Hail TO THE Duke.

HE PLAYED the clubs, wrote a couple of Broadway musical scores, did the dance band circuit, recorded his music with his band, appeared in movies and on television, and last but not least, inspired more than fifty choreographers to use his music for their dancing visions.

Duke Ellington brought an elegance to jazz composition that earned the respect of classical musicians, as well as the sidemen in his own band. He connected creatively with as wide an array of choreographers as could imagined: Pierre Lacotte of the Paris Opera; movie pro Hermes Pan and Broadway's Carol Haney; modern dancers Alvin Ailey, Talley Beatty, John Butler, Jean Erdman, Lester Horton, Sophie Maslow and Donald McKayle; as well as television dance pioneer June Taylor and a legion of tap dancers.

What Ellington provided was a rich variety of moods, textures and rhythmic structures laced with emotional coloration that enhanced choreographic expression. To Ailey he was, hands down, one of the twentieth century's most important composers, and in 1976, the "Ailey Celebrates Ellington" festival was organized in Ellington's honor. Ailey choreographed a half-dozen dances for the occasion and invited a handful of admiring choreographers to do the same. He included his amusing play-on-words duet Pas de Duke for Judith Jamison and Mikhail Baryshnikov, as well as The Mooche, a touching suite of dances based on Ellington's tone portraits of female performers Florence Mills, Mahalia Jackson, Marie Bryant and Bessie Smith.

Aware of the black experience in America and elsewhere, Ellington celebrated aspects of that journey in Liberian Suite, Deep South Suite, Creole Rhapsody and Black, Brown, and Beige. The worldly side of him created Sophisticated Lady and Night Creatures and noted the tarnished side of city living in Echoes in Blue.

Ellington was very sympathetic to having his music danced. A varied clutch of tap dancers found sustaining scores to decorate with their own percussive meditations. Among them were Buster Brown, Brenda Bufalino, Danny Buraczeski, Benny Clory, Grover Dale, The Four Step Brothers, Chuck Green, Lynn Dally and the Nicholas Brothers.

Ellington's work habits were a marvel to all. He originally came to New York City from his native Washington, D.C., to make his career as a songwriter. He wrote music wherever and whenever he could, in waiting rooms and hotel lobbies, between sets and even at home on his piano. A legendary feat occurred early in his career when, in one night, he composed the whole score for a revue called Chocolate Kiddies. Then the lure of club life during the Harlem Renaissance claimed him. He celebrated it in his composition Night Creatures, about which he wrote, "Night creatures, unlike stars, do not come out at night--they come on, each thinking that before the night is out he or she will be the star."

Until recently, one of Ellington's most overlooked compositions included a selected number of musical settings of themes from Tchaikovsky' s score for The Nutcracker. The pieces as they appeared were considered interesting novelties but little more. However, these numbers were gathered by choreographer Donald Byrd, who had composer David Berger fill out the action with suitable connective music. Thus was born The Harlem Nutcracker. The Ellington style is clear in his noodling with the familiar themes. It is one composer, talking to another whom he respects, and wanting to present a musical language that was in its developmental infancy during Tchaikovsky's own lifetime.

Choreographers were drawn to Ellington as to no other contemporary composer. He spoke in the rhythmic accents of the twentieth century in a musical idiom developed out of the black experience. To it he brought an elegance of phrasing and a subtlety that remains unique. It is intrinsically stimulating to men and women who dance, and to the choreographers who design those dances.

Contributing editor Don McDonagb is also author of The Rise and Fall and Rise of Modern Dance and the introduction to The Encyclopedia of Modern Dance.