Talk:Duke Ellington

Reference
Nick added this passage: "In the special A Walking Tour of Sesame Street with James Earl Jones, Jones' introduction includes a subtle reference to 'Flugel Street Rag,' an Ellington song. Saying he's on the most famous street in the world, he continues that 'it's not Flugel Street, and it's not Pennsylvania Avenue… It's not even the street where you live!.'" It's actually not really clear *what* Flugel Street was referring to, thirty years later. It's true that Ellington co-wrote a song with that title, in 1965, but it doesn't appear to be widely known or performed (that's just going by the internet and books, of course, which aren't always the best judges of these things when it comes to music). I can't find the full lyrics, but it seems possible that the Ellington title was in itself a reference to an old vaudeville routine, performed by Abbott and Costello and others, which asks "Where's Flugel Street?" That routine is the primary result when one does a Google Book Search and it seems reasonable that the Ellington song *may* have been playing with that, but I can't find a copy of the song itself or its lyrics online to check. Jones says the line, but Jim Thurman wrote it and, given his sense of humor and the sometimes obscure references in his scripts (both with and outside of Sesame/the Muppets), the vaudeville connection seems more likely. So I'm mostly just parking this. -- Andrew Leal (talk ) 19:57, November 6, 2009 (UTC)