Duke Ellington

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

There's something very hard to cover about Ellington. I'm part of a jazz facebook group that has a different theme each week where various musicians post their videos on that theme, and this week it's Duke Ellington. Somehow nearly everyone sounds dumb when playing Ellington tunes.

https://dgwh4hty77sxy.cloudfront.net/9107-medium_zoomcrop/image.jpg

very fine is this, Strayhorn out of Ellington's shadow for an album and with it seems most of his band and Johnny Hodges.

bought a used copy of the Latin American Suite on RSD, what a stunning record

his ability to synthesize latin music into what he did without resorting to cliche tropes or signifiers like "hey check it out - congas!" is really amazing

such ambitious music, reminds me a bit of the "third stream" stuff I've heard but without a stick up its butt

his ability to synthesize latin music into what he did without resorting to cliche tropes or signifiers like "hey check it out - congas!" is really amazing

otm, and The Far East Suite is similarly brilliant in this regard. There's no "Hey, let's throw a sitar and/or koto into the arrangement TO PROVE WE WERE REALLY THERE." Those late '60s and early '70s suites are some of my favorite work of his.

I need to track down Far East Suite what are the other ones?

New Orleans Suite is a fucking masterpiece for starters.

The New Orleans Suite is great, as is The Private Collection, Volume 5 which includes two suites: "The Degas Suite," and "The River," the latter of which includes a theme later used on New Orleans Suite.

The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse is essential; if you like Latin American Suite, you'll love this.

There's a compilation called The Ellington Suites which includes The Queen's Suite (1959), The Goutelas Suite (1971), and The Uwis Suite (1972) -- not quite on the same level as Afro-Eurasian, but still pretty fascinating.

love the suave intro by Duke on Afro-Eurasian Eclipse as well, it never gets old.

Rikki tikki

Queens Suite is on the level of the others but I agree the other two suites on that cd are not quite.

all the Private Collection albums are excellent, especially the studio recordings

xps
I should have mentioned you should check out Afro Bossa as well.

yeah, private collection boxes are fantastic (and usually pretty cheap).
recent ellington I've been getting into is the concert in the virgin islands (which confusingly is not a live record). great version of "chelsea bridge".

I have that and Afro Bossa on a weird 2fer but I have not really put them through their paces yet

picked up a nice copy of New Orleans Suite yesterday, wow....this lives up to my expectations

this is really intensely rewarding music

thanks everyone, been slowly picking some of these up and it's good to have recommendations

recently been listening to a lot of this one:

https://www.discogs.com/Duke-Ellington-An-Explosion-Of-Genius-1938-1940/release/2949550

Love so many of those tracks - got to know them on the excellent Braggin' in Brass album of his 1938 sides. "Pyramid" is an excellent cousin to "Caravan."

yeah "Pyramid" is really a standout there

just saw "anatomy of a murder" the other night, after long admiring the soundtrack. was VERY cool to see how the music was used in the film.

i really dug the scene from the club where ellington's jazz band can be seen playing. here they are:

https://imgur.com/Qvyjcb1

to the best of my knowledge that's L-R grady tate, jimmy woode, clark terry, jimmy hamilton.

is that right ? i would've thought sam woodyard would be playing drums, but this guy doesn't look anything like him.

also i like how ellington is called "pie-eye" in the film. cool bass drum design, too:

https://imgur.com/a/qgCuvNJ

oh FUCK

ok here we are:

https://i.imgur.com/Qvyjcb1.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/YRd9fHp.jpg

Cool. I need to watch it too.

really love cootie williams' vocals on this tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O9bnB4_9UY
PECKIN' - Johnny Hodges and his Orchestra, vocal by Cootie Williams (1937)

that doesn't look like grady tate to me. Wiki says the soundtrack is James Johnson on drums. Having trouble finding a good pic of him to compare.

Yes to Peckin'. My fav of his jive songs.

Also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA1gfjvpFOE

A new series has launched called Ellington In Order, a remastering of just about everything Duke recorded.

That’s good!

There is no physical release; it’s streaming-only.

That’s bad.

https://open.spotify.com/album/4ornuDeqxrpKPMnh5zKxNN?si=5hGa-gJJQdCX-j92fEV8yQ

hmmm — yeah, seems like they could do one of those 100+ CD sets a la Beethoven or Bach ... it'd probably sell!

Exactly — and considering the target audience for Ellington isn’t likely to be listening via streaming, a big CD box a) would presumably be cheap to produce, and b) would sell.

But at least this material is finally getting remastered, especially his ‘20s sides — I don’t think the 1991 OKeh Ellington set has ever gotten a sonic upgrade.

A new series has launched called _Ellington In Order_, a remastering of just about everything Duke recorded.

_That’s good!_

There is no physical release; it’s streaming-only.

_That’s bad._

https://open.spotify.com/album/4ornuDeqxrpKPMnh5zKxNN?si=5hGa-gJJQdCX-j92fEV8yQ🕸

Ah, the Hoffman forum has the answer: it’s just Sony-owned stuff (which now they own the Victor masters is a lot).

True, it's not everything Duke recorded, and I'm not enough of an expert to know how much tune-overlap there was from one label to another, especially among the smaller labels. But supposedly the Vocalion material isn't part of this, which is odd since I assumed Sony owned those, like they do Robert Johnson's Vocalion sides.

Last I knew the Vocalion stuff was owned by Decca, now owned by Universal.

The RCA Victor stuff alone is huge. The "Centennial" box set from 1999 was probably the last time any of those records were remastered from the best sources from RCA's vaults. (I *think* it was mostly original metal parts too, which is typically rare but not that surprising for an artist of Duke's stature.) I used to covet that set - a whopping 24 CD's - but the mastering was really bad. If you listen to any of the Ellington stuff John R. T. Davies mastered, it's clear they jacked up the high end and did something wrong where you have that loud high-pitched noise that shouldn't be there. (Has nothing to do with typical surface noise, they just messed something up with those transfers.)

Some great RCA LP's like ...and his mother called him Bill and Far East Suite but I really want the Blanton-Webster band records from 1940 to 1942 re-done, that alone took up six discs of the Centennial box set thanks to the additional duets and small combo stuff which was also great. If it's available as a download, I'll settle for that - again, it's been close to 25 years since this stuff has been remastered.

Should clarify, "it's clear they jacked up the high end and did something wrong" is in reference to RCA's 1999 Centennial set.

Comparing the two versions of The Mooche the Victor version sounds really sharp and the Okey version sounds about the same general quality as I remember from 90s CDs.

I didn’t even know the opening track, so neat to walk though his career the way the band experienced it.

but I really want the Blanton-Webster band records from 1940 to 1942 re-done

The very existence of that massive RCA box was frustrating — I wasn’t going to shell out $400 or whatever it was for a bunch of things I already had, things I didn’t necessarily want (the Tanglewood concert), and things I was sure would get their own release soon anyway (Blanton-Webster). The mastering of the Blanton-Webster recordings was, as you said, poorly done, but it was actually a marked improvement over the ‘80s CDs of that band, which sounded like a landline phone. A year or so after the big box came out, RCA started releasing many of its elements as standalone sets (e.g., the mid-‘40s recordings 3CD set, which actually sounds fairly decent)…but it was years until the Blanton-Webster material got its own release. When it finally came out it was in cheap, flimsy packaging, and then it quickly went out of print. I hope this current project brings the same necessary fidelity to these recordings that, say, the most recent Robert Johnson set received.

It looks like Ellington In Order is available for download on HDTracks. I listened to a few samples, compared them with The OKeh Ellington, and...this feels like a missed opportunity. Maybe the comparison to the Robert Johnson set isn't fair (after all, guitar and voice is probably easier to futz with mastering-wise than a 12-15 piece orchestra), but the new remasters don't sound dramatically different. They do sound different, and a little better -- slightly fuller, a little more bass -- but it's not the revelation it could or should have been. I dunno, I probably had unrealistic expectations that advancements in technology over the last 30+ years would've resulted in more of a sonic upgrade. ymmv.

i remember getting the remastered Blanton-Webster CD set in the mid-'00s. it sounded fucking awful because they decided to leave in all this digital clipping, or something?

https://i.discogs.com/LkVQURXYwybpf77OllTlS47I9e6ITPkFqsNJGqvJGpA/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:543/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI2MDI3/MzYtMTYxNzUwMTYw/MS02MTA3LmpwZWc.jpeg

so i have stuck with my original CD from the '80s. much better in my opinion:

https://i.discogs.com/wMShlgdGSP8MLEbXuVMg2qsVHbi8R6GZOWIYkz5RKSQ/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:594/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTEwMTc1/MTQ3LTE2MzE0MzY0/MzgtNTgxNi5qcGVn.jpeg

but i'd be interested in checking out another, new remaster of these recordings.

Yeah, that was a real disappointment — same mastering as on the big 1999 RCA box, as far as I know. Things like “Jack The Bear” especially are really frustrating for what you mentioned, when the reeds come in at the beginning — I don’t think it’s digital distortion, but just a shitty mastering job that over-emphasized the high end so that any distortion on the 78 would be magnified. That said, I still prefer it to the ‘80s set, but it sucks that the choice is limited to either something that sounds like a megaphone, or dealing with that brittle/bright mastering.

For early ‘40s Ellington, the 1940 Fargo set has vastly superior sound to any ‘40s Ellington studio recordings I’ve heard. I’d almost recommend it to a newbie over the ‘40s studio dates for that reason, despite not having certain key songs (like “‘A’ Train”), and you really get a sense of how exciting it must have been to see that orchestra live.

If you want a cheap, easy way of hearing how good early '40s Ellington can sound, find this CD:

https://www.discogs.com/release/4740444-Duke-Ellington-Rockin-In-Rhythm

Very common, very cheap, but it was remastered by the late, great John R. T. Davies. (Part of a series of jazz samplers that formed a survey on jazz history, courtesy of the UK magazine publisher Marshall Cavendish.) "Ko-Ko," "Cotton Tail" and "Jack the Bear" actually sound natural - no shrill EQ, no excessive noise but no noise processing like NoNoise or CEDAR either. It's a damn shame Davies didn't do a complete and comprehensive collection before he died.

this is what I have, any of you tru headz wanna comment on the mastering/sound?

https://www.discogs.com/release/2949550-Duke-Ellington-An-Explosion-Of-Genius-1938-1940

Sony/RCA put out a 4CD set in 2008 covering 1932-1939 in what I assume are newer transfers than The Okeh Ellington. The mastering is less aggressive than the RCA Centennial box. I always thought the latter sounded remarkably present but also, as mentioned above, unduly harsh at times with that weird high-pitched noise coming in, usually toward the end of a track.

...but that set doesn't cover the Okeh material, I see. Never mind, carry on!

in my opinion, for pre-war ellington, you need:

The Okeh Ellington 2xCD (Columbia) [1927-1930]
The Complete 1936-1940 Variety, Vocalion & Okeh Small Group Sessions 7xCD (Mosaic)
The Blanton-Webster Band 3xCD (RCA Bluebird) [1940-1942]

curious what others would add, but this has been enough for me.

Just now seeing: In Order Volume 1 (1927-1928)---43 songs, 2 hrs. 11 min.--is also on YouTubeMusic; maybe they've got the rest, or will have:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l_NlTYi1pu5LbIIUR-eDP6MPfBuUSMJD4