Today it is 117 years ago since the wonderful life of Duke Ellington began. Every year on this day we salute him with Happy Birthday and sit down to talk about his legacy and enjoy our favorite Ellington recordings.
Duke Ellington Society of Sweden (DESS) has as its main objective to promote and maintain the interest in the music and life of Duke Ellington and to get new groups to share this interest.
Every time we meet we talk among ourselves how we can do this even better and bring further value to the members of DESS and to the international Duke Ellington network.
This has made us to decide to honor the Duke with a very special birthday present – a completely new DESS website. We hope that it will expose even better his legacy and bring members and friends together around it.
Consequently, we have tried to make it dynamic and rich in information and we will ensure that it is updated frequently. It has also been designed to serve as a platform for discussions and exchange of information between DESS members and other friends of Duke Ellington.
As a service to the international Duke Ellington community, the website will be available in both Swedish and English.
The DESS Board is very grateful to Ulf Lundin, who has used his combined knowledge of the Internet and Duke Ellington to develop the website. In this task he has been assisted mainly by two eminent and knowledgeable DESS-members, Göran Axelsson and Anders Asplund.
We hope to see you here often.
For the Duke Ellington Society of Sweden
Leif Jönsson
Chairman of the Board