, becoming and everything in between.

Jeff Chery – Salty

Produced By Stefan Green

The cliché goes: if you don’t have haters, you aren’t doing anything noteworthy. So, naturally, songs about them are probably my favourite. Nothing like glorious flexing as a defence mechanism to truly propel a song and Chery leans into his naysayers over woozy bass and autotune.

J. Cole – Neighbors

Produced By J. Cole Album: 4 Your Eyez Only

Certain people will always let prejudices rule their perception of others. As a young black man, the hurtful reminders creep up on you every time who walk pass a car and the white person inside frantically locks their door or when you call your friends for a get together and your racist nearby residents bring the police to your doorstep to break it up. Cole explores this reality in a way that’s both relatable and fittingly hopeless. No matter who or where you are, the burden of being black is sometimes too heavy.

DJ Khaled Feat. Drake - For Free

Produced By Jordan Ullman & Nineteen85 Album: Major Key

I didn't want Khaled and Drake to have another anthem so they made another anthem. And as audacious as Drizzy Drake Rogers might be, as irritating as his love "Serana, Rihanna and JLo in one year" life might be, this is a really nice song. Like those moments after when you're feeling yourself, appreciating your agility wanting to ask the person next to you “... Is this sex so good I shouldn't have to fuck for free?"

Ma-E & AKA – Lie 2 Me

Produced by: Brian Soko, Mr Kamera & Ma-E 

Ma- E is basically your uncle who tries way too hard to look/sound ‘hip’ but still somehow pulls it without coming off corny. This ‘Township Counsellor’ gem hides the lingering insecurity of being rich/famous and always wondering if people like you for you or what you offer. Roping in SA’s erratic egoistic makes perfect sense as the pair smash this one out the park.

Ka – Just

Produced By Ka Album: Honor Killed the Samurai

Gangster turned firefighter, Ka writes like how one would imagine if they found themselves in a ‘I Am Legend’ type world. Even the pragmatic, bare-knuckle beats can’t dull the emotionally profound bars about backstabbers, dead loved ones, poverty and unfulfilled potential. Guilt more than anything invades this samurais’ nightmares.

Lil Yachty - One Night (Extended) 

Produced by TheGoodPerry Album: Lil Boat

It's really the most pleasant mean way to tell a hoe she ain't no wifey, matter of fact to tell anyone she ain't no wifey. But the video is tight tho, very Odd Future 2011-esq and very much Lil Yachty's assertion that he's pretty much here to do whatever the fuck he wants with this hip hop thing, and even scarier is that you actually can't stop him. Hook hella catchy tho.

Cousin Stizz Feat. Larry June – Down Like That

Produced By Puff Daddy Album MONDA

Billed as a showcase of star potential, Stizzy breaks out of the seriousness that drives ‘MONDA’ for some old fashioned hijinks. But Larry June truly murks this sizzling beat with one of the verses of the year. Who else can deliberately rap off beat, admit and end the bar with cold ‘fuck rap’?

Belly Feat. 2 Chainz, The Weeknd & Yo Gotti - Might Not (Remix)  

Produced By Merlin Watts, DaHeala & Ben Billions

Between the time the original and now Belly had delivered consistently cold bars embodied in solid projects twice. And hip hops heavy hitters and OGs aren't asleep to this, Belly's signed to Roc Nation. Everyone on here does their part but it's 2 Chainz who steals the show with his playful but vicious flow with audacious lines like, "IF YOU LOVE ME TAT MY NAME ON YOUR UTERUS!". Belly comes through cold tapping into the drug taking, model fucking persona The Weeknd had before he went full pop on us. And while Yo Gotti's verse is otherwise forgettable, mans didn't go down without a fight. 

Young Thug - Digits/Swizz Beats

Produced By Wheezy Album: JEFFERY

Thug’s output makes it hard to pick a favourite but these two highlight why I love Slime’s style. He’s a unique, eccentric singular voice that constantly defies rap norms and conjures up memorable hooks with ease.

A$AP Mob Feat. A$AP Rocky, A$AP Ant, A$AP Ferg, A$AP Nast, A$AP Twelvyy & Juicy J  - Yamborghini High

Produced By Hector Delgado Album: Cozy Tapes Vol. 1: Friends

First off, s/o and daps to A$AP Mob for executing skits on a tape the way we remember skits on a tape, niggas too fucking cozy. It's the type of contextualising taking us back to Pesos. A corner store in Harlem. Second, you gotta want to believe that Yams in heaven tripping the fuck out not only watching the most tumbler-esque video but fact that the whole tape is not only an ode to Yams but also the preservation of his legacy.

Denzel Curry – ULT

Produced By Finatik N Zac, Nick Leon & Ronny J Album Imperial

The most gifted pick on 2016’s XXL Freshmen List. ‘ULT’ is the perfect song if you’re unfamiliar with Curry’s work. It’s high tempo and ferocious coupled with unyielding intelligence. Denzel sounds unflinching in the face of racial profiling and police brutality as he basks in the idea of unity. The chorus carries its 2Pac influence proudly. Revolt music.

Chance The Rapper feat. Saba - Angels 

Produced By The Social Experiment & Lido   Album Coloring Book

Chance is that guy, he either irks you or like Obama he's on your playlist(s). So this song found its way onto mine. This is the soundtrack to my success, the background music to scenes of triumph, the sound of joy, a thugs prayer of gratitude ..that's this song. Pain is beautiful but it takes real skill to articulate happiness. 

 ASAP Mob - Telephone Calls Feat.  Yung Gleesh, Playboi Carti, Tyler, The Creator & A$AP Rocky

Produced By Plu2o Nash Album Cozy Tapes Vol. 1: Friends

The best thing about this song outside the quotable, outside Tyler stepping his flow up, outside walk Gleesh walk and outside "POST MAN, who dis?" is A$AP Rocky's verified lyrics where he writes about Tyler "I wish I knew this nigga my whole life" ❤

Frank Ocean Feat. KOHH – Nikes

Produced By Malay Ho, Om'Mas Keith & Frank Ocean Album: Blonde

Frank’s writing displays vulnerable humanity that we all try and tap into on our best days. ‘Nikes’ is filled with hilarious shit talking, short eulogies to passed peers and kin, lines about doing lines and trying to stay young. Life in your 20’s captured in 5 minutes.

Isaiah Rashad - Free Lunch

Produced By Cam O'bi Album: The Sun's Tirade

 Damn, I hate to say this but drugs and depression gave depth to this man’s music and made it interesting. After Clivia Demo, I had feared that under the shadow of TDE/Kendrick hype, that like other almost kinda famous sorta artists we were going to lose him, collateral damage so to speak. But instead Rashad in the most cliche of ways turned tragedy into triumph. 

Skepta – Man(Gang)

Produced By Skepta Album: Konnichiwa

The appeal of grime is its ability to be entertaining and aggressively haughty simultaneously. Skepta comes for everyone’s head on this ‘Konnichiwa’ standout. Fake fans and friends, washed rappers &wannabe fashionstas; no one is spared. London boyz made noise in 2016.

Childish Gambino – Me & Your Mama

Produced By Ludwig Göransson Album: "Awaken, My Love!"

The signal to the stars. Sitting through this ever mortifying gospel-rock joint feels transient. A shift from dick inspired punchlines to channeling Parliament Funkdelic; Donald Glover is proof of the rewards of artistic progression.

Danny Brown - Dance In The Water 

Produced By Paul White Album: Atrocity Exhibition

I'd like to think that this song would fit perfectly in a Tarantino film that's already been made, maybe that one about the car with Rosario Dawson and the lady who did stunts for Uma Therman. I'd like to think those things, a perfect middle between the old world and new. Danny Brown, at his peak, paints the most perfect picture of curated chaos.. 

Saba & Noname – Church/Liquor Store

Produced By Cam O'bi Album: Bucket List Project

Two of Chicago’s more gifted writers take us on a ride through their hometown. Saba is insightful, sorrowful and clear headed as he tackles addiction, gang violence, gentrification and the school to prison system. Noname acts as the perfect foil. It soars with gorgeous keys and beautiful choir worthy voices that only add to the misery

Earl Sweatshirt & Knxwledge – Balance

Produced By Knxwledge Album: 2016 Adult Swim Singles

A sensible union. Two talented non stars whose styles fit each other like big feet & AF’s 1.Earl’s attention to detail add a personal touch to universal gripes of being young, black & confused. His mumblings feel at home over Knxwledge’s lush, anxious phrases.

AKA ft Yanga – Dream Work

Produced by KJ Conteh

Sampling ‘Street Fighter’ should already make this a classic but AKA takes it a step further by rightfully staking a claim to SA rap’s crown. The hook is masterful; Yanga’s voice complements the thumping bass perfectly and AKA sounds focused, sharp and agitated. A continuation of a 5 year streak that doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon. Long Live Supa Mega.

Terrance Martin – Valdez off Crenshaw

Produced by Terrace Martin Co-Produced by Robert “Sput” Searight

Modern music would be less great without Terrace Martin. One could go on an endless tangent listing countless accolades and contributions but rather we stick to this one moment on “Velvet Portraits”. It’s a mesmerizing piece of jazz leaning funk that contains an electric guitar solo that’s so beautifully over the top you can’t help sit in awe. An experience.

D.R.A.M Feat. Lil Yachty – Broccoli

Produced By J Gramm Beats Album: Big Baby D.R.A.M.

There's this phenomena taking place where new kids want to be their own, don't want to inherit problems, keen to dictate their own narrative. This song is a prime example of this. D.R.A.M is on here with his puppy hugging positive healthy outlook on life bars and Lil Yachty is here in his whole self. The millennials Big Pimpin', I’m calling it.

Kadhja Bonet – Honey Comb

Produced By Kadhja Bonet Album: The Visitor

‘Classical music’ can be an off putting label. But Bonet puts a modern spin on the genre and breathes new life into it. It sounds so good it possess the power to you cleanse all your proverbial sins. Gorgeous piece of music.

 Solange Feat. Lil Wayne - Mad 

Produced By Troy "R8DIO" Johnson, David Longstreth, Sir Dylan, Solange &Raphael Saadiq Album: A Seat at the Table

Very rarely are us folk, black folk, worldwide given the space to be angry. Our sorrow, our pain and small glimmers of happiness have their time, designated hours. So when you're mad, you're mad on your own, you're carrying it on your own .. and when you finally exhale it's a lot. Mad about inabilities and inadequacies of the self. It's always just too much to never have someone ask "why you mad son?". It's a relief to have a song like this affirm that anger. Affirming the experience of holding on anger only for it to be dismissed, invalidated to be "why you always be so mad"-ed. I praise Solo for speaking this truth. 

Rae Sremmurd Feat. Gucci Mane – Black Beatles

Produced By Mike WiLL Made-It Album: SremmLife 2

Mannequin challenge aside, ‘Black Beatles’ was destined to be a hit. Swan Lee sounds like a fallen angel; cautious and courageous. Jimi admirably keeps up and Gucci is his outrageous melodic self. Mike Will brings out the trademark ear wormy tunes and you’ve got a stellar song that celebrates youthful exuberance like no other this year. Rae Sremmurd > The Beatles

Rich Chigga - Dat $tick 

Easily the hardest bars and hardest beat of the year, or the 2nd Quarter.  Upper Echelon bars. YOUR FAVORITE RAPPER WAS SHOOK WHEN HE HEARD IT. 

DJ Esco Feat. Future & Rae Sremmurd - Party Pack 

Produced By Southside & DJ Esco Album: Project E.T. Esco Terrestrial

 If you questioned the longevity of Future's "glow up" or how Rae Sremmurd would navigate beyond being the cute small guys then this song stands as testament. On this song Future sounds energized, he sounds damn near competitive on a song that features another well executed Swae Lee hook and a very well placed Slim Jxmmi.

Boogie – Nigga Needs

Produced By Keyel Album: Thirst 48, Pt. 2

Boogie has a knack of simplifying nuanced thoughts and conflicting feelings. Coupled with a video of him as a bleeding centrepiece in an art gallery, The Thirst 48 rapper tries to come to terms the difficultly of self-improvement in a world that conspires against him.

Travis Scott Feat. NAV - Beibs in the Trap

Produced By NAV Album: Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight

 Ay, millennials finally get our own cocaine raps, that tight. But say no to drugs. Drugs ruin lives. Drugs also cost way too much money to pick it up as a habit. Also, who actually does cocaine anymore. Isn't tripping on anxiety meds, though troubling cos clearly in the purest sense of self we have proved incapable of dealing with the realities of this world, the wave? I dunno, just don't do crack kids. That's not glamorous. Neither is crushed up Ritalin on your gums. Great song though 5/5 shout outs NAV for the harmonies and production s/o Justin Beiber.

Westside Gunn & Action Bronson – Dudley Boyz

Produced By The Alchemist Album: Flygod

Wrestling and food references? Boasting about hardness and superior garments over velvet soft chords? Why didn’t this collaboration happen sooner? Old heads need to pay more attention to Westside and stop complaining about mumble rap.

DJ Khaled Feat. Jay Z & Future – I Got Keys

Produced By Jake One, G Koop & Southside Album:Major Key

The God MC came down a couple of times this year to bless his subjects but this Future – assisted joint was a highlight. Not a world beater but admirable considering it is a 42 year old taking a jab at a relentless Southside banger.

2Chainz – Ounces Back

Produced By DJ Spinz Album Daniel Son; Necklace Don

This Christmas, I’m thankful that the most entertaining rapper on earth was inspired all throughout the year. A performance littered with ludicrous lines about forgotten apartments in Jupiter(???), expensive jewelry and his upper echelon sex game. The flow is never forced or out of pocket over dreamy bass and stuttering keys. How is he over 40 and more inventive than rappers half his age?

21 Savage – No Heart

Produced By CuBeatz, Southside & Metro Boomin Album: Savage Mode

The line between fantasy and realism grows blurry with each social media update. We continue to laud rappers who seem to draw from real life experiences more than the ‘posers’ and that what makes ‘No Heart’ so great.21 is way too specific & menacing not mean any of his threat- filled lines. Metro Boomin’ matches the dead eyed feel with his most minimalist work to date and the end product is as enthralling as it is terrifying. 

Chance The Rapper Feat. 2 Chainz & Lil Wayne - No Problem 

Produced By BrassTracks Album: Coloring Book

Chance The Rapper Feat. 2 Chainz & Lil Wayne - No Problem Produced by: Album: Coloring Book  Coloring Book is one of those polarizing projects, you either felt it or you didn't .. I didn't. But he made songs like this that didn't make you feel like you were at Christian Rap Camp, some menacing statements were made on here echoed by your mum’s church choir. Wayne told us about freeing the choir, Chance threw threats about labels meeting the real south side and 2 Chainz? Man that man effortlessly floated just right on this pleasant song that even this weird iPhone class project video even is enjoyable.  ZBo8QA/K2O8

Migos Feat. Lil Uzi Vert – Bad & Boujee

Produced By Metro Boomin Album: CULTURE

An ode to classy fly women that even Uzi Vert couldn’t ruin. Offset’s show-stealing hook sticks in your mind like a deferred exam. A shining example of the power of Migos as a hit-making collective.

Kanye West Feat. Kendrick Lamar -No More Parties in LA

Produced By Kanye West & Madlib Album The Life of Pablo

It's only fitting that the most flagrant and audacious bars would find themselves sitting on this masterpiece. It's almost felt like a battle rap, Kendrick urging Kanye to rap again and Ye coming the fuck thru, "that God for me!" Pablo declares triumphantly and the song is so good, it's such a Kanye signature sample old heads the energy in the recording studio is crazy with McDonald's and Hennessy. Crazy. Fucking magical is what it is.

G.O.O.D Music Feat. Kanye West, Big Sean, Quavo, Gucci Mane, 2 Chainz, Travis Scott, Desiigner & Yo Gotti - Champions

Produced By Kanye West, A-Trak, Lex Luger & Mike Dean Album: Cruel Winter

Briefly, for but at least a second it looked like Kanye, Pusha T, fucking Kid Cudi, La Flame, 2 Chainz and even Big Sean .. it looked like the gang were back together. This single came as a result of hysteria, a just released Gucci, Kanye West finally releasing an album, a Quavo in his prime on a fucking MIKE DEAN track. In this moment, with the whole world in a frenzy doing everything they could do to somehow get their hands on these super stars, we were reminded that this label, GOOD Music, is a home to champions.

[mrmichaelchadler]

Bright Wall/Dark Room September 2018: For Love or Money by Kellie Herson

We are pleased to offer an excerpt from the latest edition of the online magazine, Bright Wall/Dark Room. The theme for their September issue is WORK, and in addition to Kellie Herson's essay below on "Goodfellas," they''ll also be featuring essays on "Sharp Objects," "Paterson," "Support the Girls," "Five Easy Pieces," "You Were Never Really Here," "The Sting," "Fat City," "Blue Collar," "The Hours," "Mildred Pierce," "Only Angels Have Wings," "Beautiful Things," and "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." The above art is by Tony Stella. 

You can read our previous excerpts from the magazine by clicking here. To subscribe to Bright Wall/Dark Room, or look at their most recent essays, click here. 

I don’t think the world needs another definitive declaration of what Goodfellas is about. There are far too many, and the vast majority represent a particular viewer’s desire to claim ownership over a cultural phenomenon rather than any substantive effort to engage with the narrative. But since we’re here: it’s a movie about capitalism, or, more specifically, about the way capitalism structures not only our labor and how we get compensated for it, but also our families and our relationships. Every successful mob narrative is on some level a workplace comedy, and Goodfellas is the most incisive one we have. Yes, it’s also about friendships between men, and food, and jealousy, and it offers some tremendous dog content—but the thread holding all those disparate parts together is its comprehensive dissection of the belief that if you get the chance to do a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

That idea is coercive bullshit, of course. Not being miserable at work is something to aspire to, but having a job you love doesn’t magically liberate your labor from its economic or social context, even if that job ostensibly exists outside the bounds of polite society. If anything, love makes it far easier to let your work absorb your life and suck you dry. It doesn’t exempt you from wanting something in return for your work, whether it’s status or money or validation; it just makes it harder to distinguish the things you do joyfully from the things you do transactionally, to figure out the difference between who you are and what you do. It’s like graduate school, if graduate students weren’t quite as into stimulants.

The protagonists of Goodfellas choose their work early in the film because it’s thrilling and fun, because it’s something they love to do, and love to do together. The way these characters sustain themselves is always illegal and often immoral, but their joy is so contagious that I catch myself envying them despite my better judgment. Why, I inevitably ask myself while watching, do my friends and I sit in offices all day when we could be managing a tiki bar that’s a front for other illicit business and then burning it down for the insurance payout? (The answer is, just for the record, Catholic guilt and health insurance. Please let me know if any crime syndicates offer a full benefits package.) At first, the money and respect they accrue seem tangential, an unnecessary bonus. You assume they’d be engaging in theft, assault, and murder anyway as some sort of perverse but exciting group bonding activity.

But their fun decomposes as they get older, and the fantasy of Goodfellas gradually becomes a cautionary tale. Stretching the limits of what they can earn for themselves—whether it’s money or respect or belonging—through these activities becomes all-consuming. Their gradual lurch into the transactional is neither as nihilistic as Casino’s or as hedonistic as The Wolf of Wall Street’s. But it represents a similar effort to excise the rot at the core of events that seem fun and glamorous and aspirational, to expose how people who seem wholly unbound by the rules end up with lives just as limited as the rest of ours. The narrative that emerges here isn’t unsettling because it’s about social deviance; it’s unsettling because it’s deeply normal. Carefree, collective youthfulness gets devoured by individualism and acquisition, unraveling not only these characters’ separate lives but their relationships with one another. By the time Jimmy, who loves to steal, nears the end of his career, he can’t even enjoy executing the most impressive theft in American history. The success leaves him miserable, consumed by paranoia that anyone involved could send the whole thing tumbling down. These characters constantly expand their wealth and their influence, but none of them can ever have the specific kind of power they want—Jimmy and Tommy, in particular, can never become made men. And this perpetual dissatisfaction becomes the core of what motivates them, gradually replacing the love and excitement that once sucked them in.

Of course this journey into the mercenary shapes both the collective and the individual rises and falls of Henry, Jimmy, and Tommy. But for me, the film’s most compelling window into how people struggle to navigate a system that depends on constantly striving for something that’s always held just slightly out of reach is Karen Hill’s journey from (hilariously bored) date to wife to unofficial business partner. It’s a thread some viewers lose—and, to be fair, there’s a lot going on here and the run time is, like that of every Scorsese film, at least a hair too long; it’s easy to hold onto the scenes that stand most memorably on their own and forget the larger narrative context. But I’m always fascinated by her, and left struggling to separate out the things she does for money from the things she does for love, to mark where her desire for things she can never have ends and her resigned willingness to grab whatever she can get begins.

In fact, I would argue that her development is the backbone of Goodfellas, the piece that enables much of its thematic and emotional heft. It’s a narrative achievement, of course, but most of the credit belongs to Lorraine Bracco, whose performance is one of my all-time favorites: funny and charming, dark and terrifying, sometimes all of these things at once. Through her, we get to know Karen’s point of view better than any other characters’, and through Karen, we get to understand what it’s like to be simultaneously inside and outside the illegal, immoral, and violent work the movie depicts. Her perspective lends the movie much of its complexity and nuance—not just because her voice-overs frame so many pivotal moments, but because her narration so compellingly contradicts not only itself but also what we watch her see. When she tells us that Henry and his friends are “just blue-collar guys,” gaming the capitalist system, it’s not an effort to convince us but to convince herself. She’s close enough to see what’s happening, distant enough that she can recognize that it’s spiraling out of control, and embedded enough to have a vested interest in talking herself out of that recognition. Her domestic labor is inseparable from but not identical to her husband’s criminal labor, and her negotiation of her own complicity swings wildly between mercenary pragmatism and hopeful idealism.

You could read her constantly shifting relationship to her work as unrealistic character development, or interpret her inconsistency as yet another troubling entry into the “Bitches Be Crazy” canon—or you can understand her as a liminal subject trying to navigate an overwhelming context with mixed results. Her journey is not so much a straightforward arc from idealism into greed as it is a messy recursive process, a constant cycle of learning and unlearning and relearning how to get by as a woman who supports and is supported by this particular work. In a less biting movie, Karen would be a well-behaved middle-class Jewish girl corrupted by a criminal husband; in a Scorsese movie, the boundary between polite society and its criminal underbelly is far too blurred for such simplicity.

From the beginning of Karen and Henry’s relationship, love and acquisition are hard to separate from one another. She loathes him instantly, identifying him as a selfish dirtbag and spending their first double-date wearing an expression that I am, as a sufferer myself, both allowed and required to note is a god-tier achievement in resting bitch face. But the moment Henry signals that he’s unattainable, she must correct this, hunting him down in the street to yell at him. And while she’s intrigued by the expensive dates that follow, she doesn’t fully commit to loving Henry until he pistol-whips the man who sexually assaults her and then asks her to hide the gun. That decision—and it feels like just that, a decision, albeit one in which desire is included in her calculations—captures exactly what being attracted to an asshole entails. It’s a combination of the hope that his unearned confidence wears off on you, the validation of occasionally being the exception to the rule of how badly he treats people, and the thrill of getting to borrow that bad behavior for your own ends.

But even after this decision is formalized at their wedding, she still harbors reservations about Henry. She’s always evaluating her surroundings, trying to determine whether this life is worth what she receives in exchange for participating in it. Whenever she verbalizes her fear that the trade-off isn’t worth it—a fear that often emerges from her awareness that she will never fully belong—Henry talks her out of it. And as Henry grows more absent, she takes over this responsibility, talking herself out of everything she knows. Her rationalizations of her role in her husband’s work aren’t a regurgitation of things he’s told her previously; her explanations are far more nuanced and observant than his, grounded not in the desire to have an exceptional life but the need to hang onto a normal one. Her rationalizations offer a way of making her life livable, of holding onto the hope that she might get what she wants from adulthood—but they serve a meta-purpose as well, exposing the logic the film critiques and revealing the ways we convince ourselves to comply with our own destruction.

Karen’s compliance is never permanent, of course. She can explain in meticulous detail how her husband games the capitalist system, but she still knows what she knows. And the most urgent thing she knows is that the things she wants in exchange for her work—some influence, but also some loyalty, some kindness—are never going to take shape. Henry fails to be reliable in any capacity beyond the material: he lies to her, cheats on her, gaslights her, and leaves her isolated for long stretches of time, sometimes because he’s incarcerated but other times because he just feels like having more fun elsewhere. The only power she can leverage is the fact that her husband’s colleagues are terrified of her—because while Henry has compartmentalized her away into a very small section of his expansive personal life, his friends already know she’s part of their enterprise. Of course, this minimal power is not enough to get her what she wants; even if it did, the fact that this is her one small measure of influence still reveals the extent to which her life is interwoven with her husband’s violence and greed.

As Goodfellas nears its end, Karen seems resigned to her perpetual dissatisfaction, treating her marriage like a miserable job at a floundering company and grabbing whatever she can get before it goes under. She has every material possession she could want—an expansive wardrobe, free cocaine, a truly hideous remote-controlled rock wall—but this glamorous excess is contradicted by the empty affect of someone who’s just trying to get through a workday. As Henry’s solo business reaps more and more chaos, she gives up trying to assert herself or find a coherent explanation for anything; she is, in a few scenes, literally just along for the ride. No one in the history of cinema has ever come down with such a severe case of the fuck-its.

And yet when everything implodes, she comes alive again—briefly. As her husband is arrested and her home is surrounded by police, she disposes of everything that could incriminate him. It’s an act of love, or at least one of loyalty; it once again makes her complicit in Henry’s business, but it also protects Henry and their family. But when Henry learns what she’s done, he’s not grateful, just furious that she flushed $60,000 of cocaine down the toilet. His reaction lays bare the void at the core of their marriage, the extent to which their conflation of love and money turns even acts of pure, irrational loyalty into a question of exchange value. She sees it clearly, but it’s far too late to extricate herself; even Henry selling out his friends, entering witness protection, and leaving his work behind doesn’t grant her a way out. His job has ended, but hers has not. Just like the men she’s surrounded by, she loved it once—and we know, finally, that love, not money or glamour or interminably delayed gratification, is the force that allows her work to consume her life.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2MhWJrT

[jacquelinebeet1-blog]

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[hanzi83]

This Season Is Tough On My Mental Illness

Like I mentioned a couple of blogs ago, maybe it was the last one, I don’t know I can’t keep up with it nor do I read them again. I don’t know how anyone does, and I bet no one really does, and then in my fucked up head I will justify knowing more people are paying attention but they can’t let me get an ego, even though I already have one, they don’t want to add to my already gigantic one and worry about creating more of a monster than I already am.

I was holding back from writing another blog, but since I already feel that people are monitoring my personal thoughts, and whenever that possibility comes to my fat head, I tend to say whatever about whomever because I want to get anyone who is potentially monitoring it. I feel like I might as well put out the generalized version in blog form because this is where I kind of shine, sadly. I can’t have these conversations with people I know in specifics, and that is why it will always be awkward and always making me question any interaction I may have encountered.

What is stressful is that during this time of the season all through March, this is where I am most triggered and because people know that, and I am putting it out there, the vultures who create this kind of chaos will try to derail you at any chance they get, and it is been happening a lot more subtly but still very transparent and it takes so much energy to hold back anytime I just want to scream and confront people about things but I can’t do that anymore, and maybe I can do it in a funny or positive way in some kind of fashion, but I don’t know if I am being tested to not say something or for me to declare I feel this way and I have a feeling something secretive is going on. It is the worst time for me to socially gather and being at important events of life to celebrate, I am afraid of where my mind goes after I end up doing it, I start off feeling worried about it will play out, then I end up having a good time, throughout the night someone will state something subtle whether it’s a jab or some type of open conversation that is supposed to kind of be secret, but don’t really include me in the conversation, and then after it I start worry what is else is going on afterwards and worried I am being distracted or being limited from knowing what is seemingly not my business. What bothers me is that people in this world know my business, they do privately, and that is why I become an open book with it on the surface, even if its to my own detriment.

It has gotten me into a lot of trouble with powerful people where I have become a targeted individual, at least from my perspective. If people like Stern were organizing harassment towards me and other people who have spoken out against him, no one would believe me, or are people not allowed to say they do believe me? Considering Harvey Weinstein was exposed as to having Israeli agents harassing journalists and the accusers of his sexual assault, I can only conclude that other prominent people have that at their disposal, and I can only imagine what guys like Howard Stern would do with people who fuck with him, and then “coincidently” become material on his show under the guise of entertainment and comedy, when he could have possibly organized someone’s demise mentally or physically. It is scary how deep these tactics could exist, and at what time does his past come to be exposed? It feels closer and closer, he has the people in his fan base doing dirty work for him and even to some extent the ones who are hating on him are putting his shadiness and evilness to correlate with being “PC” even though he is not, and he is trying to do it horribly, because he is really associated with Trump, so he has people on his payroll, presumably without any evidence, and makes it seem like he is so anti Trump and the ones attacking him are ones who claim he is a liberal, he is one of those corporatist neo liberals, who might speak out on social issues to some degree, but he bows to the empire and because he has built his career on being the rebel against the system who fought the FCC, he can convince a hoard of fans to believe he is anti establishment, and now making it obvious that he is establishment while branding himself a liberal, and then his shadiness gets misconstrued because people think the overly racist, homophobic, or misogynistic jokes and antics are the epitome of what is edgy in this world.

This experience has given me this feeling where I want to speak out on the system. It can refer to the authority in this world or people in my life.  I start to envision future arguments with people and then at the same time being reminded of the past problems I have had with people. It makes me not want to be here because every friendship or relationship will always become toxic. This PTSD will always fuck with me and it makes me wonder what my life really means and why I don’t want to be here and not in a malicious way, but there is only so much I can take, and when seemingly that feeling is being triggered with organized harassment, and no one with any power speaks out about it, it fucks with me. These people claim they are surprised when certain things happen, but I have been screaming about this for years and no one in the media even decided to look into this, and even if they did, they were probably threatened not to. They can hide their tactics and the genius is if I complain and don’t take the responsibility fully, they will say I am blaming people and making excuses, all while hiding their tactics to fuck with people, but I wonder what t will take to get some traction, because people can’t say I haven’t been speaking out about this, and because as of this moment officially, my words don’t hold any weight of this moment, so you I can be brushed aside as a conspiracy nut who lives in his parents basement. So because of this constant feeling of this harassment taking place, whether its trolls or people in my life, I have this mistrust with every interaction.

My mind goes to such a dark place and envisions the worst happening. I don’t know if the negative thoughts are the devil creeping into my mind and getting me to hate people, or am I justified with the disdain I have for their disdain they have for me and still need me alive so they can benefit majority of the time and they just want to keep slowly being positive while putting out their jabs and still being secretive about the matters at hand. If they weren’t in on what is going on and being told to monitor me, maybe I wouldn’t care about their business and they can chalk it up to delusions grandeur and whatever other term they created to constantly discredit anyone who speaks out about the ways of this world behind the scenes. And by that I mean the real behind the scenes, not the one that is advertised on social media and in front of a camera in a public atmosphere. It will always bother me and there is more to it than “just move on with your life” but my PTSD from all of this will haunt me forever. I can’t make friends with anyone because of how much I will piss them off or vice versa, and how I will have compiled hatred for people. I can’t even talk to the closest people about this, and what makes it worse these people could have just sold me out for some extra perks and a better life. It shows my mental illness did not mean much if they can keep abusing it with their secret tactics, and then claim I am the one who is solely acting out like this, when I don’t have the resources these people do, and whatever license of misconduct they have access to, they can know whatever they want. They can compromise different people who I have interactions with.

See and knowing this it trickles down to my personal life. People will just tell me stop using the internet, when they know it isn’t possible, especially with how news circulates and having to know what is going on, they have ensured that people are obsessed with the internet, any gathering or any event in this world, me included, we are all on our phones. We can’t escape the internet, yet these same people want me off because I am speaking out about the corrupt ways these people act and fuck with my head. It has affected every part of my life. I don’t look forward to anything because I feel like I will always have a false reality presented to me, and it makes me wonder how this all operates and what is really going on.

These people want to be able to get away with it and then say they are there for me. It bugs me, and maybe they are, I can’t believe everything about them is evil, but we all have some darkness to us and I wonder how long do I let this slide and just keep taking it. Everything has been taken from me, my own friends, my associates etc and then secret associations that are supposed to be secret for some odd reason. It disturbs me and it will never ever go away. I am starting to see some therapist, but I can already tell my theories and thoughts will eventually be off putting, especially when I go on about I think I am being targeted by someone like Stern.

Even if this is vindicated I don’t think I can be the same. What they have put me through mentally is fucked up and maybe I am not tough enough mentally to be present in this world anymore. There has to be some value if someone who is a waste of space like me seemingly is still alive. You can keep encouraging me to do something and go places, but if I don’t get met half way with what is going on then this entire thing has been a waste of time. I know my value and I am sick of having to be humble about it, because when you are humble, they will continuously walk all over you and at some point you have to stand up and confront people who have partaken in fucking with your mind state.

It feels like anytime something cool happens, it feels like it was a derailment or some kind of distraction. It scares me because this is subtle revenge that takes place. I will never understand anyone’s motives. Maybe there are good motives overall, but there is something secretive about it and it just makes me wish I was not here and it makes me wish I could be anywhere but here. I never want to worry about this, and all of this suffering mentally and the amount of times I break down and explode on the internet all for one day be accepted and pass their test, it doesn’t seem like it is worth a damn. At least people I know get their perks for what they do, and that is great, so someone got use out of all these resources and perks I never got my hands on, because that would be entitled to expect some type of favor for being exploited on a prominent radio show, and because I called it out, I got punished even more for it. Now my existence is nothing and even if it is something they still have to pretend it is not, even if it involves shitting on me on reddit and spreading false rumors about me. if it were just people fucking around it would be one thing, but these people are specifically paid to fuck with me. it is fucked up, and it will never stop.

Even with upcoming events I am already nervous with how false the reality will be because something better already took place and then there will be the getting into the groove of having a good time, and then realizing something secretive is taking place afterwards and then when I get back into my personal spot I start to just recall every odd that I encountered wherever I was. There is a certain level of respect I am given, and I don’t know if that is genuine or a subtle way of telling me I am more important to the game then we can discuss, but seemingly this is just extremely narcissistic and egotistical, but to be on the top to some degree, you better have that because these people will use theirs at their disposal and fuck with people.

I also decided to write this half ass blog because I am also sick of being in my personal space and writing down my thoughts or jokes and structuring how my irrational opinions evolve into whatever it evolves into, they decide to fuck with me there as well. They will move my cursor and hack my social media, and not maliciously, but to send a message and display their presence in a way where, if I go out of my way to speak about it, you can add that to the list of fucked up shit I have been saying the past several years. So where can I fucking go with these thoughts? They will not stop until my mind completely deteriorates and I am nothing more than vegetable, and it is funny because I already resemble a potato but that isn’t good enough for them. I looked up if a potato is considered a vegetable and officially it is but at the same time not really. Botanically it is considered a vegetable even though nutritionally considered a starch food. So whatever, it doesn’t even matter.

This is the problem with these blogs, all throughout the night I am amped up and I am cutting wrestling like promos confronting people about what abuse they have given to me, and then I have myself hyped up to write it down and then it just disappears. It is like I have all this fire in my head, but when it comes time to write it down, it ends up becoming the same reading that I have posted the last several years with minor adjustments, like an IOS update. I don’t know that was kind of a weak reference too, I am too dumb to think of anything witty, so I go to the same well, and maybe that is what their mission was, to drain me of my creativity and wanting to even learn anything more because I am afraid of learning new things because stuff I learned prior will just escape me and I will not be able to retain everything I need to, and I forget portions of history from my life or just life in general, I will forget experiences I had, things I have watched and because this era is moving fast, it is really fucking with my head and it will never ever be the same. I don’t think I am meant for this era of technology. Send me back to the 90’s and let everyone I know have their good time and I can just be alone and I won’t bother anyone.

No one will ever fucking tell me the truth and it will disturb me more and more, because it feels like I am brought out for an agenda, maybe it is to make me feel less badly about myself and what lack of things I get to do while being reminded in my head of what potential cool things they will do.

Overall I think with whatever happens, and as much as I point it out it sucks that there is some false reality where they pretend they want me present, but at the same time they don’t want me around because they have other interesting things to do. It seems sketchy and the more I complain about it the more they will fuck with my life and will continue to do so while pretending to be nice to me. Right now this blog will piss off people, because I am explaining my mentality, and it is so hilarious for them for all of this stuff to take place at the worst time of the season for my mental health, but they don’t fucking care and none of them ever will. They present me this false hope or the illusion I am doing cool stuff, but they are happy behind the scenes that they are steps ahead of me and have done some of the coolest things on this planet while I was not present and still present it like they live ordinary lives, when they are in the new elite on some level. It is fucking scary how much they can manipulate me. It feels like there are backup plans for when I am not there present and when I am there, the limited plans are in effect while the others are doing more important things. It is disturbing that people pretend they want me there. No one will ever be honest.

So please I beg of the powers to be to just strike me down but it would be less fun because you need me around to smack around and it is even a lot more fun when you know that no one can look into this and help me out, unless its serving their agenda, so with that these people can keep doing what they are doing and tactfully fuck with my mental illness and see how much I will be triggered, because if I don’t get triggered, they will find new innovative ways to try it, and if I do get triggered, it just looks like I am the one who is just losing it and I am the one who needs help, not the organized assholes who are paid to harass people. It must be nice to have that privilege of hiding your mental illness behind a plethora of sock puppet accounts to torture people over the internet under the guise of “ joking around” and people who can’t take it are sensitive pussies, not you the people who are hiding behind your fake accounts while being afraid to speak to your spouse because they don’t love you and married you for convenience. The only power you have is hiding behind fake accounts to get your perks and acting like you worked hard for it, like it isn’t easy to fuck with mentally ill people online and make them think they are the ones who are the problems, when it is assholes like you fucking with their heads. Eventually the system that tells you to do it will sacrifice you for what you have done, and will cut their losses because they got subordinate types to do this kind of thing.

I really wish I was eligible for assisted suicide. It would be the best thing for everyone. It would be better for people in my life, because they wouldn’t have to hide their love and admiration for others while making me feel like shit and they can be open about whatever and whoever is associated. I confronted one person from my past about this recently and you can see his long message of deflecting and acting like it isn’t cool that I accused him, but anyone who shows up randomly on my face book live chats I can tell they are ones who have been harassing me and because they are cool with wrestlers in the industry, and at one point hinted at it and acted like he knew my family personally, when seemingly he only met them once, but then had a whole new excuse for it, and kept telling me to forget these trolls, no you want me to stop focusing on the trolling YOU guys are all doing, so you can get me off the net, and feel like you have won, you don’t want me to retort to say mean things back to you and you hate knowing that I am onto you people. That is what you hate. He is an undercover agent, who from college, was sent to fuck with me or inject themselves into my lie. It is really disturbing.

Now they have sent other people who pretend they are analyzing me and I don’t completely trust it to be honest. I feel like in my own house I am being recorded nonstop which makes me get creative and test it out by yelling about certain people, because even if they know I am aware of it being recorded, my harsh words still get at them and it makes them react even worse online and to get their revenge on me. It is disturbing that these could be people I know at the very least. Like your lives aren’t already great and amazing, but still you can’t handle that I run my mouth on my platforms to deal with my shit because people keep me out of commission, especially the last several years. So I will always wish death upon myself and I will always sense anger and jealousy towards me for something, even though they have attended all the concerts, hit up all the vacation spots, mingled with industry type, supplying written material for them secretly, getting to fuck industry escorts, and that is still not good enough, you still have to fuck with my life completely. Maybe doing it helps you get all those stuff, and maybe you hate me more because without me being alive, none of that stuff would be available. I am just taking a wild guess.

v

[ghostofatree]

Private Moments in the Depths of Dorset (sketchbook 11) had, aside from the designs for Upward Spiral, what I can only describe as a selection of terribly weird shit going on. Because it was not toward any particular project it was totally liberated to be whatever it was and I found that very creative. The first of these was a kind of Social Realist Policeman drawn in response to Heather’s blinding insight at a very early age. It is even more true these days. (From the mouths of babes...) An avenging angel in the same pose is next, a real policeman leaking, a topless queer punk rioter having fun in chaos, a large hardboard painting of the Aztec Callander I had done toward O level work during a stint at the Crawford Arts Centre, a fat naked lad with an inexplicable aura, the back of Steve Marley’s neck as I imagined it in my sketchbook, two opposite pages to prove a heterophobic world view with a picture of unseemly intimacy in public opposite a picture of the lovely Stephen Twigg ruining Michael Portillo’s night and career on the feast day of Things Can Only Get Better. To be fair this binary opposition was without my admittance that dreadful Portillo was also gay -(which was unforgivable to be gay and a Tory minister as part of the government of Clause 28). Apologies to any of you who may be struggling with heterosexuality. It must be difficult and I have more compassion these days. The last of these is of a genuinely horrendous thing about the most nightmarish fatal accident imaginable. I saw it in a newspaper and it scarred me so much I had to put it in the book just to prove it was real. #sketchbook #journaling #archive #nostalgia #memories #labourlandslide #90s #queerartist #injustice #heterophobia #liverpoolartist # (at Toxteth, L8) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8cJDSVAlyo/?igshid=hixt5glu65lf

[blackkudos]

Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death over a career spanning more than six decades.

Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. In the 1930s, his orchestra toured in Europe. Although widely considered to have been a pivotal figure in the history of jazz, Ellington embraced the phrase "beyond category" as a liberating principle and referred to his music as part of the more general category of American Music rather than to a musical genre such as jazz.

Some of the jazz musicians who were members of Ellington's orchestra, such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, are considered to be among the best players in the idiom. Ellington melded them into the best-known orchestral unit in the history of jazz. Some members stayed with the orchestra for several decades. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, with many of his pieces having become standards. Ellington also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, for example Juan Tizol's "Caravan", and "Perdido", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. In the early 1940s, Ellington began a nearly thirty-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed many extended compositions, or suites, as well as additional short pieces. Following an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, in July 1956, Ellington and his orchestra enjoyed a major revival and embarked on world tours. Ellington recorded for most American record companies of his era, performed in several films, scored several, and composed a handful of stage musicals.

Ellington was noted for his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and for his eloquence and charisma. His reputation continued to rise after he died, and he was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize Special Award for music in 1999.

Early life and education

Ellington was born on April 29, 1899, to James Edward Ellington and Daisy (Kennedy) Ellington in Washington, D.C. Both his parents were pianists. Daisy primarily played parlor songs, and James preferred operatic arias. They lived with Daisy's parents at 2129 Ida Place (now Ward Place), NW, in D.C.'s West End neighborhood. Duke's father was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, on April 15, 1879, and moved to D.C. in 1886 with his parents. Daisy Kennedy was born in Washington, D.C., on January 4, 1879, the daughter of a former American slave. James Ellington made blueprints for the United States Navy.

When Edward Ellington was a child, his family showed racial pride and support in their home, as did many other families. African Americans in D.C. worked to protect their children from the era's Jim Crow laws.

At age seven, Ellington began taking piano lessons from Marietta Clinkscales. Daisy surrounded her son with dignified women to reinforce his manners and teach him elegance. His childhood friends noticed that his casual, offhand manner and dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman, so they began calling him "Duke". Ellington credited his friend Edgar McEntree for the nickname. "I think he felt that in order for me to be eligible for his constant companionship, I should have a title. So he called me Duke."

Though Ellington took piano lessons, he was more interested in baseball. "President Roosevelt (Teddy) would come by on his horse sometimes, and stop and watch us play", he recalled. Ellington went to Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D.C. His first job was selling peanuts at Washington Senators baseball games.

Ellington started sneaking into Frank Holiday's Poolroom at age fourteen. Hearing the music of the poolroom pianists ignited Ellington's love for the instrument, and he began to take his piano studies seriously. Among the many piano players he listened to were Doc Perry, Lester Dishman, Louis Brown, Turner Layton, Gertie Wells, Clarence Bowser, Sticky Mack, Blind Johnny, Cliff Jackson, Claude Hopkins, Phil Wurd, Caroline Thornton, Luckey Roberts, Eubie Blake, Joe Rochester, and Harvey Brooks.

In the summer of 1914, while working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Café, Ellington wrote his first composition, "Soda Fountain Rag" (also known as the "Poodle Dog Rag"). He created the piece by ear, as he had not yet learned to read and write music. "I would play the 'Soda Fountain Rag' as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango, and fox trot", Ellington recalled. "Listeners never knew it was the same piece. I was established as having my own repertoire." In his autobiography, Music is my Mistress (1973), Ellington wrote that he missed more lessons than he attended, feeling at the time that playing the piano was not his talent.

Ellington continued listening to, watching, and imitating ragtime pianists, not only in Washington, D.C., but in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, where he vacationed with his mother during the summer. He would sometimes hear strange music played by those who could not afford much sheet music, so for variations, they played the sheets upside down. Henry Lee Grant, a Dunbar High School music teacher, gave him private lessons in harmony. With the additional guidance of Washington pianist and band leader Oliver "Doc" Perry, Ellington learned to read sheet music, project a professional style, and improve his technique. Ellington was also inspired by his first encounters with stride pianists James P. Johnson and Luckey Roberts. Later in New York he took advice from Will Marion Cook, Fats Waller, and Sidney Bechet. Ellington started to play gigs in cafés and clubs in and around Washington, D.C. His attachment to music was so strong that in 1916 he turned down an art scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Three months before graduating he dropped out of Armstrong Manual Training School, where he was studying commercial art.

Career

Early career

Working as a freelance sign-painter from 1917, Ellington began assembling groups to play for dances. In 1919 he met drummer Sonny Greer from New Jersey, who encouraged Ellington's ambition to become a professional musician. Ellington built his music business through his day job: when a customer asked him to make a sign for a dance or party, he would ask if they had musical entertainment; if not, Ellington would offer to play for the occasion. He also had a messenger job with the U.S. Navy and State departments, where he made a wide range of contacts.

Ellington moved out of his parents' home and bought his own as he became a successful pianist. At first, he played in other ensembles, and in late 1917 formed his first group, "The Duke's Serenaders" ("Colored Syncopators", his telephone directory advertising proclaimed). He was also the group's booking agent. His first play date was at the True Reformer's Hall, where he took home 75 cents.

Ellington played throughout the D.C. area and into Virginia for private society balls and embassy parties. The band included childhood friend Otto Hardwick, who began playing the string bass, then moved to C-melody sax and finally settled on alto saxophone; Arthur Whetsol on trumpet; Elmer Snowden on banjo; and Sonny Greer on drums. The band thrived, performing for both African-American and white audiences, a rarity in the segregated society of the day.

When his drummer Sonny Greer was invited to join the Wilber Sweatman Orchestra in New York City, Ellington left his successful career in D.C. and moved to Harlem, ultimately becoming part of the Harlem Renaissance. New dance crazes such as the Charleston emerged in Harlem, as well as African-American musical theater, including Eubie Blake's Shuffle Along. After the young musicians left the Sweatman Orchestra to strike out on their own, they found an emerging jazz scene that was highly competitive with difficult inroad. They hustled pool by day and played whatever gigs they could find. The young band met stride pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith, who introduced them to the scene and gave them some money. They played at rent-house parties for income. After a few months, the young musicians returned to Washington, D.C., feeling discouraged.

In June 1923, a gig in Atlantic City, New Jersey, another at the prestigious Exclusive Club in Harlem. This was followed in September 1923 by a move to the Hollywood Club (at 49th and Broadway) and a four-year engagement, which gave Ellington a solid artistic base. He was known to play the bugle at the end of each performance. The group was initially called Elmer Snowden and his Black Sox Orchestra and had seven members, including trumpeter James "Bubber" Miley. They renamed themselves The Washingtonians. Snowden left the group in early 1924 and Ellington took over as bandleader. After a fire, the club was re-opened as the Club Kentucky (often referred to as the Kentucky Club).

Ellington then made eight records in 1924, receiving composing credit on three including "Choo Choo". In 1925, Ellington contributed four songs to Chocolate Kiddies starring Lottie Gee and Adelaide Hall, an all-African-American revue which introduced European audiences to African-American styles and performers. Duke Ellington and his Kentucky Club Orchestra grew to a group of ten players; they developed their own sound by displaying the non-traditional expression of Ellington's arrangements, the street rhythms of Harlem, and the exotic-sounding trombone growls and wah-wahs, high-squealing trumpets, and saxophone blues licks of the band members. For a short time, soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet played with them, imparting his propulsive swing and superior musicianship to the young band members.

Cotton Club engagement

In October 1926, Ellington made an agreement with agent-publisher Irving Mills, giving Mills a 45% interest in Ellington's future. Mills had an eye for new talent and published compositions by Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Fields, and Harold Arlen early in their careers. After recording a handful of acoustic titles during 1924–26, Ellington's signing with Mills allowed him to record prolifically, although sometimes he recorded different versions of the same tune. Mills often took a co-composer credit. From the beginning of their relationship, Mills arranged recording sessions on nearly every label including Brunswick, Victor, Columbia, OKeh, Pathê (and its Perfect label), the ARC/Plaza group of labels (Oriole, Domino, Jewel, Banner) and their dime-store labels (Cameo, Lincoln, Romeo), Hit of the Week, and Columbia's cheaper labels (Harmony, Diva, Velvet Tone, Clarion) labels which gave Ellington popular recognition. On OKeh, his records were usually issued as The Harlem Footwarmers, while the Brunswick's were usually issued as The Jungle Band. Whoopee Makers and the Ten Black Berries were other pseudonyms.

In September 1927, King Oliver turned down a regular booking for his group as the house band at Harlem's Cotton Club; the offer passed to Ellington after Jimmy McHugh suggested him and Mills arranged an audition. Ellington had to increase from a six to eleven-piece group to meet the requirements of the Cotton Club's management for the audition, and the engagement finally began on December 4. With a weekly radio broadcast, the Cotton Club's exclusively white and wealthy clientele poured in nightly to see them. At the Cotton Club, Ellington's group performed all the music for the revues, which mixed comedy, dance numbers, vaudeville, burlesque, music, and illicit alcohol. The musical numbers were composed by Jimmy McHugh and the lyrics by Dorothy Fields (later Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler), with some Ellington originals mixed in. (Here he moved in with a dancer, his second wife Mildred Dixon). Weekly radio broadcasts from the club gave Ellington national exposure, while Ellington also recorded Fields-JMcHugh and Fats Waller–Andy Razaf songs.

Although trumpeter Bubber Miley was a member of the orchestra for only a short period, he had a major influence on Ellington's sound. As an early exponent of growl trumpet, Miley changed the sweet dance band sound of the group to one that was hotter, which contemporaries termed Jungle Style. In October 1927, Ellington and his Orchestra recorded several compositions with Adelaide Hall. One side in particular, "Creole Love Call", became a worldwide sensation and gave both Ellington and Hall their first hit record. Miley had composed most of "Creole Love Call" and "Black and Tan Fantasy". An alcoholic, Miley had to leave the band before they gained wider fame. He died in 1932 at the age of 29, but he was an important influence on Cootie Williams, who replaced him.

In 1929, the Cotton Club Orchestra appeared on stage for several months in Florenz Ziegfeld's Show Girl, along with vaudeville stars Jimmy Durante, Eddie Foy, Jr., Ruby Keeler, and with music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Gus Kahn. Will Vodery, Ziegfeld's musical supervisor, recommended Ellington for the show, and, according to John Hasse's Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, "Perhaps during the run of Show Girl, Ellington received what he later termed 'valuable lessons in orchestration’ from Will Vodery.” In his 1946 biography, Duke Ellington, Barry Ulanov wrote:

From Vodery, as he (Ellington) says himself, he drew his chromatic convictions, his uses of the tones ordinarily extraneous to the diatonic scale, with the consequent alteration of the harmonic character of his music, its broadening, The deepening of his resources. It has become customary to ascribe the classical influences upon Duke – Delius, Debussy and Ravel – to direct contact with their music. Actually his serious appreciation of those and other modern composers, came after his meeting with Vodery.

Ellington's film work began with Black and Tan (1929), a 19-minute all-African-American RKO short in which he played the hero "Duke". He also appeared in the Amos 'n' Andy film Check and Double Check, released in 1930. That year, Ellington and his Orchestra connected with a whole different audience in a concert with Maurice Chevalier and they also performed at the Roseland Ballroom, "America's foremost ballroom". Australian-born composer Percy Grainger was an early admirer and supporter. He wrote "The three greatest composers who ever lived are Bach, Delius and Duke Ellington. Unfortunately Bach is dead, Delius is very ill but we are happy to have with us today The Duke". Ellington's first period at the Cotton Club concluded in 1931.

The early 1930s

Ellington led the orchestra by conducting from the keyboard using piano cues and visual gestures; very rarely did he conduct using a baton. By 1932 his orchestra consisted of six brass instruments, four reeds, and a four-man rhythm section. As a bandleader, Ellington was not a strict disciplinarian; he maintained control of his orchestra with a combination of charm, humor, flattery and astute psychology. A complex, private person, he revealed his feelings to only his closest intimates and effectively used his public persona to deflect attention away from himself.

Ellington signed exclusively to Brunswick in 1932 and stayed with them through late 1936 (albeit with a short-lived 1933–34 switch to Victor when Irving Mills temporarily moved him and his other acts from Brunswick).

As the Depression worsened, the recording industry was in crisis, dropping over 90% of its artists by 1933. Ivie Anderson was hired as the Ellington Orchestra's featured vocalist in 1931. She is the vocalist on "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" (1932) among other recordings. Sonny Greer had been providing occasional vocals and continued to do in a cross-talk feature with Anderson. Radio exposure helped maintain Ellington's public profile as his orchestra began to tour. The other records of this era include: "Mood Indigo" (1930), "Sophisticated Lady" (1933), "Solitude" (1934), and "In a Sentimental Mood" (1935)

While the band's United States audience remained mainly African-American in this period, the Ellington orchestra had a significant following overseas, exemplified by the success of their trip to England and Scotland in 1933 and their 1934 visit to the European mainland. The British visit saw Ellington win praise from members of the serious music community, including composer Constant Lambert, which gave a boost to Ellington's interest in composing longer works.

Those longer pieces had already begun to appear. He had composed and recorded "Creole Rhapsody" as early as 1931 (issued as both sides of a 12" record for Victor and both sides of a 10" record for Brunswick), and a tribute to his mother, "Reminiscing in Tempo", took four 10" record sides to record in 1935 after her death in that year. Symphony in Black (also 1935), a short film, featured his extended piece 'A Rhapsody of Negro Life'. It introduced Billie Holiday, and won an Academy Award as the best musical short subject. Ellington and his Orchestra also appeared in the features Murder at the Vanities and Belle of the Nineties (both 1934).

For agent Mills the attention was a publicity triumph, as Ellington was now internationally known. On the band's tour through the segregated South in 1934, they avoided some of the traveling difficulties of African-Americans by touring in private railcars. These provided easy accommodations, dining, and storage for equipment while avoiding the indignities of segregated facilities.

Competition was intensifying, though, as swing bands like Benny Goodman's began to receive popular attention. Swing dancing became a youth phenomenon, particularly with white college audiences, and danceability drove record sales and bookings. Jukeboxes proliferated nationwide, spreading the gospel of swing. Ellington's band could certainly swing, but their strengths were mood, nuance, and richness of composition, hence his statement "jazz is music, swing is business".

The later 1930s

From 1936, Ellington began to make recordings with smaller groups (sextets, octets, and nonets) drawn from his then-15-man orchestra and he composed pieces intended to feature a specific instrumentalist, as with "Jeep's Blues" for Johnny Hodges, "Yearning for Love" for Lawrence Brown, "Trumpet in Spades" for Rex Stewart, "Echoes of Harlem" for Cootie Williams and "Clarinet Lament" for Barney Bigard. In 1937, Ellington returned to the Cotton Club, which had relocated to the mid-town Theater District. In the summer of that year, his father died, and due to many expenses, Ellington's finances were tight, although his situation improved the following year.

After leaving agent Irving Mills, he signed on with the William Morris Agency. Mills though continued to record Ellington. After only a year, his Master and Variety labels (the small groups had recorded for the latter), collapsed in late 1937, Mills placed Ellington back on Brunswick and those small group units on Vocalion through to 1940. Well known sides continued to be recorded, "Caravan" in 1937, and "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart" the following year.

Billy Strayhorn, originally hired as a lyricist, began his association with Ellington in 1939. Nicknamed "Swee' Pea" for his mild manner, Strayhorn soon became a vital member of the Ellington organization. Ellington showed great fondness for Strayhorn and never failed to speak glowingly of the man and their collaborative working relationship, "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine". Strayhorn, with his training in classical music, not only contributed his original lyrics and music, but also arranged and polished many of Ellington's works, becoming a second Ellington or "Duke's doppelganger". It was not uncommon for Strayhorn to fill in for Duke, whether in conducting or rehearsing the band, playing the piano, on stage, and in the recording studio. The 1930s ended with a very successful European tour just as World War II loomed in Europe.

Ellington in the early to mid-1940s

Some of the musicians who joined Ellington at this time created a sensation in their own right. The short-lived Jimmy Blanton transformed the use of double bass in jazz, allowing it to function as a solo/melodic instrument rather than a rhythm instrument alone. Terminal illness forced him to leave by late 1941 after only about two years. Ben Webster, the Orchestra's first regular tenor saxophonist, whose main tenure with Ellington spanned 1939 to 1943, started a rivalry with Johnny Hodges as the Orchestra's foremost voice in the sax section.

Trumpeter Ray Nance joined, replacing Cootie Williams who had defected to Benny Goodman. Additionally, Nance added violin to the instrumental colors Ellington had at his disposal. Recordings exist of Nance's first concert date on November 7, 1940, at Fargo, North Dakota. Privately made by Jack Towers and Dick Burris, these recordings were first legitimately issued in 1978 as Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940 Live; they are among the earliest of innumerable live performances which survive. Nance was also an occasional vocalist, although Herb Jeffries was the main male vocalist in this era (until 1943) while Al Hibbler (who replaced Jeffries in 1943) continued until 1951. Ivie Anderson left in 1942 for health reasons after eleven years: the longest term of any of Ellington's vocalists.

Once again recording for Victor (from 1940), with the small groups recording for their Bluebird label, three-minute masterpieces on 78 rpm record sides continued to flow from Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Ellington's son Mercer Ellington, and members of the Orchestra. "Cotton Tail", "Main Stem", "Harlem Air Shaft", "Jack the Bear", and dozens of others date from this period. Strayhorn's "Take the "A" Train" a hit in 1941, became the band's theme, replacing "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo". Ellington and his associates wrote for an orchestra of distinctive voices who displayed tremendous creativity. Mary Lou Williams, working as a staff arranger, would briefly join Ellington a few years later.

Ellington's long-term aim though was to extend the jazz form from that three-minute limit, of which he was an acknowledged master. While he had composed and recorded some extended pieces before, such works now became a regular feature of Ellington's output. In this, he was helped by Strayhorn, who had enjoyed a more thorough training in the forms associated with classical music than Ellington. The first of these, Black, Brown and Beige (1943), was dedicated to telling the story of African-Americans, and the place of slavery and the church in their history. Black, Brown and Beige debuted at Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1943, beginning an annual series of Ellington concerts at the venue over the next four years. While some jazz musicians had played at Carnegie Hall before, none had performed anything as elaborate as Ellington's work. Unfortunately, starting a regular pattern, Ellington's longer works were generally not well received.

A partial exception was Jump for Joy, a full-length musical based on themes of African-American identity, debuted on July 10, 1941, at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles. Hollywood luminaries such as actors John Garfield and Mickey Rooney invested in the production, and Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles offered to direct. At one performance though, Garfield insisted Herb Jeffries, who was light-skinned, should wear make-up. Ellington objected in the interval, and compared Jeffries to Al Jolson. The change was reverted, and the singer later commented that the audience must have thought he was an entirely different character in the second half of the show.

Although it had sold-out performances, and received positive reviews, it ran for only 122 performances until September 29, 1941, with a brief revival in November of that year. Its subject matter did not make it appealing to Broadway; Ellington had unfulfilled plans to take it there. Despite this disappointment, a Broadway production of Ellington's Beggar's Holiday, his sole book musical, premiered on December 23, 1946. under the direction of Nicholas Ray.

The settlement of the first recording ban of 1942–43, leading to an increase in royalties paid to musicians, had a serious effect on the financial viability of the big bands, including Ellington's Orchestra. His income as a songwriter ultimately subsidized it. Although he always spent lavishly and drew a respectable income from the Orchestra's operations, the band's income often just covered expenses.

Early post-war years

Musicians enlisting in the military and travel restrictions made touring difficult for the big bands and dancing became subject to a new tax, which continued for many years, affecting the choices of club owners. By the time World War II ended, the focus of popular music was shifting towards singing crooners such as Frank Sinatra and Jo Stafford. As the cost of hiring big bands had increased, club owners now found smaller jazz groups more cost-effective. Some of Ellington's new works, such as the wordless vocal feature "Transblucency" (1946) with Kay Davis, was not going to have a similar reach as the newly emerging stars.

Ellington continued on his own course through these tectonic shifts. While Count Basie was forced to disband his whole ensemble and work as an octet for a time, Ellington was able to tour most of Western Europe between April 6 and June 30, 1950, with the orchestra playing 74 dates over 77 days. During the tour, according to Sonny Greer, the newer works were not performed, though Ellington's extended composition, Harlem (1950) was in the process of being completed at this time. Ellington later presented its score to music-loving President Harry Truman. Also during his time in Europe, Ellington would compose the music for a stage production by Orson Welles. Titled Time Runs in Paris and An Evening With Orson Welles in Frankfurt, the variety show also featured a newly discovered Eartha Kitt, who performed Ellington's original song "Hungry Little Trouble" as Helen of Troy.

In 1951, Ellington suffered a significant loss of personnel: Sonny Greer, Lawrence Brown and, most importantly, Johnny Hodges left to pursue other ventures, although only Greer was a permanent departee. Drummer Louie Bellson replaced Greer, and his "Skin Deep" was a hit for Ellington. Tenor player Paul Gonsalves had joined in December 1950 after periods with Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie and stayed for the rest of his life, while Clark Terry joined in November 1951.

During the early 1950s, Ellington's career was at a low point with his style being generally seen as outmoded, but his reputation did not suffer as badly as some artists. André Previn said in 1952: "You know, Stan Kenton can stand in front of a thousand fiddles and a thousand brass and make a dramatic gesture and every studio arranger can nod his head and say, Oh, yes, that's done like this. But Duke merely lifts his finger, three horns make a sound, and I don’t know what it is!" However, by 1955, after three years of recording for Capitol, Ellington lacked a regular recording affiliation.

Career revival

Ellington's appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, 1956 returned him to wider prominence and introduced him to a new generation of fans. The feature "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" comprised two tunes that had been in the band's book since 1937 but largely forgotten until Ellington, who had abruptly ended the band's scheduled set because of the late arrival of four key players, called the two tunes as the time was approaching midnight. Announcing that the two pieces would be separated by an interlude played by tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, Ellington proceeded to lead the band through the two pieces, with Gonsalves' 27-chorus marathon solo whipping the crowd into a frenzy, leading the Maestro to play way beyond the curfew time despite urgent pleas from festival organizer George Wein to bring the program to an end.

The concert made international headlines, led to one of only five Time magazine cover stories dedicated to a jazz musician, and resulted in an album produced by George Avakian that would become the best-selling LP of Ellington's career. Much of the music on the vinyl LP was, in effect, simulated, with only about 40% actually from the concert itself. According to Avakian, Ellington was dissatisfied with aspects of the performance and felt the musicians had been under rehearsed. The band assembled the next day to re-record several of the numbers with the addition of artificial crowd noise, none of which was disclosed to purchasers of the album. Not until 1999 was the concert recording properly released for the first time. The revived attention brought about by the Newport appearance should not have surprised anyone, Johnny Hodges had returned the previous year, and Ellington's collaboration with Strayhorn had been renewed around the same time, under terms more amenable to the younger man.

The original Ellington at Newport album was the first release in a new recording contract with Columbia Records which yielded several years of recording stability, mainly under producer Irving Townsend, who coaxed both commercial and artistic productions from Ellington.

In 1957, CBS (Columbia Records' parent corporation) aired a live television production of A Drum Is a Woman, an allegorical suite which received mixed reviews. His hope that television would provide a significant new outlet for his type of jazz was not fulfilled. Tastes and trends had moved on without him. Festival appearances at the new Monterey Jazz Festival and elsewhere provided venues for live exposure, and a European tour in 1958 was well received. Such Sweet Thunder (1957), based on Shakespeare's plays and characters, and The Queen's Suite (1958), dedicated to Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, were products of the renewed impetus which the Newport appearance helped to create, although the latter work was not commercially issued at the time. The late 1950s also saw Ella Fitzgerald record her Duke Ellington Songbook (Verve) with Ellington and his orchestra—a recognition that Ellington's songs had now become part of the cultural canon known as the 'Great American Songbook'.

Around this time Ellington and Strayhorn began to work on film soundtrack scoring. The first of these was Anatomy of a Murder (1959), a courtroom drama directed by Otto Preminger and featuring James Stewart, in which Ellington appeared fronting a roadhouse combo. This was followed by Paris Blues (1961), which featured Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier as jazz musicians. In 2009 Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker wrote that Ellington and Strayhorn's work in Anatomy of a Murder , is "indispensable, [although] . . . too sketchy to rank in the top echelon among Ellington-Strayhorn masterpiece suites like Such Sweet Thunder and The Far East Suite, but its most inspired moments are their equal."

Film historians have recognized the soundtrack "as a landmark – the first significant Hollywood film music by African Americans comprising non-diegetic music, that is, music whose source is not visible or implied by action in the film, like an on-screen band." The score avoided the cultural stereotypes which previously characterized jazz scores and rejected a strict adherence to visuals in ways that presaged the New Wave cinema of the '60s". Ellington and Strayhorn, always looking for new musical territory, produced suites for John Steinbeck's novel Sweet Thursday, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt.

In the early 1960s, Ellington embraced recording with artists who had been friendly rivals in the past, or were younger musicians who focused on later styles. The Ellington and Count Basie orchestras recorded together with the album First Time! The Count Meets the Duke (1961). During a period when Ellington was between recording contracts, he made records with Louis Armstrong (Roulette), Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane (both for Impulse) and participated in a session with Charles Mingus and Max Roach which produced the Money Jungle (United Artists) album. He signed to Frank Sinatra's new Reprise label, but the association with the label was short-lived.

Musicians who had previously worked with Ellington returned to the Orchestra as members: Lawrence Brown in 1960 and Cootie Williams in 1962.

The writing and playing of music is a matter of intent.... You can't just throw a paint brush against the wall and call whatever happens art. My music fits the tonal personality of the player. I think too strongly in terms of altering my music to fit the performer to be impressed by accidental music. You can't take doodling seriously.

He was now performing all over the world; a significant part of each year was spent on overseas tours. As a consequence, he formed new working relationships with artists from around the world, including the Swedish vocalist Alice Babs, and the South African musicians Dollar Brand and Sathima Bea Benjamin (A Morning in Paris, 1963/1997).

Ellington wrote an original score for director Michael Langham's production of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada which opened on July 29, 1963. Langham has used it for several subsequent productions, including a much later adaptation by Stanley Silverman which expands the score with some of Ellington's best-known works.

Last years

Ellington was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1965 but no prize was ultimately awarded that year. Then 66 years old, he joked: "Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be famous too young." In 1999 he was posthumously awarded a special Pulitzer Prize "commemorating the centennial year of his birth, in recognition of his musical genius, which evoked aesthetically the principles of democracy through the medium of jazz and thus made an indelible contribution to art and culture."

In September 1965, he premiered the first of his Sacred Concerts. He created a jazz Christian liturgy. Although the work received mixed reviews, Ellington was proud of the composition and performed it dozens of times. This concert was followed by two others of the same type in 1968 and 1973, known as the Second and Third Sacred Concerts. These generated controversy in what was already a tumultuous time in the United States. Many saw the Sacred Music suites as an attempt to reinforce commercial support for organized religion, though Ellington simply said it was "the most important thing I've done". The Steinway piano upon which the Sacred Concerts were composed is part of the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Like Haydn and Mozart, Ellington conducted his orchestra from the piano – he always played the keyboard parts when the Sacred Concerts were performed.

Duke turned 65 in the spring of 1964 but showed no signs of slowing down as he continued to make vital and innovative recordings, including The Far East Suite (1966), New Orleans Suite (1970), Latin American Suite (1972) and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971), much of it inspired by his world tours. It was during this time that he recorded his only album with Frank Sinatra, entitled Francis A. & Edward K. (1967).

Ellington performed what is considered his final full concert in a ballroom at Northern Illinois University on March 20, 1974.

The last three shows Ellington and his orchestra performed were one on March 21, 1973 at Purdue University's Hall of Music and two on March 22, 1973 at the Sturges-Young Auditorium in Sturgis, Michigan.

Personal life

Ellington married his high school sweetheart, Edna Thompson (d. 1967), on July 2, 1918, when he was 19. The next spring, on March 11, 1919, Edna gave birth to their only son, Mercer Kennedy Ellington.

Ellington was joined in New York City by his wife and son in the late twenties, but the couple soon permanently separated. According to her obituary in Jet magazine, she was "homesick for Washington" and returned. In 1929, Ellington became the companion of Mildred Dixon, who traveled with him, managed Tempo Music, inspired songs at the peak of his career, and raised his son.

In 1938 he left his family (his son was 19) and moved in with Beatrice "Evie" Ellis, a Cotton Club employee. Their relationship, though stormy, continued after Ellington met and formed a relationship with Fernanda de Castro Monte in the early 1960s. Ellington supported both women for the rest of his life.

Ellington's sister Ruth (1915–2004) later ran Tempo Music, his music publishing company. Ruth's second husband was the bass-baritone McHenry Boatwright, whom she met when he sang at her brother's funeral. As an adult, son Mercer Ellington (d. 1996) played trumpet and piano, led his own band, and worked as his father's business manager.

Ellington was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha and was a freemason associated with Prince Hall Freemasonry.

Death

Ellington died on May 24, 1974, of complications from lung cancer and pneumonia, a few weeks after his 75th birthday. At his funeral, attended by over 12,000 people at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Ella Fitzgerald summed up the occasion: "It's a very sad day. A genius has passed."

He was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx, New York City.

Legacy

Memorials

Numerous memorials have been dedicated to Duke Ellington, in cities from New York and Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles. Ellington is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City.

In Ellington's birthplace, Washington, D.C., the Duke Ellington School of the Arts educates talented students, who are considering careers in the arts, by providing intensive arts instruction and strong academic programs that prepare students for post-secondary education and professional careers. Originally built in 1935, the Calvert Street Bridge was renamed the Duke Ellington Bridge in 1974. Another school is P.S. 004 Duke Ellington in New York.

In 1989, a bronze plaque was attached to the newly named Duke Ellington Building at 2121 Ward Place, NW. In 2012, the new owner of the building commissioned a mural by Aniekan Udofia that appears above the lettering "Duke Ellington". In 2010 the triangular park, across the street from Duke Ellington's birth site, at the intersection of New Hampshire and M Streets, NW was named the Duke Ellington Park.

Ellington's residence at 2728 Sherman Avenue, NW, during the years 1919–1922, is marked by a bronze plaque.

On February 24, 2009, the United States Mint issued a coin with Duke Ellington on it, making him the first African American to appear by himself on a circulating U.S. coin. Ellington appears on the reverse (tails) side of the District of Columbia quarter. The coin is part of the U.S. Mint's program honoring the District and the U.S. territories and celebrates Ellington's birthplace in the District of Columbia. Ellington is depicted on the quarter seated at a piano, sheet music in hand, along with the inscription "Justice for All", which is the District's motto.

In 1986 a United States commemorative stamp was issued featuring Ellington's likeness.

Ellington lived for years in a townhouse on the corner of Manhattan's Riverside Drive and West 106th Street. After his death, West 106th Street was officially renamed Duke Ellington Boulevard. A large memorial to Ellington, created by sculptor Robert Graham, was dedicated in 1997 in New York's Central Park, near Fifth Avenue and 110th Street, an intersection named Duke Ellington Circle.

A statue of Ellington at a piano is featured at the entrance to UCLA's Schoenberg Hall. According to UCLA magazine:

When UCLA students were entranced by Duke Ellington's provocative tunes at a Culver City club in 1937, they asked the budding musical great to play a free concert in Royce Hall. 'I've been waiting for someone to ask us!' Ellington exclaimed.On the day of the concert, Ellington accidentally mixed up the venues and drove to USC instead. He eventually arrived at the UCLA campus and, to apologize for his tardiness, played to the packed crowd for more than four hours. And so, "Sir Duke" and his group played the first-ever jazz performance in a concert venue.

The Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival is a nationally renowned annual competition for prestigious high school bands. Started in 1996 at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the festival is named after Ellington because of the large focus that the festival places on his works.

Tributes

After Duke died, his son Mercer took over leadership of the orchestra, continuing until his own death in 1996. Like the Count Basie Orchestra, this "ghost band" continued to release albums for many years. Digital Duke, credited to The Duke Ellington Orchestra, won the 1988 Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. Mercer Ellington had been handling all administrative aspects of his father's business for several decades. Mercer's children continue a connection with their grandfather's work.

Gunther Schuller wrote in 1989:

Ellington composed incessantly to the very last days of his life. Music was indeed his mistress; it was his total life and his commitment to it was incomparable and unalterable. In jazz he was a giant among giants. And in twentieth century music, he may yet one day be recognized as one of the half-dozen greatest masters of our time.

Martin Williams said: "Duke Ellington lived long enough to hear himself named among our best composers. And since his death in 1974, it has become not at all uncommon to see him named, along with Charles Ives, as the greatest composer we have produced, regardless of category."

In the opinion of Bob Blumenthal of The Boston Globe in 1999: "[i]n the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington."

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Duke Ellington on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

His compositions have been revisited by artists and musicians around the world both as a source of inspiration and a bedrock of their own performing careers.

Dave Brubeck dedicated "The Duke" (1954) to Ellington and it became a standard covered by others, including by Miles Davis on Miles Ahead, 1957. The album The Real Ambassadors has a vocal version of this piece, "You Swing Baby (The Duke)", with lyrics by Iola Brubeck, Dave Brubeck's wife. It is performed as a duet between Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae. It is also dedicated to Duke Ellington.

Miles Davis created his half-hour dirge "He Loved Him Madly" (on Get Up with It) as a tribute to Ellington one month after his death.

Charles Mingus, who had been fired by Ellington decades earlier, wrote the elegy "Duke Ellington's Sound Of Love" in 1974, a few months after Ellington's death.

Stevie Wonder wrote the song "Sir Duke" as a tribute to Ellington which appeared on his album Songs in the Key of Life released in 1976.

There are hundreds of albums dedicated to the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn by artists famous and obscure. Sophisticated Ladies, an award-winning 1981 musical revue, incorporated many tunes from Ellington's repertoire. A second Broadway musical interpolating Ellington's music, Play On!, debuted in 1997.

Loss of material

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Duke Ellington among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

Discography

Awards and honors

1960, Hollywood Walk of Fame, contribution to recording industry

1966, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

1969, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the US

1971, an Honorary PhD from the Berklee College of Music

1973, the Legion of Honor by France, its highest civilian honors.

1999, posthumous Special Pulitzer Prize for his lifetime contributions to music and culture

Grammy Awards

Ellington earned 14 Grammy awards from 1959 to 2000, three of which were posthumous and a total of 24 nominations

Grammy Hall of Fame

Recordings of Duke Ellington were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and that have qualitative or historical significance.

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A new story about celebrities using their fame for some nightmarish purpose comes up, oh, every month or so. In times like these, it's good to remind ourselves that humans don't automatically use their fame and fortune to diabolical ends, so let's cheer ourselves up with a few positive examples, shall we?

#5. Colin Farrell Befriends, Saves A Homeless Man

When Colin Farrell was in Toronto filming A Home At The End Of The World, which we haven't watched but did read the Wikipedia plot summary so we can fake it if we ever meet him, he spotted a homeless man smoking outside a restaurant. Naturally, Farrell decided to bum a cigarette. They chatted for a bit, although the man had no idea who Farrell was because homeless shelters tend to have shitty DVD collections.

Not that it mattered -- Farrell's handsome enough that you'd take up smoking just to have the honor of bumming him one.

The man, who went by the bizarre but kind-of-cool name of Stress, began opening up about his struggles with depression and alcoholism. When they were done, Farrell promised to stay in touch, a promise that we assumed sounded about as empty as our promise to have coffee with the old elementary school friend we ran into at the mall.

However, a few days later, a local radio station was offering listeners $2,000 if they could bring Farrell to them for an interview (and presumably not under duress). When Farrell heard about the offer, he started scouring the streets in his limousine until he found Stress. Stress might have been under the reasonable impression that this rich man was going to hunt him for sport, but instead Farrell took him to the radio station under the guise that Stress had actually convinced him to come. Stress was $2,000 richer, and when Farrell again promised to stay in touch, it now sounded pretty damn legitimate.

Colin Farrell spell checks his texts. Don't you want to be like Colin Farrell, everyone on Earth?

When Farrell returned to Toronto four years later, he took it upon himself to end Stress' homelessness. First he took him on a shopping spree for clothes and a few other essentials, and then he gave him some rent money. Stress joined an addiction recovery group, started exercising at the Y, and today is a sober man with a sturdy roof over his head who goes by his real name, David Woods. David described his life as "hopeless" before Farrell gave him a helping hand, which makes us feel kinda shitty for cracking all those jokes about how terrible he was in Daredevil.

Pictured: David, counting the number of ways Daredevil sucked. OK, phew, we're over the guilt.

#4. Howard Stern Stops A Suicide Live On The Air

There are plenty of resources out there for suicidal people to reach out for help. If a friend chose to forgo all of them in favor of calling into a wacky morning radio show, you'd assume it meant they'd truly given up on life. Especially if the guy on the other end of the call was "shock jock" Howard Stern, who spent the '90s doing things like having contests in which listeners came to the studio and ate carrots out of crew members' asses. Yet, in December of 1994, Stern convinced a man to step down from the edge of a New York City bridge, and he did it live.

Emilio Bonilla had parked his car on the bridge, walked to the railing, and called into Stern's radio show on what we can only assume was a hilariously gigantic '90s cell phone.

"It was the only thing weighing me down from the high-speed bridge winds."

Initially Stern thought the man was joking about his suicidal intentions. To verify the call, Stern asked listeners on the bridge to honk their horns. He heard one in the background, so the man was either telling the truth or at least being an irresponsible pedestrian.

Now fully aware of the seriousness of the situation, Stern busted out every trick in the book to keep the man talking instead of jumping. He encouraged Bonilla to find a hobby that would get him "tuned into anything in life," reminded him that life is sometimes challenging, and, uh, told him that if he killed himself, he'd never get the chance to see Stern's movie, Private Parts.

"You see, the title is a euphemism for dicks. It's going to be hilarious."

While Stern and Bonilla continued to talk, one of Stern's listeners stopped her car, approached Bonilla, and gave him a bear hug, which is possibly the most adorable thing we've ever read. While Stern and his fan were playing good cop / profane cop, another listener happened to be an actual cop, who expedited a police response.

The only other time you'll see this many Stern newspaper clippings is MTV Cribs: Robin Quivers' Basement Shrine Edition.

Bonilla was taken to the hospital, and just a few days later, he was out and visiting the studio to thank Stern, who had milked the incident for every bit of promotion it was worth. And honestly, for turning a man threatening to kill himself into a situation where he could crack jokes about the aftermath, he earned it.

Not that Stern was the first ...

#3. Muhammad Ali Talks Down A Suicidal Man From A Nearby Window

1981 was Muhammad Ali's last year as a professional boxer. He'd rumbled in the jungle, thrilla'd in Manila, and even fought a Japanese wrestler. But, much like the Rocky movies he inspired, there was time to fit in one more unbelievable twist.

In mid-January, a 21-year-old man was threatening to jump from the ninth floor of a Los Angeles building (it was the tallest building in the city at the time). Police tried to talk him down, but to no avail. A psychologist tried his hand, but he didn't get anywhere either. Possibly suspecting demonic possession, a police chaplain was called, but he struck out too. They were probably desperately looking up the number of the nearest rabbi when Ali's aide spotted the commotion and was all, "Hey, my boss is across the street, you want him to handle this shit?" Or, you know, something to that effect.

"He's a boxer, so he's perfect for anyone who needs a hug."

The police were torn between wanting to discourage future suicidal people from demanding to see celebrities, and the fact that Muhammad Goddamn Ali wanted to help them, and the latter obviously won out. Ali popped his head out the window and said, "You're my brother. I love you and I wouldn't lie to you. You got to listen. I want you to come home with me, meet some friends of mine," which is the greatest thing Ali could say to you short of, "Hey, do you have any bullies you'd like me to beat up?"

"Can you send the psychologist back? I'm hallucinating that Muhammad Ali's up here."

After a half-hour conversation that included the shocked man saying "It's really you!" Ali got him inside, downstairs, and to a hospital, where he vanished into the mists of time. Ali commented that the man was depressed because he couldn't find a job and wasn't getting along with his family, so Ali promised to help him find work. Presumably this was accomplished by giving the man a resume that simply read "References: Muhammad Ali" and marching him into the nearest office.

#2. The Grateful Dead Make An Entire Country's Olympic Dream Come True

The Grateful Dead had a long and storied career that was largely overshadowed by the fact that an ice cream flavor was named after lead singer Jerry Garcia. But the band remains beloved by potheads across America as well as, inexplicably, the people of Lithuania.

To explain, we need to go back to 1992, the Year Of The Pog. The Summer Olympics rolled around right as the credits for the Cold War were running, and while the collapse of communism was generally something you'd chalk up in the "plus" column, countries that had once found themselves behind the Iron Curtain were flat broke. Funding Olympic teams became a secondary concern to keeping power plants and hospitals running, and it looked like the newly liberated Lithuanians wouldn't be able to play Olympic basketball.

Those pillars might as well have been Stalin's middle finger, three times over.

This was a problem, because basketball is Lithuania's ridiculously popular national sport. This was their first chance to compete as an independent nation -- they wanted to shoot hoops for freedom, goddammit! So Lithuanian player Sarunas Marciulionis, who played for the Golden State Warriors, came up with the idea of soliciting the international community for help. Many donors answered the call, but chief among them were, for reasons that are given a tragically inadequate explanation by history books, the Grateful Dead.

"We'll give you whatever; just put on some pants."

The aging '60s stalwarts sent them both a fat check and a load of custom-designed tie-dye jerseys that featured a skeleton dunking a basketball. They were ridiculous but awesome, and they were a welcome change from the drab greys of the Soviet era. While the players weren't allowed to wear them during games because blinding your opponents is considered an unfair advantage, they wore them pretty much everywhere else, including practice and in bed.

Deadheads though they were, they had absolutely no use for "Touch Of Grey."

If you were expecting Lithuania's Olympic journey to take the form of a cheesy inspirational movie, well, you'd be right. The team fought their way to a bronze medal, at one point winning a massive upset against their former Russian overlords. The freaking president of the country joined them in the locker room to sing the national anthem, after which the team doused him with champagne, forcing him to gamely leave in one of their tie-dye outfits like he was ready to take the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Try to picture Obama wearing those duds, to get a sense of just how absurd the scenario was.

Some of their uniforms were then sold to raise money for Lithuanian children's charities, and the team continued their partnership with the Dead in the 1996 Olympics. Man, that shatters so many stoner stereotypes, we don't even know where to begin.

Although it does prove a couple others.

#1. A Famous Soccer Player Ends A War

The awesomely named Didier Drogba is a soccer player from the Ivory Coast. Considered one of the best players to ever strap on whatever it is they play soccer with, Drogba's impressive sporting career is still secondary to his career as a human being.

In his home country, Drogba enjoys the combined popularity of Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson at their respective peaks. Unfortunately, in 2002, while the worst thing happening in our lives was a sudden influx of Linkin Park anime music videos, Ivory Coast was spiraling into civil war. The worst was over by 2004, but sporadic violence continued and tensions were high. Drogba wanted to help, but he was an athlete living in another country. That doesn't exactly scream high-level diplomatic power. He didn't even have any shield-wearing captains or armored flying billionaires to call on. What could he do to end a civil war, just politely ask everyone to put their guns down?

"Seriously, guys, not cool."

Well, yeah, that's exactly what he did. In 2006, Ivory Coast's national soccer team qualified for their first World Cup. Drogba and his teammates then went on television and pleaded for his countrymen to put aside their differences so they could enjoy some good old-fashioned football. Within a week, a truce had been established, because cheering on your country is a lot more fun than shooting at your fellow citizens.

The Ivorian team kept up their diplomatic work when, in 2007, they played a game in a rebel stronghold. Leaders and soldiers from both sides were invited, making it the first time in five years that opposing troops had met peacefully. The Ivorians won the game in a rout, although how shitty would Madagascar had felt if they had won and restarted the war?

Drogba had to be rushed off the field by soldiers so he could go rescue a cat that was stuck in a tree.

Not long after the game, a peace treaty was signed and the war ended. Drogba was able to secure his homeland several years of peace and optimism just by asking nicely. Meanwhile, Tom Brady still hasn't solved America's gun crisis. Come on, man.

Did that warm the cockles of your heart? Then read 5 Heartwarming Stories to Restore Your Faith in Celebrities and learn about how Tom Cruise is an actual superhero. Or check out 6 True Stories That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity to keep the good vibes going.