In retrospect, Duke Ellington's formal music career could be split up into three distinct,masterful periods, when the fruition of his work was most evident. The first period occurred in 1923.........

The second phase of Duke's masterful career came between the late thirties and

mid-forties, when Duke began experimenting and reworking his earlier, successful titles, and began to reconstruct them into longer forms, to accentuate his players strengths. Gone was the "chugging sound of early jazz bands, replaced by a panorama of musical

textures bound together by a subtler but no less incisive pulse" (Holmes). During this period of his career, Duke would have the extreme fortune of working and learning from musicians that would initialize their career by playing in Duke's orchestra, and eventully gain historic jazz notoriety from their times with Duke (Holmes). Such players as Jimmy Blanton, the "doomed young virtouoso of the stringed bass", and Ben Webster, adding to the sax section that already housed Jonny Hodges, Harry Carney, and Barney Bigard

legends as Rex Stewart and Cootie Williams. Joe Nanton, Juan Tizol, and Lawrence

At the turn of the seventies, though, Ellington's orchestra began to wane a bit, and with the sudden death of Jonny Hodge's, the orchestra began to undergo a sharp decline. In the last recordings of this period, "the band no longer sparkles as brilliantly as it once did, and occasionally Duke's fatigue is apparent" (Holmes). Duke Ellington would die on May 24, 1974, and would leave behind a style that would endure and impact other for an eternity. (Continue with next paragraph "Duke Ellington's style is a reflection.....")

1956, at the Newport Jazz Festival, with the return of blazing saxman Jonny Hodges. Needless to say, the '56 Jazz Festival was hailed by not only the crowd, but critics worldwide. This final period of Duke's major success would span into the decade of the sixties. During this time, Duke was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, proclaiming his triumphant return as once again becoming a major force in music (Holmes). Also, during this entire time, Duke specialized in his concert-length works performed in symphony halls, and took his orchestra all over the entire world, to places that had never heard Duke's sound before (Holmes). It seems the orchestra regained it's furious pace of

decline in his status as the grandmaster of the music world. With newer, more popular forms of music

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Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)