Duke (98 page)

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Such official recognition had always been important to a U Streeter like Ellington, who included in
Music Is My Mistress
a fifteen-page list of his “honors and awards.” Among other tributes great and small, he noted that he was an honorary deputy sheriff of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, and a member of the Poultry and Egg National Board’s “National Good Egg Club.”

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It was Ellington’s long-accustomed salutation, and it puzzled the president. “Four kisses? Why four?” Nixon asked. “One for each cheek, Mr. President,” he replied.

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Both remained incomplete at the time of his death and were finished by other hands.