A Question of Containment: Duke Ellington and Early Radio

By Chadwick Jenkins


Nearly all scholars studying Duke Ellington's early period emphasize the debt he owes radio for spreading his music and exponentially increasing his fame. Yet they provide little documentation demonstrating any impact radio may have had upon the composer's career from 1923 when Ellington arrived in New York City—one of broadcasting's early capitals—to February 1931 when Ellington and his orchestra completed a successful stint at Harlem's notorious Cotton Club. This dearth of information can be attributed partially to the relative scarcity of surviving data relating to radio from that period. It was not until the late 1930s that recordings of broadcasts were regularly made and archived; additionally, early radio stations saw little reason to retain payment records, playlists, or other such information useful to the contemporary scholar. But this lack of source material has not deterred scholars from making grandiose claims for radio's effect on Ellington—nor has it led them to rely on a small, shared collection of data. indeed, searching through the secondary literature for information about Ellington and radio, a scholar must trace a zigzagging line among isolated sources: articles from Variety, local newspapers, interviews with Ellington and members of his orchestra, the hyperbolic statements of his manager irving mills, and, of course, the trajectory of Ellington's career. Certainly, much had changed for Ellington from 1923 to 1931, owing to myriad factors including live concerts, recordings, movie appearances, sheet-music sales, and undeniably his success on the local and later national broadcasts from the Cotton Club.