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Duke Ellington was perhaps the greatest Jazz musician ever, if not the greatest American musician ever.  Unlike Louis Armstrong, and like Count Basie, his instrument was the band, not just the piano he played in the band.  Along with his composition partner, Billy Strayhorn, Ellington also wrote some of the greatest Jazz compositions ever.  Count Basie acknowledged it himself in 1961: that "The Duke" was at the top of Jazz royalty hierarchy, with "The Count" being one of his subjects.  From the dawn of the Swing Era in the 1930s to his final orchestral suites in the 1970s, Ellington was always, and perhaps will always be, the single most important figure in Jazz music. 

Duke's fame derived from four major elements: 1) his remarkable ability as a musician and composer; 2) his ability to politically sooth the egos of uppity but immensely-talented musicians who would not have thrived or stayed under anyone but Duke; 3) his sheer drive to succeed and not "give up;" and 4) (the factor to which he most attributed his success) his amazing good fortune to be "in the right place, at the right time, in front of the right people," with the right people at his side to give him the opportunities to succeed.  

Although Ellington, himself, developed as a musician in the pre-swing and Swing Era, and although many of the greatest Swing songs ever were either written or performed by him, Ellington's greatness as a Jazz musician stemmed only in part from his Swing music.  A new fan of Swing music might feel understandably confused by going out and purchasing an Ellington album expecting to hear great Swing music.  Although it is more difficult to find Duke's great Lindy Hop songs, that only attributes to the breadth of his greatness as a musician, not his limitations as an unquestioned Master of Swing.  Indeed, his band's ability to Swing fueled his success, giving him the opportunity to innovate and create critically-acclaimed Jazz music that deviated from his popular formula.  

One final preliminary note that I have echoed elsewhere but merits re-emphasis here to at least diminish the risk that I will contribute to the problem.  It is easy for us to historically idolize musical giants as pre-ordained demi-gods who could never, and did not ever, do any wrong, could not and did not record any "junk," or whose significance or place in history could never or have never been legitimately questioned or doubted.  Were we to go back in history, we envision their peers fawning in their presence as we would, feeling immensely privileged to see just one of hundreds of shows Ellington performed, say, at The Cotton Club.  This idolizing tendency both dehumanizes and diminishes the accomplishments of men like Duke Ellington.  Although Ellington was always comfortable in his own success and never really flirted with failure, he struggled with his own demons, lapsed through periods of unpopularity, and did not become the unquestioned genius of Jazz he now is considered until he had fully earned his role in history.  Back in the Cotton Club days, he was just another good band, and people took him for granted just like they now take, say, The Counting Crows for granted.  It was neither as easy nor as melodramatically-difficult as many biographies make it sound.  In many regards, he was "just another famous, accomplished Swing musician" until the later part of his career, where he blossomed far beyond the boundaries of Swing or even song-based Jazz music.  

    Musical Biography

Ellington's career can be divided into six essential stages:  

1. The Early Years from 1917-1927;

2. The Cotton Club days from 1927-1931 and popular success thereafter to 1938;

3. The "Blanton-Webster" Years from 1939-1945 after Billy Strayhorn joined Duke;

4. Duke's diminishing popularity (with other Swing Era leaders) from 1945-1954; 

5. The Big Band Revival from 1954 to 1963; and 

6. Duke's emergence as a grand composer of Jazz Suites from 1963 until his death in 1972.  

These dates are convenient markers, and elements of each stage appear in other stages, but they more or less can serve as a guide.

Unlike the common folklore of many, if not most, great black musicians, Edward Kennedy Ellington was not raised in poverty in a broken home out of some old country shack down on the bayou.  Ellington instead was the pampered son of a White-House butler, James Edward Ellington, and grew up in upper-middle class suburban surroundings in the Washington D.C. area.  He was a "mama's boy" inside and out, but in a way that ultimately helped instill in him the measured patience and underlying confidence that would serve him well professionally as a bandleader and businessman.  

    1. The Early Years, 1917-1927

Ellington's music career began early before the dawn of Swing music in 1917, when he quit high school to pursue a career in music.  At first, he booked and performed in bands in the Washington, D.C., area, but in September 1923 he moved to New York as one of five members of "The Washingtonians," where they gained a residency in the Times Square venue The Hollywood Club (later The Kentucky Club).    They made their first recordings in November 1924, and cut tunes for different record companies under a variety of pseudonyms, so that several current major labels, notably Sony, Universal, and BMG, now have extensive holdings of their work from the period in their archives, which are reissued periodically.

The Washingtonians gradually increased in popularity as Ellington gradually assumed control of the group.  The style of their music was very typical pre-swing, "Charlestoney/Dixieland" music of the day, but slowly developed elements of what was called "jungle" style: their sly arrangements often highlighted by the muted, growling sound of trumpeter James "Bubber" Miley.   Although people today might not associate the sound with the jungle, its held-back, pensive, stalking, earthy, and grovely character stuck out at the time.  A good example of this early "jungle style" is Ellington's first signature song, "East St. Louis Toodle-oo," which the band first recorded for Vocalion Records in November 1926, and which became their first chart single in a re-recorded version for Columbia in July 1927. 

    2. The Cotton Club and "Pop" Years, 1927-1938

The band moved uptown to The Cotton Club in Harlem on December 4, 1927, now named after Duke and under Duke's actual and nominal control.  This moment marked the first notable time where Duke was in the right place at the right time in front of the right people with the right people at his side.  Not only did the Cotton Club become one of the hot spots of Harlem night life, but radio was at the beginning of its glorious heyday; commercial radio began in 1920 and had grown by 1927 such that virtually every home had a radio.  Live radio broadcasts from the Cotton Club brought Ellington his first taste of national fame and helped fuel the success of his early recordings such as "Black and Tan Fantasy"/"Creole Love Call" on Victor (now BMG) and "Doin' the New Low Down"/"Diga Diga Doo" on OKeh (now Sony) in 1928, and "The Mooche" on OKeh in 1929.  

Ellington's showmanship also added to his fame.  He appeared in tuxes and tails, and carried himself with the confident swagger of his upper-middle-class upbringing.  He ensured that the stage lights at his shows were not the common amber color because amber reflected poorly off of Black skin.  The lighting at his shows featured spotlights over soloists and singers as they were featured in songs, adding a touch of style to his performances.  And Ellington never lowered himself to play the role of the shuffly "minstrel" character common among many black performers of the day.  Not out of spite, but out of natural elegance, he often elevated himself above the fray.

During his Cotton Club days Ellington developed his "Jungle Style" of music even further into a more popular style that appealed to a wide variety of people while still retaining its sultry, earthy character.  Ellington, himself noted how this sound stuck out from the popular but sing-songy Paul-Whiteman formula that virtually every other band on the radio had tried to emulate.  While maintaining his job at The Cotton Club, Ellington also played downtown with his band in the Broadway musical Show Girl, featuring the music of George Gershwin, in the summer of 1929.  The following summer, the band took a leave of absence to head out to California and appear in the film Check and Double Check.  From the score, "Three Little Words," with vocals by The Rhythm Boys (featuring Bing Crosby), became Ellington's first number-one hit on Victor in November 1930; its flip side, "Ring Dem Bells," also reached the charts.

The Ellington band left The Cotton Club in February 1931 to become one of the most popular bands of the 1930s.  Several hit tunes followed in the next few years such as "Mood Indigo,"  "Rockin' in Rhythm" (recorded by "The Jungle Band"), "Limehouse Blues" and then in the winter of 1932, Ellington's hallmark "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)," featuring the vocals of Ivie Anderson.  His instrumental version of "Sophisticated Lady" became a Top Five hit in the spring of 1933, with its flip side, Duke's version of "Stormy Weather," also making the Top Five.  In 1934 Ellington's unremarkable instrumental rendition of "Cocktails for Two" became his second number-one hit song, in part due to its association with the popular movie "Murder at the Vanities."  Ellington also recorded other instrumental works such as "Creole Rhapsody," and "Diminuendo in Blue"/"Crescendo in Blue" in 1937, foreshadowing Ellington's ultimate interest in longer orchestral, and eventually Jazz Suite, pieces.  Ellington also recorded music for The Marx Brother's 1937 film, "A Day at the Races," which featured a scene with Whitey's Lindy Hoppers.  In April 1938, Ellington scored his third number-one hit with an instrumental version of another standard, "I Let a Song Go out of My Heart."  In the fall, he was back in the Top Ten with a version of the British show tune "Lambeth Walk."

    3. The Blanton-Webster Years, 1939-1945

The Ellington band underwent several notable changes at the end of the 1930s to move into its third and perhaps most heralded stage.  In early 1939, Billy Strayhorn, a young composer, arranger, and pianist, joined the organization.  He did not usually perform with the orchestra, but he became Ellington's composition partner to the extent that soon it was impossible to tell where Ellington's writing left off and Strayhorn's began.  Two key personnel changes also strengthened the outfit.  Bassist Jimmy Blanton joined the band in September and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster joined in December.  Their impact on Ellington's sound was so profound that their relatively brief tenure has been dubbed "the Blanton-Webster Band" by jazz fans.  A great, three-CD set popular among Lindy-Hoppers entitled "The Blanton-Webster Years" features music from this time period.  

The rhythm retained a "churning" element of its previous era, but lightened up a bit, as did all popular music at the time due to the influence of Count Basie's Orchestra.  Still, Ellington's "Duke-Swing" rhythm remained unique, with the bass seeming to lean forward and roll ahead of the beat a shade and the drums tending to settle back and follow the beat a bit, all in perfect time with each other so that a passive listener would not notice what made the rhythm sound unique.  The rhythm also lightened up from the pounding, chonk-chonky Harlem-Swing rhythm of the 1930s.  Jimmy Blanton did not just mark time by thumping on the bass; he was one of the first bassists to truly garner respect as a musician and not just a time-keeper.  The freer rhythms that resulted offered greater flexibility for composers, arrangers, and soloists, and no band took advantage of that freedom better than Duke Ellington's.

With Strayhorn's influence and a lighter, freer rhythm, Ellington's jungle music developed an almost dissonant balance to the easy, melodic tendencies of popular Swing music of the day.  But instead of merely shocking the listener like Shostakovich or The Sex Pistols, the dissonant counterbalance tended to hit just the right notes to shake a listener out of complacent, passive listening and simply pay attention.  This ability of musicians to shake their audience out of their seats to "pay attention" has always accompanied if not defined popular musical innovation: from Louis Armstrong's trumpet in the 1920s and 30s, to Elvis' Rock n Roll in the 1950s, to the Beatles British-Invasion/Beatnik Rock in the 1960s, The Who and Led Zepplin's Hard Rock of the 1970s, Iggy Pop's Punk Rock in the 1980s, and Public Enemy's Gangsta-Rap of the 1990s.  Duke Ellington's band served that purpose better than any other in the early 1940s to shake listeners out of their complacent expectations and make them pay attention to the music because it is not the same old drivel that they had expected.  

Ellington and Strayhorn also tinkered with the harmonic structure of the music so as to blend together structures into single songs.  The most notable was perhaps the greatest Swing song ever written for ensemble, Jack the Bear, recorded in 1940.  The horn arrangement created sounds that nobody figured possible from a horn ensemble, and that only Ellington would aspire to create.  The arrangement also combines 8-bar AABA form (the most common Jazz structure) with 12-Bar blues (the most common Blues structure) via 4-bar transitional interludes.  Of course, passive listeners did not notice these shifts in structure, but they made the song "kick it" to another level midway through, keeping passive listeners' attention even though they would not know why.  In the summer of 1942, the band also released Strayhorn's "Take the 'A' Train," a swing era standard that became Ellington's signature song and perhaps the ultimate Swing Anthem for the East Coast Swing scene that gravitated toward the A-Train destinations in Harlem.  That same summer, Ellington lived in Los Angeles, where his stage musical, Jump for Joy, opened on July 10 and ran for 101 performances.  Unfortunately, the show never went to Broadway, but among its songs was "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)," another standard.  

The U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941 and the onset of the recording ban called by the American Federation of Musicians in August 1942 slowed the Ellington band's momentum.  Unable to record and with touring curtailed, Ellington found an opportunity to return to extended composition with the first of a series of annual recitals at Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1943, at which he premiered "Black, Brown and Beige."  He also returned to the movies, appearing in Cabin in the Sky and Reveille with Beverly.  

Meanwhile, the record labels, stymied for hits, began looking into their artists' back catalogs.  Lyricist Bob Russell took Ellington's 1940 composition "Never No Lament" and set a lyric to it, creating the standard "Don't Get Around Much Anymore."   The Ink Spots scored with a vocal version (recorded a cappella), and Ellington's three-year-old instrumental recording also became a hit, reaching the pop Top Ten and number one on the newly-instituted R&B charts.  Russell repeated his magic with another 1940 Ellington  instrumental, "Concerto for Cootie" (a song written to showcase trumpeter Cootie Williams), creating "Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me."  Nearly four years after it was recorded, the retitled recording hit the pop Top Ten and number one on the R&B charts for Ellington in early 1944, while newly recorded vocal cover versions also scored.  Remakes of Ellington's vintage recordings became ubiquitous on the top of the R&B charts during 1943-1944.  Ellington, himself, also hit number one with "A Slip of the Lip (Can Sink a Ship)," "Sentimental Lady," and "Main Stem."  With the end of the recording ban in November 1944, Ellington was able to record a song he had composed with his saxophonist, Johnny Hodges, set to a lyric by Don George and Harry James, "I'm Beginning to See the Light."  The James recording went to number one in April 1945, whereas Ellington's recording was a Top Ten hit.

    4. Post-War Decline, 1945-1954

With the end of the war, Ellington's period as a major commercial force on records largely came to an end.  The music industry underwent a revolution that eschewed the more expensive big bands of the pre-war years, and instead focused on singers who fronted bands, like Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Louis Jordan, and others.  

Ellington could not keep together the Blanton-Webster band of the early 40s, and what is widely-regarded as his best years as a Big Band leader were now behind him.  Jimmy Blanton passed away and many of the best band members (Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams, et al.) went on to belatedly pursue solo careers on their own.  It was amazing that Duke kept them in his band as long as he did.  However, unlike other big bandleaders who abandoned their big bands when the Swing Era passed, Ellington maintained a big band and continued touring, augmenting his diminished road revenues with his songwriting royalties to keep his band afloat.  In a musical climate in which jazz was veering away from popular music and toward bebop, and popular music was being dominated by singers, the Ellington band no longer had a place at the top of the business.  But it kept working.  

Many of Duke's best Swing recordings that survive from this era are re-mastered versions of radio broadcasts.  The Three-CD boxed set "Duke Ellington and His World Famous Orchestra: The 'Collection' Recordings, '46-47" on Hindsight records contains many of these recordings, which maintain the vigor and energy of the Blanton-Webster years. 

Ellington kept trying composing more extended pieces, as well.  In 1946, he teamed with lyricist John Latouche to write the music for the Broadway musical Beggar's Holiday, which opened on December 26 and ran 108 performances.  Duke also wrote his first full-length background score for a feature film with 1950's The Asphalt Jungle.

    5. Big Band Revival, 1954-1963

In the early to mid-50s, Ellington's career had faded much like all of the old-school Jazz musicians who had not embraced the bebop or pop form.  Ellington still understood the need to play to the crowd, but his crowds became smaller and smaller.  Many of the instrumental, famous sidemen--Johnny Hodges, Ben Webster, Sonny Greer,  had defected from his band.  He even found himself playing sideman for a local ice dancing show in New York.  Even the great Duke Ellington financially had trouble keeping a big band together as a viable entity.  Count Basie was the only Swing Era legacy that had produced any recently popular music, with the success of Basie and Joe William's "Everyday (I Get the Blues)."  

But then Duke's legacy of "being in the right time at the right place in front of the right people" came back into play and propelled Duke back into the spotlight.

In July 1956, Ellington received an invitation to the Newport Jazz Festival, then a festival for mostly well-to-do suburban whites in the posh Atlantic resort town of Newport, Rhode Island.  He composed a Jazz suite especially for the occasion, and gave his band a rare pep talk before the show, as if knowing the importance of the moment before it happened.  The show went well, but not fantastically, until the final number.  As his final number, and as the audience was rumored to be filing out of the stands, he played a staple of the Ellington Big Band at the time: Diminuendo and Crescendo in D; a song blending two songs that Duke had originally recorded on flip sides of a 78-record in 1937.

Duke lazily introduced the song to a quiet, mulling audience that even "sounds like" it was filing out of the stands at the beginning of the song.  The band struck, and much of the audience returned to their seats, inspired by the amazing ensemble work of the Diminuendo half of the song and the up-beat Swing rhythm.   Four minutes into the song, Paul Gonsalves began what would become one of the most famous saxophone solos in Jazz history.  Duke had seen Golsalves develop into that particular solo over the past months of performance, and let him loose that night.  What began as an ordinary solo for a few bars developed into a rousing 27-chorus, 7 minute saxophone solo.  

The song tapped into many of the elements of Duke's music throughout his career, as if condensing his entire career to that point into one song: the forward-leaning but relaxed and intoxicating Duke-Swing rhythm, the almost-dissonant but still strikingly-awesome and harmonic tenor of his piano and horn section ensemble, and the individually-talented musicians that nobody but Duke could harness in a big band, the blend of complex harmonic arrangement and "old-old school" dixieland-style trumpet solos.  A legendarily-anonymous young, blonde woman in a black dress (a Marilyn Monroe "wanna-be") jumped up and started dancing in the audience and then onstage.  The previously-sedate, silent, mulling crowd of mostly young white suburban kids--most of them born after Duke had finished his stint at the Cotton Club in the late-1920s; divided by time, class, and culture from those early Harlem crowds at the Cotton Club--was lifted into a frenzy that called for four encores.  You can even hear the roar of the crowd clearly develop into a frenzy through Gonsalves solo on the recording.  

That performance, and the best-selling album of Duke's career ("Ellington at Newport," pictured above) that followed from it, re-ignited Duke's career, without which he might have faded away into being just another legacy of the Swing Era.  It re-ignited youthful interest in Jazz, turning early Rock-and-Roll kids onto the music of their parents.  A few months later, Duke appeared on the cover of Time magazine.  The band received more gigs, and more money.  Duke's comeback as a live performer led to increased opportunities to tour, and in the fall of 1958 he undertook his first full-scale tour of Europe.  For the rest of his life, he would be a busy world traveler.  Duke later even ironically referred to that moment at Newport as the "beginning" of his career.  Instead, it was the beginning of his ascent into legend.  Instead of fading into retirement as one of the greatest and influential musicians of the Swing Era, that Swinging performance propelled Duke into the later half of his career.  Duke would continue to tour and play and gain critical acclaim. It is difficult for us to not imagine Duke Ellington as not being a pre-ordained demi-god of Jazz, but his career and legacy was not unquestioned as it unfolded.  But, as always, the success of his band's ability to Swing propelled him to continue composing and ultimately produce some of his most critically-heralded non-Swing work ever.

Ellington went on to record several Big Band Swing albums, including "Blues In Orbit," "Recollections of the Big Band Era," "Will the Big Bands Ever Return" and other individual recordings that were recently re-compiled onto companion CDs in 2000, "Swingin' With The Duke," and "Blues & Ballads."  He switched from Columbia to Frank Sinatra's Reprise label for many of these recordings.  Although these pop-oriented records dismayed some of his fans, they also indicated that Duke had not given up on broad commercial aspirations.  Although not recorded during the heyday of the Swing Era, and although some find these recordings more sterile than his earlier work, the sound quality is excellent and they reflect a more mature, developed sound than his earlier work. 

Ellington also joined with Count Basie in 1961 on CBS/Sony records for one of the greatest revival albums ever: "First Time: the Count Meets The Duke."  Amazingly enough, these two seminal Jazz musicians had never recorded together, even though their careers tracked each others' and they were two of the greatest ever.  Ellington even mentioned how he had seen Basie play in 1923 in New York (before Basie's journey to Kansas City), and admired him ever since.  Basie and Duke's drummer during his Blanton Webster years, Sonny Greer, were cousins.  Nonetheless, they had never recorded together until sentiment (and economic necessity) brought them together late in their careers.  Duke and Basie's orchestras combined into an amazing 30-piece Swing orchestra (with Basie's rhythm section at the core) that played a blend of Ellington and Basie standards.  "Wild Man," one of two new works by Ellington for the album, is one of the best Swing songs ever for Lindy Hop, and worth the price of the album, alone. The arrangement brings the bands together amazingly, with soloists from Ellington and Basie's bands exchanging choruses. 

Ellington also appeared in and scored the 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder, and its soundtrack won him three of the newly instituted Grammy Awards, for best performance by a dance band, best musical composition of the year, and best soundtrack.  He was nominated for an Academy Award for his next score, Paris Blues (1961).  In August 1963, his stage work My People, a cavalcade of African-American history, was mounted in Chicago as part of the Century of Negro Progress Exposition.  

    6. Emergence into Legend; Jazz Suites, 1963-1972

Ellington's later career was marked by his return to Jazz Suites and his ultimate goal of developing Jazz into more than just a song-oriented discipline.  Freed of the necessity of writing hits and spurred by the increased time available on the LP record, Ellington concentrated more on extended compositions for the rest of his career.  Borrowing inspiration from classical works that developed themes and blended more complex melodic and harmonic elements of a style of music together, Ellington used the Swing rhythm as one of many musical tools in his work instead of as a permanent, constant backdrop to his music.  Some of these suite works borrowed elements from Broadway music, early Jazz music, classical music, into unique compositions of their own.  Although this music is not ideal (or even possible) for Lindy Hop, it has rightly been acclaimed as cementing Ellington's legacy as the greatest Jazz musician ever. 

Ellington performed the first of his series of sacred concerts at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco on September 16, 1965.  He still longed for a stage success, turning once again to Broadway with the musical Pousse-Café, which opened on March 18, 1966, but closed within days.  Three months later, the Sinatra film Assault on a Queen, with an Ellington score, opened in movie houses around the country.  His final film score, for Change of Mind, appeared in 1969.

Ellington became a Grammy favorite in his later years.  He won a 1966 Grammy for best original jazz composition for "In the Beginning, God," part of his sacred concerts.  His 1967 album "Far East Suite", inspired by a tour of the Middle and Far East, won the best instrumental jazz performance Grammy that year.  Duke received his sixth Grammy in the same category in 1969 for "And His Mother Called Him Bill," a tribute to Strayhorn, who had died in 1967.  "New Orleans Suite" earned another Grammy in the category in 1971, as did "Togo Brava Suite" in 1972, as did the posthumous "The Ellington Suites" in 1976.

Ellington continued to perform regularly until he was overcome by illness in the spring of 1974, succumbing to lung cancer and pneumonia.  His death did not end the band.  His son, Mercer took the band over and led it until his own death in 1996, whereupon Duke's grandson adopted the band.  Ellington finally received the Broadway hit he had always wanted when the revue Sophisticated Ladies, featuring his music, opened posthumously on Broadway on March 1, 1981, and ran 767 performances.

The many celebrations of the Ellington centenary in 1999 demonstrated that he continued to be regarded as the most significant composer in the history of Jazz.  If that seemed something of an anomaly in a musical style that emphasizes spontaneous improvisation over written composition, Ellington was talented enough to overcome the oddity.  He wrote primarily for his band, allowing his veteran players room to solo within his compositions, and as a result created a body of work that seemed likely to help jazz enter the academic and institutional realms, which was very much its direction at the end of the 20th century.  In that sense, he foreshadowed the future of jazz and could lay claim to being one of its most influential practitioners.

    Ellington's significance from a Lindy Hop perspective

As noted above, Duke Ellington composed and recorded far more than just Swing music throughout his career.  But his presence throughout the history of Jazz has also made him an undeniable favorite among both original and revivalist Lindy Hoppers.  Duke's Big Band Swing music provides classic examples of Swing music that is great for both dancing and for just plain listening.  He enjoyed playing for dancers and enjoyed the popularity that his dance music brought his band.  His deviation from the Swing paradigm in later years manifested a musical desire for more, not a disdain for dance music as was common among other popular musicians of the Swing Era and beyond.  He merely wanted to develop something different within the Jazz paradigm, not eschew its dance-music roots as if they were nothing but a stepping stone.  

The Swing Rhythms in Ellington's music were unique to his band.  As noted above, the "Duke-Swing" rhythm featured the bass seeming to lean forward and roll ahead of the beat a shade while the drums tending to settle back and follow the beat a bit, all in perfect time with each other so that a passive listener would not notice what made the rhythm sound unique.  Duke also had a well-known rule between bass and drum players for his swing songs: if one deviated from the rhythm to provide an accent or riff here and there, then the other kept a straight rhythmic line so that the music did not stray from the Swing rhythm.  

From a Lindy Hopper's perspective, most of his great Lindy Hop Swing music came during his Blanton-Webster years from 1938-1945 and his Big Band Revival Years from 1954-1963.  Although gems exist elsewhere, dancers will find the best Ellington music for Lindy Hopping during those periods.  Some recommended albums are on LP's Top 20 Essential CD list, including "First Time: The Count Meets The Duke" (with the Count Basie Orchestra) and "Blues In Orbit."  "Recollection of the Big Band Era" and "Will The Big Bands Ever Return?" (on Reprise) also provides amazing Hi-Fi recordings of many Ellington Standards from the revival period.  As for vintage music, the three-CD set, "The Blanton Webster Years" contains the majority of Duke's best work in the Swing Era.   The three-CD boxed set "Duke Ellington and His World Famous Orchestra: The 'Collection' Recordings, '46-47" on Hindsight records also contains some phenomenal vintage recordings of Duke Ellington's orchestra "back in the day that maintain the vigor and energy of the Blanton-Webster years. 

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