Celebrating the Birthday of Duke Ellington
with a glimpse into a single journal issue
in the forthcoming RIPM Jazz Periodicals
This week we celebrate the birthday of composer, pianist, and bandleader Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, born 29 April 1899. Our forthcoming RIPM Jazz Periodicals collection contains a wealth of material related to Ellington, his music, his collaborators, and his band members that is otherwise unavailable or out of print. Ellington related content also includes news and reports from national and international tours, illustrations, photographs, articles, reviews of concerts, recordings, and festival performances, discographies, interviews, and advertisements.
At the same time we are also demonstrating the massive content of RIPM Jazz Periodicals, by focusing on a single journal issue from among the thousands in this collection: Jazz [First Series], Vol. 1 Nos. 5-6 (January 1943). The issue deals exclusively with Ellington and represents but a tiny fraction of references to him in RIPM Jazz Periodicals. In fact, with ninety-seven of the one hundred journals now uploaded to our database, Ellington’s name appears on an astounding 16,681 pages!
The front and back cover of the Ellington issue of Jazz
Jazz [First Series], Vol. 1 Nos. 5-6 (January 1943).
Here are the titles of the principal articles in the issue.
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Following is a selection of images from this issue…
Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 8.
Ibid., 14. 
Ibid., 24. 
Ibid., 5. 
Ibid., 11,19.
Ibid., 28.
And finally, some snippets from the articles…
Ellington and the history of music…
Ibid., 9.
Ibid., 18.
A young Ellington “attached” to a piano stool…
Ibid., 11.
Ellington and Strayhorn…
Ibid., 13.
The Duke and the Deb…
“A true master of jazz…”
RIPM search tip: Be on the lookout for more updates and posts on the RIPM Jazz Periodicals collection, coming soon!
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RIPM is an international non-profit organization preserving and providing access to music periodicals published in more than twenty countries between approximately 1760 and 1966, from Bach to Bernstein. Functioning under the auspices of the International Musicological Society, and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres, RIPM produces four electronic publications: Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals, Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Full Text, European and North American Music Periodicals (Preservation Series), and RIPM Jazz Periodicals (Preservation Series, forthcoming).