“Some Day all the jazz musicians should get together in one place and get down on their knees and thank Duke.”
— Miles Davis
Ellingtonia.com
Sad News
Marcus Girvan, the founder of Ellingtonia.com and creator of this discography, has passed away on the 9th of January 2023. Marcus created a resource that is much appreciated by Ellington scholars and enthusiasts alike. When his health deteriorated, he passed it on to new management. We will endeavor to remain true to Marcus’ vision of this site and dedicate it to his memory.
About this site
The principal aim of this site is to provide as full an on-line discography of the recorded works of Duke Ellington as possible. The discography was created by Marcus Girvan, drawing on many sources including Massagli and Volonté’s “The New DESOR”, The DEMS Bulletin and archive, DESUK’s “Blue Light”, Ken Vail’s “Duke’s Diary”, Dr. Stratemann’s “Duke Ellington - Day by Day and Film by Film”, Mark Tucker’s “Ellington - The Early Years” and last but by no means least, David Palmquist’s “The Duke: Where And When” (TDWAW), the essential guide to The Duke’s itinerary.
Please note that due to the sheer quantity of recorded output, the pages on this site can be large and are not well-suited to use on mobile devices.
As with all discographies, this will always be a work in progress and cannot be thought of as definitive. Errors and omissions are still being found. Decades after Duke’s last recording, new compilations continue to be released on CD, LP and via streaming services. Corrections and contributions are gratefully received.
Please contact Charlie Dyson (charlie@charliedyson.net) if you spot something that’s missing or wrong. A list of known bugs is maintained here, while changes to the discography are recorded on the Changes page.
You can join us in talking all things Duke using the DESUK Discord chatroom at https://discord.gg/efQNUMa.
Other resources:
- The Duke Ellington Society UK (DESUK): https://dukeellington.org.uk
- The Duke Ellington Society of Sweden (DESS): https://ellington.se
- The Duke Ellington Society: http://thedukeellingtonsociety.org (archived site)
- The Dooji Collection: Duke Ellington 78 rpm record labels and related materials: http://ellingtonweb.ca/Hostedpages/DoojiCollection/DoojiCollection.htm
- Archives of the DEMS bulletins http://tdwaw.ellingtonweb.ca/DEMS/DEMSIndex.html
- Jazz Online (older records in the public domain): http://www.jazz-on-line.com/artists/Duke_Ellington.htm
Ellingtonia.com Blog
We are happy to announce a new feature for Ellingtonia.com: a “Releases” page. This contains a table for every release mentioned in the discography. While browsing the discography, you can click any release to be taken to the correct part of the releases page. Similarly you can click on the index number of any entry on the Releases page to be taken back to the relevant part of the discography.
In addition, the Record Labels page now features links to the releases for each label.
There will be a few rough edges initially: some index numbers are incorrect, and there are typos in the release names, but overall we hope this will be a useful addition to the site.
Over time we’d like to bring you more information for each release. For some we already have links to Discogs.com, Spotify, Tidal etc. In addition we hope to add the title, year of release, format (LP, CD etc.). Watch this space!
Welcome to the slightly refurbished ellingtonia.com.
After years of painstaking work on this discography, Marcus Girvan has retired from day-to-day work on this discography and handed it over to a new webmaster. This necessitated some technological changes and prompted a minor refresh of the site’s look and feel. We hope you like it!
If the site isn’t working properly for you, please get in touch with Charlie Dyson (charlie@charliedyson.net) and we will do our best to fix the issue.
We hope you continue to enjoy our discography whether as a researcher or Duke enthusiast. As ever, please get in touch if you spot any inaccuracies or omissions.