Business Records
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Ellington, Duke, 1899-1974
setName: label: See more items in
content: Duke Ellington Collection
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1938-1988
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives Center, National Museum of American History
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAH.AC.0301, Series 3
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents note
content: Consists of booking contracts and correspondence, tour receipts, personal and band bills and receipts, accounting ledgers, union dues statements, cancelled checks and bank statements, accounting records for several Ellington-owned and operated music companies, tax records and Internal Revenue Service audits, general correspondence, and miscellaneous records.

The records document Duke Ellington's career as a musician, composer, and bandleader between 1938 and 1988, and the operation of several of his and Mercer Ellington's music companies, including Tempo Music, Incorporated; Gaye Records, Incorporated, and Eighty-Eight Records, Incorporated. The records illustrate the complexities of maintaining a stable performing musical group when America's tastes in popular music were shifting away from large swing-style orchestras.

The records are organized into nine subseries: Subseries 3.1, Performance Management Records, 1941-1974; Subseries 3.2, Accounting Ledgers, 1960-1967; Subseries 3.3, Work Dues Statements, 1965-1974; Subseries 3.4, Bank Records, 1955-1974; Subseries 3.5, Tempo Music, Incorporated Records, 1961-1973; Subseries 3.6, Music Company Records, 1938-1965; Subseries 3.7, Tax Records and Internal Revenue Service Audits, 1944-1974; Subseries 3.8, General Correspondence, 1941-1988; and Subseries 3.9, Miscellaneous Records, 1966-1970.