How many compositions did Ellington actually write?
Erik Weidemann, Andre Hodeir and Gunthur Schuller, Ken Rattenbury, and Jørgen Mathiasen have all tried to quantify Ellington's output. Mathiasen (
DEMS 04/3-58 and Current Research in Jazz vol. 16) has traced approximately 1,700 discrete compositions (not counting variant titles for the same piece):
https://www.crj-online.org/v16/CRJ-EllingtonCompositions.php
Duke Elllington's own count was approximately 5,000 pieces, or 100 compositions per year over a 50-year career, thus about two compositions per week.
Per Duke Ellington, "The Best Years of My Life," "Our World," December 1953 (vol. 8, no. 12), pp. 32, 34:
"I've had the inspiration to write or collaborate on more than 3,000 tunes and our records have sold more than 25 million copies. [....] Am I busy? Working on an average of over 100 tunes a year for the past two decades I've gotten something of a reputation as a musical speed merchant. But don't think I rip off hit tunes in a few minutes while waiting for trains or resting between stage appearances. [....] I'm not a 'formula composer' but most of my music is born in one of two ways. Either I see something which ought to be experienced in music, or some member of the band plays a few inspired bars that remind me of some experience I've felt deeply. [....]"
According to the 1971 edition of Ellington's press manual, "there are well over 5,000 original musical works by Duke Ellington." In about 1972, Brooks Kerr asked Ellington how many pieces he'd written, to which the maestro replied "about 5,000."
So if there were 5,000, yet we can trace only 1,700 today, what became of the other 3,300?
In the 1920s, Ellington sold many of his songs outright, but he recalled he didn't sell any after 1930.
Many of Ellington's songs went no farther than the toilet or waste basket. Two quotes from Rex Stewart illustrate this point. Both are from the
Evergreen Review, December 1966 (reprinted in "
Jazz Masters of the 30's," p. 95):
"I was utterly fascinated when I first saw him deliberately tear into tiny pieces some music that he had spent hours writing. Then, he flushed it down a toilet drain. I couldn't contain my curiosity, so I asked him why he had destroyed it. His reply stunned me; he answered with a smile,
'Well, I'll tell you, Fat Stuff, If it's good, I'll remember it. If it's bad, well I want to forget it and I would prefer that no one catches on to how lousy I can write.
During the years that I spent with Duke, this scene was often repeated, and what he said would come back to me as I watched him flush dreams down the drain."
and
"As I recall, it was a rare day that Duke didn't write something, even if it was only four bars."