Duke Ellington

i've said this before on ilm, maybe on this thread, but i was familiar with various things of ellington's for a long time, which i appreciated plenty, prior to him really clicking for me because of the blanton-webster set.

right I know the blanton-webster stuff pretty well, but there's so much else

The first thing I heard after the B-W set was The Far East Suite, which completely floored me. After that, I sought out all late 60s suites.

I used the Penguin Guide as a reference, but I was also taking a tutorial on Ellington in college at the time. Every piece that was played in class, I thought, "Wow, this is great...wow, THIS is great...shit, they're all great."

yeah I like the far east suite

Latin American Suite and Afro-Eurasian Eclipse are nearly as good. "Brasilliance" on the former is just...I mean, what is this?
http://youtu.be/eB1SApN1OM4

if I had to get one ellington primer, you guys would suggest Blanton-Webster? I saw there were a couple of different versions of the set on amazon, both with reviews questions their sound quality.

yeah I'd go with that. I mean, you're going to have some "sound quality" issues on any issue, it's just the nature of the original recordings.

If you're going for that era, get Never No Lament, not the old RCA Bluebird set. Besides the shitty denoise-ing on the Bluebird set, those CDs were/are pretty susceptible to "disc rot."

The period after Blanton-Webster is good, too (sometimes I prefer it), but I've had to live with a Bluebird set analogous to the B-W Bluebird set. The Naxos Jazz Legends "Black, Brown and Beige" CD might be good, though.

i don't have any problems with the sound on the 'never no lament' set (the blanton-webster set i have)

it's 'warm'

yeah never no lament is the one I listen to so maybe I wasn't aware of the problems

one of the things I love about his compositions/arrangements is the way he really lets the countermelodies and harmodies compete with the "melody" in strength, so you don't really get the effect of a "melody" over "chords" but more like moving tonal clusters

like sometimes I don't even feel like there is a single line that sticks out as the melody in the group sections

that's a peculiarity he shares with Delius (I didn't think about it until I read that Percy Grainger quote where he was like "the greatest living composers are Delius and Ellington")

Happy 115th, Duke! 24-hour WKCR birthday broadcast: http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/wkcr/story/duke-ellington-birthday-broadcast-tuesday-april-29th

My high school on NPR
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/29/307785387/the-public-school-where-the-duke-lives-on

Nice. Sting & Paul Simon did a benefit for the school earlier this year

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/matthew-shipp-offers-a-stirring-tribute-to-duke-ellington-at-bohemian-caverns/2014/04/28/978f84ec-cee0-11e3-a714-be7e7f142085_story.html

avante-jazzer Shipp

Would've loved to have seen that. I saw that trio about a month ago, and they were astounding. Shipp incorporated "What Is This Thing Called Love?" (which I took as a nod to his fellow Delawarean Clifford Brown), and Dickey put on one of the most sensitive and inspiring percussion performances I've seen in years.

Did you gasp yesterday when the guy announced the next album as Monkey Jungle!?! After the break he repeated the correct title several times.

Posted by curmudgeon on the RIP thread:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/arts/music/herb-jeffries-singing-star-of-black-cowboy-films-dies-at-100.html?_r=0

Very surprised not only that he was one of the last living Ellingtonians, but that he was the last living member of the Blanton-Webster band.

man, that guy had an interesting life... wonder if the documentary about him is any good?
this clip is something:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORaSnWF2SX4
though i'll admit to never having been nuts about that song

Thanks for posting that! Interesting arrangement, too -- different from what was released at the time.

It took me a while, but I grew to dig his voice. The first Ellington piece I (knowingly) heard was "You, You Darlin'" off the Blanton-Webster band set. I thought his singing was square and corny, but eventually heard how it worked with the rest of the orchestra. I can't imagine "Flamingo" any other way -- even Mingus' version (which is great) feels like something's missing without Jeffries.

The poster Ben Williams of 11 years ago up-thread is eternally otm, some of the greatest music ever created on there.

Lately I cannot stop playing Ellington Uptown, The Far East Suite + Such Sweet Thunder. What a player/artist/arranger, he even makes Mingus sound like a mere gifted acolyte.

whoa never knew that ellington recorded w/ conny plank! this doesn't sound like neu! but it does sound damn good.
https://soundcloud.com/groenlandrecords/duke-ellington-his-orchestra-afrique-take-3-vocal/
As described by Henrik von Holtum, who wrote the album’s liner notes:

Duke Ellington’s musical works are seemingly well documented; the likelihood of finding a good, unreleased Duke Ellington recording is slight at best. When Grönland Records called and told me they had found exactly that in Conny Plank’s estate and asked me if I wanted to give it a listen, I felt pretty honored, and excited. The music of Duke Ellington is – in my worldview – to jazz what Bach’s oeuvre is to classical music: THE great benchmark, or – to raise it up onto an even higher pedestal – the Old Testament, the alpha and omega. With both Bach and Ellington, you can sit down at a piano simply to go through it building chords and something great always happens. This music is so rich, and it is virtually indestructible.

I listened to the recordings for the first time in Grönland Records’ offices. One session, two songs: three takes each of “Alerado” and “Afrique.” They weren’t just alternate takes, like you often get on reissues of jazz classics; you can really hear Ellington working. He’s not just looking for the best take to get something clearly defined, he’s experimenting.

The tempi change, solo instruments are switched around, and, on the last take of “Afrique,” you can even hear soprano vocals. “Alerado” is a straightforward swing number, it features Wild Bill Davis on the organ, and, most notably, Cat Anderson on the trumpet, who provide a foundation for striking concepts of sonority and solo performance. The musical approach to “Afrique” is freer and more avant-garde; the foundation of the piece is a tom-tom based beat that is sustained throughout and layered with improvisations and arranged segments.

Conny was fascinated by how great the difference in tone was between his prior studio work and those takes; the Ellington big band was delivering something totally different, something better than he was accustomed to. It resulted in a recording that even Conny could be happy with. This session seems to have given an important impulse to his work, independent of the praise he received from the master.

This casts the bon mot often attributed to Conny that “every band gets the sound it deserves” in a different light; it no longer comes across as an arrogant remark, but as a clear conception of a simple fact: one can only produce what’s there – if the performance isn’t any good, technology won’t help either. So, for him, it was a moment of realization and revelation.

And ensuring that the performance was spot-on was one of Conny’s great talents. Independently of one another, artists he later produced repeatedly described how vital his kindheartedness, tranquility and circumspection were to producing successful recordings.

so cool

Whoa new exotica-mode Ellington produced by conny plank??? Is this out yet?

out july 10

this is insanely exciting

Seriously can't wait for this.

Wow this will be great.

I have been going through a major Ellington binge for the last couple of months, I have barely listened to much else lately tbh

waht

I didn't know much about Ellington other than his dad was a butler at the White House. I read a bit of the Terry Teachout book today and he portrays him very much as a brilliant last minute-meister who drove his band mad with mad with his consistent idle procrastination, rather than the driven musical Stakhanovite I was expecting. It was an amusing revelation for me(considering his 1700 compositions in 5 decades) that adds to his legend if anything.

Duke salutes the Beatles!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oCnFvz8YKc

https://youtu.be/0eaTmoPmJPU

Duke Ellington - Reflections In D -- a friend posted this.. apologies if it's already in the thread

"Well gentlemen, Sullivan's wardrobe department is letting me off the hook with the lace cuffs, but the rest of you are going to have to roll with it."

I am really getting into Bonga off the Afro Bossa album recently.

You thought the recently-discovered hi-fidelity Armstrong recordings were something?

Dig THIS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEU1bIxZHDo

Digging it

Nice one!

So much bass! Which is to say, there's bass. And guitar too. Really gives a sense of how the early rhythm section would have motored the live orchestra.

this is great: 15 minutes of the ellington tribute at the white house in 1969.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW9PdAY8_D0&feature=youtu.be

Wow! Thanks for posting that!

Always loved this exchange, after Ellington kissed Nixon four times:

Nixon: "Four kisses? Why four?"
Ellington: "One for each cheek."

so suave, flirting with Pat and accepting his Medal of Freedom with a shout-out to Strayhorn

<3

It must have felt good for him to go to the White House as a revered 20th century icon and thinking his old man used to occasionally work as a butler there to get by.

that improv at 8:40...nobody in his league

yeah totally!

a shout-out to Strayhorn
it's funny, i feel like it's become part of the Ellington "narrative" that Strayhorn didn't get the credit he deserved ... but I feel like on virtually every live recording I've heard, Duke gives him a shout out. (i know strayhorn might've been overshadowed by the Ellington genius mythos, but it doesn't seem to be Duke's fault anyway).

I'm loving his Three Suites today, especially his majestic peer gynt.

Finally remembered to play Blue Rose (the mono-LP-era R Clooney collabo). It's really good.