ABSTRACT
Early Life Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in Washington, D.C, on April 29, 1899. His parents, James Edward and Daisy Ellington, were moderately well-to-do middle-class blacks. James Edward was a popular butler and caterer in Washington, often serving at the White House, and later he worked as a blueprint reader and tracer at the Navy Yard. Both he and Daisy were cultured, well-read, and musically inclined, traits that Edward and his younger sister, Ruth, would share in the future. Neither of the Ellington children would suffer from a lack of creature comforts or social opportunities. Edward would later write that his father "spent and lived like a man who had money, and he raised his family as though he were a millionaire."
