In a historic Duke-meets-Queen encounter the previous year, Ellington served up his famous charm for the monarch. With the help of Billy Strayhorn, he composed The Queen’s Suite, had one record manufactured-and sent it directly to Buckingham Palace, solely intended for Her Majesty’s ears. In this instance, he created a unique album solely for the pleasure of giving it to Queen Elizabeth. Or even generating publicity from the incident-which took place in secret, without fanfare or press releases. We never learned how much financier Martin Shkreli paid for it back then, but the Department of Justice later seized it, and sold it for $4 million -making this the most expensive musical work in history.īut Duke Ellington did the exact same thing in 1959, and without any desire to make money. Back in 2015, the Wu-Tang Clan made just a single copy of its seventh album, and packaged it in a jewel-studded silver box. The recent mania for turning music into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is just the latest iteration of this quest.
Because of the inherent scarcity of one-of-a-kind originals, art works turn into status symbols, with wealthy elites paying exorbitant amounts for the privilege of owning something irreplaceable. Many musicians have long envied visual artists-who can sell unique objects at very high prices.
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