; Whereas blues, ragtime, and jazz became the key form of form of cultural expression in Harlem, where legendary artists such as Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Bessie Smith, Count Basie, Ethel Waters, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Ivie Anderson, Mamie Smith, Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, Jelly Roll Morton, and many performers composers and arrangers rose to prominence; Whereas Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington, with Billy Strayhorn, a gay great affectionately known as, Sweet Pea , was a composer, pianist, and jazz orchestra leader for five decades writing over 1,000 songs, and Louis Armstrong, the Jazz Ambassador , became three of the most influential musicians in the history of jazz with a distinctive voice and a unique style; Whereas the era also saw the burgeoning of literary work by and about African Americans by writers like Sterling A. Brown, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larson, Wallace Thurman, and Countee Cullen, to name just a few; Whereas two of the first works that had a significant impact on the culture of the Harlem Renaissance were the poetry anthologies known as Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay and Cane by Jean Toomer; Whereas artist Aaron Douglas, a figure of the Harlem Renaissance, defined a modern visual language that represented Black Americans in a new light and later became known as the father of African-American art , along with noted sculptor Richard Barthe and several leading women artists, including Augusta Savage and Elizabeth Catlett; Whereas acclaimed Black architects including Vertner Woodson Tandy, George Washington Foster, John Lewis Wilson, and Norma Merrick Sklarek all helped to transform the Harlem landscape