Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free Duke Ellington trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 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 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Duke Ellington's real first name?
Edward
His full name was Edward Kennedy Ellington; the Kennedy came from his mother Daisy's maiden name.
Q 02In which city was Duke Ellington born and raised?
Washington, D.C.
He moved to New York in the mid-1920s and became part of the Harlem Renaissance.
Q 03Which instrument did Duke Ellington play?
Piano
Both his parents were pianists too: his mother played parlour songs and his father preferred operatic arias.
Q 04How did Ellington get the nickname "Duke"?
Childhood friends thought his manner and dress were aristocratic
Ellington credited his friend Edgar McEntee, who felt he needed a title to be eligible for his constant companionship.
Q 05As a boy, what was Duke Ellington more interested in than his piano lessons?
Baseball
He recalled President Theodore Roosevelt stopping on his horse to watch the boys play, and his first job was selling peanuts at Washington Senators games.
Q 06What was Ellington's first job?
Selling peanuts at Senators baseball games
He later worked as a soda jerk, a sign painter and a messenger for the U.S. Navy and State departments.
Q 07What was Ellington's first composition, written in 1914 while he worked at the Poodle Dog Café?
Soda Fountain Rag
He composed it by ear before he could read or write music, and played it as a one-step, two-step, waltz, tango and fox trot so listeners never knew it was the same piece.
Q 08Ellington turned down a scholarship in 1916 to study which subject at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn?
Art
He was studying commercial art at Armstrong Manual Training School and dropped out three months before graduating.
Q 09What day job did Ellington use to drum up bookings for his early dance bands?
Sign painter
When a customer ordered a sign for a dance or party, he would ask whether they had booked music yet.
Q 10What was Ellington's first band, formed in late 1917, called?
The Duke's Serenaders
His telephone directory advertising proclaimed them the "Colored Syncopators"; his first date at True Reformer's Hall earned him 75 cents.
Q 11The group Ellington took over in early 1924, after banjoist Elmer Snowden left, was known by what name?
The Washingtonians
It had started as Elmer Snowden and his Black Sox Orchestra during a four-year engagement at the Hollywood Club at 49th and Broadway.
Q 12In October 1926 Ellington signed with which agent-publisher, who took a 45 percent stake in him?
Irving Mills
Mills regularly took a co-composer credit and arranged sessions on nearly every label of the day.
Q 13Ellington's orchestra became the house band at which Harlem venue in December 1927?
The Cotton Club
Q 21In which city did Ellington compose 'It Don't Mean a Thing' during intermissions at the Lincoln Tavern in 1931?
Chicago
It contains one of the earliest uses of the word 'swing' in popular music, and Ellington said the title was the credo of the dying trumpeter Bubber Miley.
Q 22Barney Bigard learned the 'Mood Indigo' theme from his teacher in which city?
New Orleans
Bigard's teacher Lorenzo Tio called it a 'Mexican Blues'; the tune was originally titled 'Dreamy Blues' for a 1930 radio broadcast.
Q 23What did Ellington do to the trumpet, trombone and clarinet front line in his 'Mood Indigo' arrangement?
He inverted their usual registers
The booking had first been offered to King Oliver, who turned it down; Ellington had to expand from six to eleven players to audition.
Q 14What gave the orchestra national exposure during its late-1920s Harlem residency?
Weekly radio broadcasts
The club's revues mixed comedy, dance numbers, vaudeville, burlesque, music and illicit alcohol.
Q 15Which trumpeter's growling style created the hot "Jungle Style" sound of Ellington's early band?
Bubber Miley
Miley composed most of "Creole Love Call" and "Black and Tan Fantasy" but left because of alcoholism and died in 1932 aged 29.
Q 16Whose 1927 'Creole Love Call' with the Ellington orchestra was their first hit?
Adelaide Hall
Hall sang wordless vocals; Ellington had earlier written songs for the revue Chocolate Kiddies in which she starred.
Q 17Under what pseudonym were Ellington's OKeh records usually issued?
The Harlem Footwarmers
The Brunswick sides were usually issued as The Jungle Band; the other two names were also used.
Q 18What was Ellington's first film, a 1929 RKO short in which he played "Duke", titled?
Black and Tan
The next year he appeared with the orchestra in the Amos 'n' Andy film Check and Double Check.
Q 19Which composer said the three greatest composers who ever lived were Bach, Delius and Duke Ellington?
Percy Grainger
Grainger added that unfortunately Bach was dead and Delius very ill, but Ellington was with them that day.
Q 20Which Ellington vocalist sang on the 1932 recording of 'It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)'?
Ivie Anderson
She stayed 11 years, the longest of any Ellington vocalist, leaving in 1942 for health reasons.
Muted trumpet, muted trombone and clarinet blended into a sound that became one of his trademarks.
Q 24At which theatre did the Duke Ellington Orchestra make its British debut on June 12, 1933?
The Palladium
They were one of 13 acts on the bill and limited to eight short numbers, but Ellington got an ovation just for walking on stage.
Q 25The 1935 Ellington short film Symphony in Black introduced which singer to the screen?
Billie Holiday
The film won the Academy Award for Best Musical Short Subject.
Q 26How did the Ellington band avoid segregated facilities on its 1934 tour of the American South?
They travelled in private railcars
The railcars provided accommodation, dining and storage for equipment.
Q 27Which member of Ellington's band wrote the 1937 hit "Caravan"?
Juan Tizol
Tizol was a valve trombonist; Charles Mingus was fired from the band in 1953 after four days following a fight with him.
Q 28Billy Strayhorn was originally hired by Ellington in 1939 in what role?
Lyricist
Nicknamed 'Sweet Pea', he became Ellington's writing and arranging companion for nearly 30 years and often stood in for him at the piano.
Q 29Which Strayhorn composition became the Ellington band's theme in 1941?
Take the 'A' Train
The title came from subway directions Ellington wrote out so Strayhorn could find his house in Harlem.
Q 30Which organisation's 1940 ruling forced the band to adopt a Strayhorn tune as its signature?
ASCAP
Ellington's own ASCAP-registered music could not be broadcast during the dispute; Strayhorn was not yet a member.