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Edward Kennedy Ellington Research Paper

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Great American Composers
Over the course of history, the arts have played an important role in aspects of people’s lives. More specifically, music is something that has been around for centuries and will continue to play a part in shaping people into who they are. There have been numerous talented composers in America, but some worth mentioning are Duke Ellington, George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin.
Though music has been around for generations, during the 1900’s, Duke Ellington was a famous composer in the Americas. Edward Kennedy Ellington was born on April 29, 1899 in Washington D.C. to a religious family; his mother was a Baptist and his father was a Methodist (“Duke,” n.d.). Ellington had a passion for piano during his childhood; he had started taking piano at the age of seven …show more content…

He also won numerous Grammy Awards as well as the Spingarn Medal from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Ellington continued to compose and perform music until he died from lung cancer in May of 1974. He will always be remembered for "the daring innovations that came to mark his music—the strange modulations (changing from one key to another) built upon lush melodies that ramble into unexpected places, the unorthodox (untraditional) construction of songs.…" (“Duke,” n.d.).
Not only was Duke Ellington well-known for his involvement in jazz during the 1900’s, George Gershwin was also popular during that time. Gershwin was born in Brooklyn in 1898 to a family of immigrants. He left school at the age of 15 in order to work as a “song plugger” (a pianist that demonstrated songs) on Tin Pan Alley (Hingley, 2013). He soon began to write his own pieces, and his first published song was “When You Want ‘Em, You Can’t Get “Em”; although this song was composed of new techniques, he only received five dollars (“George,”

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