Ellington’s current position in the jazz canon isn’t the best measuring device to gauge the importance of these performances. Opinion toward his music varied greatly during the era of his Carnegie run and though there were those who readily took stock in his genius, most musical intellectuals outside jazz remained highly skeptical of his merits as a serious composer of superlative music. Prior to his debut at Carnegie Hall in 1943 the only other jazz musician who had been afforded the honor of performing there was Benny Goodman. Ellington’s unit did hold the distinction of being the first primarily African-American orchestra to play the venue. Pressure from a variety of diverse constituents ranging from the reigning jazz intelligentsia to the far larger and encompassing Black community itself to make good on the promise must have been daunting in the extreme. Judging from Leonard Feather’s liners (which, incidentally make for a fascinating read) Duke took it all in stride and made the most of what must have seemed like a monumental opportunity.

Organized as a benefit for the Russian War Relief Fund the January 1943 concert also served as a premiere for one of Ellington’s most ambitious long-form suites- “Black, Brown and Beige”. Composed as tribute to and treatise on the resiliency, fortitude and patriotism of colored Americans the Suite’s three parts symbolize in succession (according to Feather): the work song/spiritual traditions of slavery days, African American participation in American military endeavors and the urban Black cultural milieu of the early half of the 20th century. Overall the suite in these newborn stages feels slightly erratic, buckling somewhat under the pregnant weight of Duke’s many intended themes, which in and of themselves, make for difficult musical translations. The orchestra confronts these challenges with collective zeal, bringing the charts to radiant life with ample verve and precision, but there are also sections where they seems to fall back into the safety net of communal riffing. The frontline soloists carry most of the weight through the grueling duration, routinely firing off individual sermons that embellish on the section work specially designed by Duke to their individual strengths. Perusal of musicians on hand should be enough to corroborate the staggering talent brought to bear on the formidable suite and the program in its entirety. Rex Stewart, Ray Nance, Juan Tizol, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, Sonny Greer-- each man contributes in his own unique way to the overarching success of the date.

Opening with a rousing, but fairly rote reading of the national anthem the orchestra pushes full steam ahead into several standards from the Ducal songbook leading off with “Black and Tan Fantasy.” Nance’s growling vocalized brass steals the spotlight and recalls vintage Bubber Miley and Cootie Williams from orchestra’s ‘Jungle Band’ days. He unpacks his violin for Mercer Ellington’s “Moon Mist” yielding a lead voice suffused with romance and emotion that is matched by bittersweet replies from Hodges horn and Brown’s soothing brass. Together the trio of soloists rides the tune out and carries the concert to an early artistic peak. Nance’s strings make another impressive appearance later in the concert jousting with Greer’s imperious tympani on the Tizol penned classic “Bakiff.” A trilogy of musical portraits follows, each one painting a vivid aural likeness of its respective dedicatee. Of the three pieces it’s “Bojangles” which stands out most prominently thanks to the contagious rhythms of Greer, which mirror the influential dancer’s jaunty steps and a rasp-heavy wailing solo from Webster.

Strayhorn’s “Dirge” proves the most experimental fare of the date (other than the sprawling Suite centerpiece). Classically tinged and structured around the indigo colors of muted brass and chalumeau clarinet, Feather suggests in the liners that audience was somewhat puzzled by the piece’s inclusion in the program. Soon after the concert the composition was dropped from the orchestra repertoire and it’s a shame because the dark layered harmonies make for an intriguing listen. The remainder of the program is filled with many familiar pieces including the Webster feature “Cotton Tail” and “Jack the Bear,” where bassist Raglin pays respects to the dearly departed Jimmy Blanton. Ellington’s own comments preface many of the pieces, almost to the point of longwinded intrusion in some instances. But there are sections, as during the breaks in the Suite, where his explanations offer instructive elaboration on the music.

Feather recounts that critical reactions to the concert didn’t reflect the unanimous praise Ellington was shooting for, but expectations but the seeds must have been planted sufficiently because roughly two years later the orchestra made a triumphant return in the form of December 1944. In the interim between concerts the band weathered a series of personnel changes, most due to draft inductions caused by World War II. Heavyweight soloists like Webster and Tizol left the ranks, but their replacements were well in place by the time the winter engagement rolled around.

As with his Carnegie debut, Ellington took the occasion to trace his orchestra’s history as well as showcase new compositions. Most notable among the latter is another extended piece, this time scripted by Strayhorn, entitled “The Perfume Suite.” Less ambitious in terms of length and relative complexity than “Black, Brown and Beige” this musical character study describes in aural terms the shifting moods of a woman intoxicated by the various fragrances at her disposal. It’s a piece that perfectly embodies the majesty of the Ellington orchestra and the pan-tonal palette of colors personified in the rich roll call of players, most arrestingly in Cat Anderson’s soaring solo on the suite-closing “Coloratura.” Other music in the program (and the later 46’ and 47’ concerts) also touches upon the coloristic attributes of the band both in terms of the pieces and the titles ascribed them. Tunes like “Blutopia” and “Transblucency” capture the linguistic imagination the listener and stand as protean examples of the intensely clever nomenclature employed by their composer.

Ellington prudently chose to revisit his earlier suite as well; this time opting for choice selections from its labyrinthine girth further refining them into well-crafted stand-alone compositions. In their streamlined guises the pieces field the same emotive impact while enjoying an increased thematic flexibility. The recording fidelity is also markedly improved on this second visit, with much of the surface noise carefully excised to reveal even greater dynamic range in the orchestra’s ensemble exchanges. Early highlights arise in the rollicking swing shuffle of Strayhorn’s “Midriff” supported by the reeds and brass in full attendance, and the gentle falsetto croon of Kay Davis’ voice, which trades choruses with Nance’s surly brass and Carney’s gilded clarinet on a glowing rendering of “Creole Love Call.” Even Raglin gets in on the solo action during “Pitter Panther Patter,” somewhat muffled in the cavernous space, but still playing a pivotal role in the piece’s architecture. Showing yet another side of his multifarious artistry Nance offers up a saucy vocal on “It Don’t Mean a Thing” following up with a scalding arco break on violin. Later tunes like “Blue Cellophane,” and the closing folk-derived encore “Frankie and Johnny” maintain the high caliber of musicianship and focus.

More than a year elapsed before the Ellington Orchestra’s next engagement at Carnegie Hall in January 1946. Once again the interim visited changes upon the organization in the form of shifting and ailing personnel. The presence of tandem bassists in the form of Al Lucas and his youthful understudy Oscar Pettiford makes for one of the most exciting alterations in the ensemble sound, a precedence first set (according to liner scribe Stanley Dance) in the 30s. Dance’s incisive liners explore the pressures that public opinion and expectation exacted on Ellington’s compositional direction and intention during this time. The rigors of the concert stage and all the pomp and ostentatious excess that went along with it thankfully shaded Ellington’s outlook in only minor musical ways. This third concert in the series suggests that despite the often-vainglorious surroundings his jazz roots and credentials remained relatively uncorrupted. Many of the familiar favorites are still on the menu like “Caravan” and “Take the ‘A’ Train,” both given effective though comparatively tempered readings. The orchestra also revisits sections of the stalwart “Black, Brown and Beige,” once again slightly retooled for the new line-up and audience.

A series of new compositions make strong appearances as well including the three-pronged “A Tonal Group,” which serves as the band’s customary long-form vehicle for the concert. The piece offers effective juxtapositions of various soloists alone and in combination and celebrates the pronounced tonal variations between instruments through inventive harmonic layering. The individual movements themselves are regrettably affixed with trite titles, but the quality of the music thankfully transcends them.

As a whole the program marks a departure from previous concerts in Ellington’s assertion that the emphasis is on extolling the individual and collective abilities of musicians themselves rather than the band’s compositional brilliance. The result is that several of the pieces such as the Carney conveyance “Sono,” while containing absorbing solos, end up shortchanging the orchestra as a whole. It’s a questionable trend particular noticeable during “Air Conditioned Jungle” where Hamilton’s fluttering clarinet sounds especially vulnerable and naked negotiating Ellington’s melodic minefield, much of the time with only Al Lucas’ stout strings to support him. Tipping another top hat to the bassists in the band Pettiford is tapped as Ellington’s partner on the piano trio piece “Pitter Panther Patter.” Later tunes like “Magenta Haze,” where Hodges pristine alto shines effulgently, and “Suburbanite,” which gives Sears burning tenor the chance to thrill the crowd, guide Ellington’s insistence on showcasing soloists to a more effective fruition.

Setbacks of a meteorological kind befell the band two years later on the occasion of the December 1947 concert. Beginning two days prior to the performance date a snowstorm ensued which eventually left Manhattan blanketed in over two feet of snow. The inclement conditions understandably took their toll on both orchestra and audience. Fortunately promoters had possessed the fortitude to book a second show and the band rallied its forces with much finer effect on the following evening. It’s this subsequent date that comprises the set issued by Prestige, with the concert closing “Trumpets No End” being the only holdover from the ill-fated first night.

As with earlier concerts in the series the orchestra is a blend of fresh and veteran faces. Fixtures like Hodges, Carney and Greer stand beside future old hands like Glenn, Procope and Killian. Nance is among the frontline again as well and his return is a welcome one. Again, Ellington opts for a program that revolves around a central extended composition, the six-part Liberian Suite, commissioned in honor of Liberia’s centennial. This time out he also includes a number of rarities that due to a variety of factors, including an impending recording ban, were not recorded again under his leadership. Strangely, a dozen pieces originally omitted from the LP version of the release are also absent on the compact disc reissue including a Billy Strayhorn composition featuring three music students (on French horn, flute and piano) that sounds quite compelling. Liner scribe J.R. Taylor describes each edited piece in detail and contends that many were below Ellington par, but given the accommodating running time of digital media their exclusion still seems puzzling.

The music that is included goes a long way toward shoring the gaps. Sounding off with an early and brilliantly realized medley of many of his signature pieces Hodges jogs through an obstacle course of shifting tempos and melodies with the endurance and ease of a long distance runner. Hearing his alto sally forth in such a centralized space is a sublime experience and one of the set’s most beautifully revealing sections. Carney and Hamilton are awarded similar solo honors to lesser effect on “Mella Brava” and “Kickapoo Joy Juice” respectively, neither of which made it to recorded form outside this Carnegie performance. The later “Theme Medley,” a collection of early Jungle Band referents, serves as Nance’s stomping grounds and he bleats and whinnies through his muted brass with ample relish. With “On a Turquoise Cloud” the band veers onto experimental terrain. Carney hoists his bass clarinet and Kay Davis’ wordless vocals twine in ethereal confluence with Hamilton and Brown in stating a seraphic theme. “Basso Profundo” suffers from a diminished duration, but even in its brief two minutes the splendid empathy between bassists Raglin and Pettiford is exquisitely commemorated. Ellington’s own turn in the limelight comes with “The Clothed Woman” where the maestro shows his modernist side melding throwback stride elements with near atonal flourishes.

Ellington’s quartet of recorded Carnegie Hall concerts on Prestige preserve an essential period in the Maestro’s variegated career. The 1940s were a time of constant transition both within the orchestral organization and in the larger contexts of jazz and American music as a whole. The onset of economic and war related recording bans depleted the former ease of documenting the ever-evolving music for posterity. For a composer of Ellington’s fecundity this meant significant stretches where the only forum for the dissemination of newly devised works was the performance stage. As these concerts illustrate such live settings were both incubators and proving grounds for the band, evidence of both its stamina and ability to adapt to its leader’s constant innovations. The cumulative prestige garnered from the concerts is one of the traceable forces that led Ellington to ascend to his current and justly deserved place of veneration. Each one exists as a precious archival entry in the living history of what arguably remains the most influential orchestral unit ever birthed on American soil. By most accounts, and with the music as a true and unbiased measure, all were affairs to remember. Thanks to these meticulously remastered and well-priced sets each one is readily available and will remain so for years to come.

Prestige on the web: http://www.fantasyjazz.com

January 1943

Disc One: The Star Spangled Banner (1:13)/ Black and Tan Fantasy (6:36)/ Rockin’ in Rhythm (4:14)/ Moon Mist (3:23)/ Jumpin’ Punkins (3:02)/ Portrait of Bert Williams (2:48)/ (Portrait of) Bojangles (3:14)/ Portrait of Florence Mills (Black Beauty) (3:39)/ Ko-Ko (2:00)/ Dirge (3:03)/ Stomp (Johnny Come Lately) (2:18)/ Are You Stickin’? (3:02)/ Black (First Movement of Black, Brown & Beige) (20:44). Disc Two: Brown (Second Movement of Black, Brown & Beige) (10:10)/ Beige (Third Movement of Black, Brown & Beige) (13:29)/ Bakiff (5:56)/ Jack the Bear (2:56)/ Blue Belles of Harlem (6:03)/ Cotton Tail (2:40)/ Day Dream (3:27) Boy Meets Horn (5:20)/ Rose of the Rio Grande (2:08)/ Don’t Get Around Much Anymore (4:11)/ Goin’ Up (3:42)/ Mood Indigo (4:34).

Orchestra: Duke Ellington- piano; Rex Stewart, Harold Baker, Wallace Jones- trumpets; Ray Nance- trumpet, violin; Tricky Sam Nanton, Juan Tizol, Lawrence Brown- trombones; Johnny Hodges, Ben Webster, Harry Carney, Otto Hardwicke, Chauncey Haughton- reeds; Fred Guy- guitar; Junior Raglin- bass; Sonny Greer- drums; Betty Roche- vocal; Billy Strayhorn- assistant arranger. Recorded: January 23, 1943, NYC.

December 1944

Disc One: Blutopia (4:19)/ Midriff (3:33)/ Creole Love Call (5:42)/ Suddenly It Jumped (2:31)/ pitter Panther Patter (2:35)/ It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) (3:46)/ Things Aint What They Used to Be (4:57)/ Perfume Suite: Introduction (:58), Sonata (3:10), Strange Feeling (4:46), Dancers in Love (2:21), Coloratura (2:43). Disc Two: From Black Brown & Beige: Work Song (6:21), The Blues (5:03), Three Dances: West Indian Dance/ Creamy Brown/ Emancipation Celebration (5:58), Come Sunday (11:11)/ The Mood to Be Wooed (4:34)/ Blue Cellophane (3:04)/ Blue Skies (Trumpets No End) (2:45)/ Frankie and Johnny (7:43).

Orchestra: Duke Ellington- piano; Rex Stewart, Taft Jordan, Cat Anderson, Shelton Hemphill- trumpets; Ray Nance- trumpet, violin, vocal; Tricky Sam Nanton, Lawrence Brown, Claude Jones- trombones; Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Otto Hardwicke, Al Sears, Jimmy Hamilton- reeds; Fred Guy- guitar; Junior Raglin- bass; Hillard Brown- drums; Kay Davis, Marie Ellington, Al Hibbler- vocals; Billy Strayhorn- assistant arranger. Recorded: December 19, 1944, NYC.

January 1946

Disc One: Caravan (3:45)/ In a Mellow Tone (2:54)/ Solid Old Man (3:35)/ From Black, Brown & Beige: Spiritual (Come Sunday)/ Work Song (12:06), The Blues (5:08)/ Rugged Romeo (3:09)/ Sono (5:04)/ Air-Conditioned Jungle (5:45)/ Pitter Panther Patter (2:14). Disc Two: Take the “A” Train (3:26)/ A Tonal Group: Melloditti (7:30), Fugueaditty (2:40), Jam-a-ditty (3:34)/ Magenta Haze (4:41)/ Diminuendo in Blue/ Transblucency (7:28)/ Crescendo in Blue (3:40)/ Suburbanite (3:28)/ I’m Just a Lucky So and So (4:32)/ Riffin’ Drill (2:26).

Orchestra: Duke Ellinton- piano; Taft Jordan, Cat Anderson, Francis Williams, Shelton Hemphill- trumpets; Lawrence Brown, Claude Jones, Wilbur de Paris- trombones; Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Otto Hardwicke, Al Sears, Jimmy Hamilton- reeds; Al Lucas- guitar; Oscar Pettiford- bass; Sonny Greer- drums; Joya Sherrill, Kay Davis, Al Hibbler- vocals; Billy Strayhorn- assistant arranger. Recorded: January 4, 1946, NYC.

December 1947

Disc One: The New Look (Snibor) (3:27)/ Blue Serge (4:16)/ Triple Play (5:39)/ Harlem Airshaft (3:10)/ A Johnny Hodges Medley: Wanderlust/ Junior Hop/ Jeep’s Blues/ Jeep is Jumpin’/ Squatty Roo/ The Mood to Be Wooed (6:15)/ Mella Brava (3:44)/ Kickapoo Joy Juice (3:37)/ On a Turquoise Cloud (3:33)/ Bakiff (5:54)/ Cotton Tail (3:04). Disc Two: Liberian Suite: I Like the Sunrise (4:50), Dance #1 (4:52), Dance #2 (4:09), Dance #3 (3:46), Dance #4 (4:13), Dance #5 (5:08)/ Theme Medley: East St. Louis Toodle-oo/ Echoes of Harlem/ Black and Tan Fantasy/ Things Ain’t What They Used to Be (6:29)/ Basso Profundo (2:08)/ New York City Blues (4:42)/ The Clothed Woman (4:27)/ Trumpets No End (Blue Skies) (2:42).

Orchestra: Duke Ellington- piano; Harold Baker, Al Killian, Francis Williams, Shelton Hemphill- trumpets; Ray Nance- trumpet, violin; Lawrence Brown, Claude Jones- trombones; Tyree Glenn- trombone, vibraphone; Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Russell Procope, Al Sears, Jimmy Hamilton- reeds; Fred Guy- guitar; Oscar Pettiford, Junior Raglin- basses; Sonny Greer- drums; Kay Davis, Al Hibbler- vocals; Billy Strayhorn- assistant arranger. Recorded: December 27, 1947, NYC.

Fantasy on the web: http://www.fantasyjazz.com