walking upstream…
Duke Ellington
photo: public domain ↗Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in Washington, D.C., in 1899, to a father who, as one profile of his early years records, "believed in using proper language and a sophisticated wit, dressing well, and always displaying impeccable manners" — the source of his lifelong nickname. He started piano at seven with a teacher named Marietta Clinkscales, then drifted from it until his teens, when the ragtime and jazz players he watched in Washington's bars and pool halls pulled him back to the keyboard. By 1917 he was slowing down stride pianist James P. Johnson's piano rolls to copy the fingering key by key. New York made him a bandleader almost by accident, inheriting Elmer Snowden's group in 1924; Irving Mills's management and a 1927 booking at the Cotton Club turned that band into the orchestra he'd spend the next fifty years composing for, one voice at a time.
the sound in question
1941
Take the "A" TrainDuke Ellington
walk the tributaries ↓
Willie "The Lion" Smith1920s-30s · Stride piano / Jazz / Ragtime
Smith became Ellington's mentor soon after he reached New York in 1923, schooling him in Harlem's rent-party stride tradition at after-hours sessions across the city. Decades later, Ellington still ranked him above every pianist he'd shared a bandstand with: "Willie The Lion was the greatest influence of all the great jazz piano players who have come along," he said. "He has a beat that stays in the mind." In 1939 he made the debt literal, composing and recording a tribute called "Portrait of the Lion" — proof, as one album's liner notes later put it, that "Duke Ellington has never lost his awe of Lion's prowess."
listen: upstream & heresource: Harlem World Magazine — The Legendary Willie "The Lion" Smith (Ellington's 'greatest influence' quote; Portrait of the Lion tribute) ↗
1939
Echoes of SpringWillie "The Lion" Smith
1939
Portrait of the LionDuke Ellington
listen forSmith's "Echoes of Spring" is a stride ballad rather than a rent-party stomp — the left hand still keeps that rolling bass-and-chord pattern, but slowed and softened into something closer to a nocturne, with harmonies richer than the usual showpiece. Ellington's "Portrait of the Lion" opens with Ellington alone at the piano, working the same unhurried tempo and lush voicing before the horns answer around him — the bandleader stepping back, for a few bars, into the stride pianist's chair Smith had taught him to sit in.
James P. Johnson1920s · Stride piano / Jazz / Ragtime
Johnson was the Harlem stride pianist every ambitious player of the 1910s tried to become, his left hand doing the work of a rhythm section on its own, and Ellington learned him the only way available from Washington: from the rolls. By 1917, as one profile of his early years records, the teenage Ellington "was slowing down James P. Johnson piano rolls and copying Johnson's playing as best he could," working out which keys the mechanism struck one at a time until the technique belonged to him. It stayed his foundation long after he'd stopped needing the machine.
listen: upstream & heresource: The Syncopated Times — The Story of Duke Ellington, Part 1 ↗
1921
Carolina ShoutJames P. Johnson
1927
Black and Tan FantasyDuke Ellington
listen forJohnson's 1921 recording of "Carolina Shout" runs on a left hand doing two jobs at once — a bass note, then a chord, over and over, fast enough to sound like a small rhythm section rather than one hand — while the right hand decorates on top. Six years later, Ellington's "Black and Tan Fantasy" arrives as a full band arrangement, but its piano break drops straight into that same stride pattern: the same alternating bass-and-chord drive under a florid melodic line, the exact mechanics Johnson's rolls had taught a teenager note by note.