One of Duke’s earliest compositions was the “Soda Fountain Rag”, which he played so many different ways, it was thought that it was several compositions (Gammond, 69). In retrospect, Duke Ellington’s formal music career could be split up into three distinct,masterful periods, when the fruition of his work was most evident. The first period occurred in 1923......... The second phase of Duke’s masterful career came between the late thirties and mid-forties, when Duke began experimenting and reworking his earlier, successful titles, and began to reconstruct them into longer forms, to accentuate his players strengths. Gone was