Dr Theodore A. Shell was the President of the Washington Chapter of the Duke Ellington Society. He was a lifelong devotee and personal acquaintance of Duke Ellington. He passed away in 2016 and much of his collection is housed at the Smithsonian Institution.
His collection of reel-to-reel recordings of the Ellington Orchestra was recently offered privately for sale. Here are scans of part of the collection. We do not have a photograph of at least one page from the Shell catalogue (nos. 192 in the inventory to 217). Nevertheless, these scans do give some idea of the extent and scope of the late Mr Shell's collection. They make an interesting comparison to the website ellingtonia.com
It is from private collections such as this and the exchange of recordings that went on between collectors throughout the late twentieth century that the information on ellingtonia.com is drawn.
We are posting the scans of some of the contents of Dr Shell's collection here for the record...
(Click on the images to enlarge)
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