Duke Ellington Trivia
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59 free Duke Ellington trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Duke Ellington led his orchestra for fifty years, wrote or co-wrote more than a thousand pieces and left the largest recorded personal legacy in jazz. This quiz follows the whole arc: the piano lessons he skipped in Washington, D.C., the nickname a school friend gave him, the sign-painting business that got him his first gigs, the Cotton Club years and the 'jungle style' of Bubber Miley, the arrival of Billy Strayhorn and the writing of his theme tune, the Carnegie Hall suites, the comeback at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, the film scores, the Sacred Concerts and the honours that followed, right up to his face on a US quarter. Easy questions cover his real first name, his instrument and his most famous theme; harder ones get into sidemen like Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Blanton and Paul Gonsalves, the record labels and pseudonyms, the 27-chorus solo, and the odd story of how much of the Newport album was really live. It suits jazz fans, music students, teachers building a Black History or American music unit, and pub-quiz setters who want a music round with substance. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Ellington, his collaborators and his key recordings, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Duke Ellington's real first name?
Edward
Edward. He was Edward Kennedy Ellington, with a middle name from his mother Daisy's family that he later handed on to his only child.
Q 02In which city was Duke Ellington born and raised?
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. He built his first bands there before moving to New York in 1923, where a Harlem residency made his orchestra famous nationwide.
Q 03Which saxophonist shared a 1963 album with Duke Ellington that includes a version of 'In a Sentimental Mood'?
John Coltrane
John Coltrane. Then at the leading edge of modern jazz, he said he was honoured to work with Duke, who had set standards he had not caught up with yet.
Q 04How did Duke Ellington get the nickname 'Duke'?
Boyhood friends found his manner aristocratic
Boyhood friends found his manner aristocratic. By his own account, one of them decided that any constant companion of his ought to have a title.
Q 05As a boy, what was Duke Ellington more interested in than his music lessons?
Baseball
Baseball. He recalled that President Theodore Roosevelt would sometimes ride by on his horse and stop to watch the boys play.
Q 06Duke Ellington wrote a suite for which figure, sent the recording and declined to release it in his lifetime?
Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen's Suite set natural wonders from his travels to music, among them the northern lights and a field of lightning bugs, and it went on sale only after his death.
Q 07What was Ellington's first composition, written around 1914?
Soda Fountain Rag
Soda Fountain Rag. He was a teenager working behind the counter as a soda jerk, and the job gave his first tune its name.
Q 08Ellington turned down a scholarship to study which subject at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn?
Art
Art. He had studied it through high school, but music had taken hold of him, and he began playing professionally at 17 instead.
Q 09What day job did Ellington use to drum up bookings for his early dance bands?
Sign painter
Sign painter. When a customer ordered a sign for a dance or party, he asked who was playing the music, and offered his own band if nobody was.
Q 10Which Tchaikovsky work did Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn rework as a 1960 jazz suite?
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker. They renamed its dances as they went, so the Sugar Plum Fairy became 'Sugar Rum Cherry' and the march became the 'Peanut Brittle Brigade'.
Q 11Which bandleader's orchestra took over Ellington's Harlem residency in the early 1930s?
Cab Calloway
Cab Calloway. His band stepped in when Ellington's moved on, and in 1931 he recorded 'Minnie the Moocher', the song that made him the 'Hi-De-Ho' man.
Q 12In 1926 Ellington signed with which agent-publisher, who then took co-writing credit on many of his songs?
Irving Mills
Irving Mills. He also demanded a share of the royalties from those songs, and in 1939 the two parted ways.
Q 13Ellington's orchestra became the house band at which Harlem venue in December 1927?
The Cotton Club
The Cotton Club. King Oliver was offered the job first and turned it down, so the opening fell to the younger Ellington.
Q 21Barney Bigard, who brought Ellington the 'Mood Indigo' theme, grew up in which city?
New Orleans
New Orleans. By Bigard's own account his old teacher from there, Lorenzo Tio, later brought him the tune in New York, and he reworked it before handing it to Ellington.
Q 22What did Ellington do to the trumpet, trombone and clarinet in his 'Mood Indigo' arrangement?
He inverted their usual registers
He inverted their usual registers. The clarinet, normally the top voice, plays at the bottom of its range with the trombone high above it, and the blend became an Ellington trademark.
Q 23At which London venue did Ellington's orchestra make its British debut in 1933, as one act on a variety bill?
Q 14What gave Duke Ellington's orchestra national exposure during its late-1920s Harlem residency?
Weekly radio broadcasts
Weekly radio broadcasts. They carried the band live from a Harlem nightspot that seated only white patrons into homes across the country.
Q 15Which trumpeter's growling style created the hot "Jungle Style" sound of Ellington's early band?
Bubber Miley
Bubber Miley. He made his horn growl through a plunger mute, and when drink cost him his chair in 1929, his replacement Cootie Williams learned the trick and kept the sound alive.
Q 16Which singer added the wordless vocal to Ellington's 1927 recording of 'Creole Love Call'?
Adelaide Hall
Adelaide Hall. By her own account she was humming along in the wings when Ellington heard her, said it was just what he was looking for and had her record it days later.
Q 17A bronze memorial showing Duke Ellington at his piano stands at the Harlem corner of which New York park?
Central Park
Central Park. The pianist Bobby Short began the campaign in 1979, and 18 years passed before the statue rose where Fifth Avenue meets 110th Street.
Q 18Which 1929 short film, Ellington's first, cast him as a bandleader named Duke?
Black and Tan
Black and Tan. Fredi Washington plays a dancer who is dying, and the film ends with the band playing his 'Black and Tan Fantasy' at her bedside.
Q 19Which composer had Ellington's band illustrate his 1932 New York University lecture, likening Duke's music to Delius?
Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger. The Australian-born pianist was a close friend of Delius and heard the same harmonies in Ellington, whom he is said to have ranked with Bach and Delius as the greatest composers ever.
Q 20Which Ellington band vocalist sang on the original 1932 recording of 'It Don't Mean a Thing'?
Ivie Anderson
Ivie Anderson. It was her first record, and she stayed eleven years, even singing in the Marx Brothers film A Day at the Races, until chronic asthma forced her off the road in 1942.
The Palladium
The Palladium. Its manager was reviving the theatre with big variety shows topped by American stars, so the band spent two weeks there as one turn among many.
Q 24The 1935 Ellington short film Symphony in Black introduced which singer to the screen?
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday. She has a small part as a woman mistreated by her lover and sings 'Saddest Tale' in her one scene.
Q 25How did Ellington's band avoid segregated facilities when it toured the American South in 1934?
They travelled in private railcars
They travelled in private railcars. The band ate and slept aboard, at great expense, so nobody had to hunt for a hotel or restaurant willing to serve Black musicians.
Q 26Which member of Ellington's band wrote the 1937 hit "Caravan"?
Juan Tizol
Juan Tizol. By Ellington's account the Puerto Rican valve trombonist played him the opening bars and the band worked out the rest; a small group recorded it before the full orchestra did.
Q 27Billy Strayhorn was originally hired by Ellington in 1939 in what role?
Lyricist
Lyricist. He had applied for work writing words to Ellington's tunes, but his arranging and composing soon made him the bandleader's closest musical partner for nearly thirty years.
Q 28Which Strayhorn composition became the Ellington band's theme in 1941?
Take the 'A' Train
Take the 'A' Train. In the best-known telling, the title came from the subway directions Ellington gave Strayhorn for reaching his Harlem apartment.
Q 29Which organisation's dispute with radio kept Ellington's own tunes off the air, so a Strayhorn piece became the band's theme?
ASCAP
ASCAP. Ellington's own pieces were licensed through it and vanished from the airwaves, so Strayhorn, who was not yet a member, had to supply the band with a fresh book of tunes.
Q 30Which Strayhorn ballad, written while he was a student in Pittsburgh, caught Ellington's attention in December 1938?
Lush Life
It was originally titled 'Life Is Lonely'; Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio and raised in Pittsburgh.