Duke Ellington's Recording Era

Mark Tucker was a professor, a pianist, and an expert on Duke Ellington’s life and his career. He taught at the Columbia University from 1987 to 1997 and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia from 1997. His scholarly works included Ellington: The Early Years that was published in 1991 and The Duke Ellington Reader that was published in 1993. He was also the co-author of the book Jazz From The Beginning with Garvin Bushell. Tuker organized the article with Ellington’s Early Years, On the Road, Later Year, Composer, Arranger, Songwriter, Bandleader and Pianist, and the Ellington Legacy. The introduction is about Duke Ellington’s role in his musical career: composer, bandleader, and pianist. However, due to massive works that Ellington was involving such as compose music for orchestra, ballet, film, radio,

The effect was huge to musicians. Due to the technology, jukeboxes, talkies, and radios had made musicians wealthy and famous, but it also made some musicians became unemployed. Bars and ballrooms started to use jukebox instead of hiring musicians. During 20s, musicians were hired to perform at the radio station, but during 40s, most of the radio stations were devoting airtime to records. Thus, the first recording ban happened in 1942 and lasted for two years. The second ban happened in 1948 because of the Congress was not pleased with the result of the first ban, which was the union had to establish fund to hire unemployed musicians and the recording industry had to make fund payments based on sales. The second ban ended in December 1948 that the union agreed to hand over the management to independent trustee that satisfied the Congress law. Tucker had proven his profession in Duke Ellington’s career in this well-explained article. However, he did not talk too much of the characteristics of Ellington’s music but his achievements and contribution in