{"id":62970,"date":"2025-11-05T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T00:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/?post_type=lecture&#038;p=62970"},"modified":"2026-03-30T16:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T20:50:15","slug":"ellington-armstrong-and-basie","status":"publish","type":"lecture","link":"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/lecture\/ellington-armstrong-and-basie\/","title":{"rendered":"Ellington, Armstrong, and Basie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"wp-block-umw-hero alignfull umw-custom-block umw-hero umw-hero--dark-text umw-hero--white umw-hero--with-no-media\"><div class=\"umw-hero__inner\"><div class=\"umw-hero__media\"><\/div><div class=\"umw-hero__title\"><div class=\"container\"><div class=\"umw-hero__title__wrapper\"><div class=\"umw-hero__eyebrow\">great lives lecture series<\/div><h1 class=\"umw-hero__title__header\"><strong><strong>Ellington, Armstrong, and Basie<\/strong><\/strong><\/h1><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block-umw-hero-ctas alignfull\"><div class=\"umw-hero__links\"><div class=\"container\"><div class=\"umw-hero__links__wrapper\">\n\n\n\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-lecture-date-february-19-2026\">Lecture Date: February 19, 2026<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-davenport-amp-company-lecture\">The Davenport &amp; Company Lecture<\/h3>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/08\/Armstrong_cover.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1280\" height=\"1932\" src=\"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/08\/Armstrong_cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-62959\" style=\"width:276px;height:auto\" title=\"\" srcset=\"\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/08\/Armstrong_cover.jpg 1280w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/08\/Armstrong_cover-199x300.jpg 199w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/08\/Armstrong_cover-678x1024.jpg 678w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/08\/Armstrong_cover-768x1159.jpg 768w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/08\/Armstrong_cover-1018x1536.jpg 1018w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/08\/Armstrong_cover-755x1140.jpg 755w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians, the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of twentieth-century America:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Duke Ellington<\/strong>, the grandson of slaves who was christened Edward Kennedy Ellington, whose story is as layered and nuanced as his name suggests and whose music transcended category.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Louis Daniel Armstrong<\/strong>&nbsp;born in a New Orleans slum so tough it was called The Battlefield. His first musical instrument, a ten-cent tin horn that drew buyers to his rag-peddling wagon, set him on the road to elevating jazz into a pulsating force for spontaneity and freedom.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>William James Basie<\/strong>, too, grew up in a world unfamiliar to white fans\u2014the son of a coachman and laundress who dreamed of escaping every time the traveling carnival swept into town, and who finally engineered his getaway with help from pianist and composer Fats Waller.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>What is far less known about these groundbreakers is that they were bound not just by their music or even the discrimination that they, like nearly all Black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries by opening America\u2019s eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music. In the process they wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/presentation\/d\/18FTe1HiTUOF3WhFQeBOOq7FT-Ao-oBT7\/edit?usp=sharing&amp;ouid=103238403274382254745&amp;rtpof=true&amp;sd=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">VIEW PHOTO SLIDESHOW<div class='arrow'><\/div><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-speaker-larry-tye\">Speaker: Larry Tye<\/h2>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/10\/tye-larry.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1270\" src=\"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/10\/tye-larry.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-63026\" style=\"width:324px;height:auto\" srcset=\"\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/10\/tye-larry.jpg 1200w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/10\/tye-larry-283x300.jpg 283w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/10\/tye-larry-968x1024.jpg 968w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/10\/tye-larry-768x813.jpg 768w, \/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2025\/10\/tye-larry-1077x1140.jpg 1077w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Larry Tye is a <em>New York Times<\/em> bestselling author whose first book, <em>The Father of Spin<\/em>, is a biography of public relations pioneer Edward L. Bernays. His seven other books cover topics as diverse as the modern-day Jewish diaspora; Black men who worked on George Pullman\u2019s railroad sleeping cars and helped kick-start the Civil Rights movement; star baseball pitcher Satchel Paige and politicians Robert F. Kennedy and Joseph McCarthy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From 1986 to 2001, Tye was an award-winning reporter at <em>The Boston Globe<\/em>, where his primary beat was medicine. He also served as the Globe\u2019s environmental reporter, roving national writer, investigative reporter, and sports writer. Before that, he was the environmental reporter at <em>The Courier-Journal<\/em> in Louisville, and covered government and business at<em> The Anniston Star<\/em> in Alabama. A graduate of Brown University, Tye was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1993-94. He taught journalism at Boston University, Northeastern, and Tufts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"umw_cb_additional_links":[[]],"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_advisory_expires_time":"","_advisory_meta_include":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"season":[1263],"class_list":{"0":"post-62970","1":"lecture","2":"type-lecture","3":"status-publish","5":"season-1263","6":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.9 (Yoast SEO v26.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ellington, Armstrong, and Basie - Great Lives<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatlives\/lecture\/ellington-armstrong-and-basie\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ellington, Armstrong, and Basie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lecture Date: February 19, 2026 The Davenport &amp; 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