Ellington

Like a lot of musicians, Cleo Laine is a great Duke Ellington fan. And Ellington, as it turned out, was something of a Cleo Laine fan. "Often, Duke said that he would like me to sing with the band," she recalls. "Unfortunately, when he did ask me seriously to sing with the band, I was involved in other things. So it never came about."At least not while Duke Ellington was alive. But after Laine and her husband, saxophonist John Dankworth, wound up sharing the bill at a few shows with Mercer Ellington and the Duke Ellington Orchestra, they thought it might be interesting to do an album of Ellington songs with the Ellington band.

Louis Armstrong came to public view as an entertainer, Dizzy Gillespie for his beret and clownish charm, Miles Davis for his immaculately cut shirts and defiant cool.But Duke Ellington was the first, and remains, almost 100 years after jazz's birth, perhaps the only jazz musician to become famous for being an artist. Due to his status, as well as the length of his mature career -- from his debut at Harlem's Cotton Club in 1927 to his death in 1974 -- Ellington inspired an enormous body of writing that is both scholarly and hostile, defensive and elegiac.

Though she came to prominence singing movie themes in the late '70s, Maureen McGovern says her real musical education began in the early '80s as a cabaret singer.Drifting from club to club across Manhattan, Ms. McGovern, 44, was freed of commercial pressures to sing things she didn't like. She was allowed to pursue her love for the music of George and Ira Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim and Duke Ellington. And it's only now, with her performance with the Duke Ellington Orchestra this weekend at the Meyerhoff, that she can pay tribute to the last of these influences.

This lively biography, through emphasizing the king-sized contributions of its subject to American popular music, provides a perspective that should interest a general readership and not mostly jazz enthusiasts.John Edward Hasse, in his stated intent to stress "the development and evolution of Ellington the musician" and to delineate the two inseparable careers of band leader and composer, has done exactly that.His theme, supported by extensive research and Ellington quotations, is expanded so judiciously that the 404-page volume seems fittingly concise.

LONDON -- American-born jazz singer Adelaide Hall, who shared the stage with Duke Ellington and other jazz stars, died in London yesterday at the age of 92, a hospital spokesman said.Born in New York, she was the daughter of a music professor and first performed on stage at 14. Her credits include appearing in the London stage premiere of "Kiss me Kate" as well as Ellington's "Chocolate Kiddies" with Josephine Baker.

As the first musician ever to have been signed simultaneously to the jazz and classical divisions of Columbia Records, Wynton Marsalis is intimately familiar with the differences and similarities between the two worlds. We spoke to him over the phone, during a tour stop in Boston, and asked what he thought about treating jazz like classical music.Q: Lately, it seems as if certain kinds of music from the pre-rock era are being treated with the same reverence as classical music. What does this portend for jazz?

There will be jazz around the clock in Philadelphia next weekend during the fourth annual Spectacor Presidential Jazz Weekend Friday through Sunday.Regional and international artists will perform in a variety of rhythms and styles, from the sophisticated sounds of Mercer Ellington and the Duke Ellington Band to the Afro-Latin beat of Papo Vazquez Bomba Jazz.As a tribute to jazz musicians Miles Davis and Lee Morgan, 14 regional jazz ensembles will take part in "Jazz 'til Sunrise," an all-night review beginning at 10 p.m. Friday and continuing until 6:30 a.m. Saturday at the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum.

Here is Stephanie Terry, first grade teacher at Duke Ellington Primary, 709 W. North Ave., racing down the hallway of maybe the only school in Baltimore located above a grocery store."