When Visiting Professor of Music Kristen Strandberg spoke during the Wally Tunes Symposium in February about Duke Ellington’s relationship with Wabash College (Sir Duke and his band played twice here), one of her resources was the Ellington-Busard Collection in the Ramsay Archives at Wabash. Donated to the archives by Broward and Mary Busard, the collection includes 78 rpm recordings of Ellington’s bands between 1926 and the late 1940s, with an additional 300 recordings of other bands of that era, along with band memorabilia.
Broward, who was born with cerebral palsy, became an Ellington fan in the 1920s when he heard the band broadcast from the Cotton Club. He met Ellington in 1931 and they remained friends until Ellington’s death in 1974. Among the items in the collection are these Christmas cards from Ellington and a ticket to the Billy Strayhorn Scholarship Fund Benefit, which the Busards attended in 1968.
—Beth Swift is the archivist for The Robert T. Ramsay, Jr. Archival Center