Jazz Articles about Don Ellis

Don Ellis: Don Ellis at Fillmore

by Jim Santella
September 26, 2005

What a memorable album. I guess I grew up on this one. That was back when my hair still had color, my knees both worked quite well, and I still had that “fresh out of college" attitude that took me off in many directions at once.

Don Ellis takes you off on a whirlwind ride, using electronic trumpet, complex meters, superb big band arrangements, and a cast of experienced sidemen who blow the walls down. Lest you've forgotten ...

Don Ellis: Tears of Joy

by Jim Santella
September 13, 2005

Recorded at San Francisco's Basin Street West in 1971, Tears of Joy marked a subtle change in the Don Ellis big band. The trumpeter was gradually drifting toward popular music, and he was beginning to use the new electronic technology to its best advantage. However, he continued to load each arrangement with the kinds of musical features that have always left their unique stamp on his undertakings. Ellis and his other soloists stretch out with virtuosity while complex rhythms and ...

Don Ellis: Connection

by Jim Santella
September 6, 2005

In the early 1970s, Don Ellis reshaped his big band, dropping the three acoustic basses and substituted one Fender bass. His guitarist added echoplex effects and wah-wah sensations, taking the group away from its straight-ahead big band sound and plunging it into the electronic decade. The band got connected to pop culture.

Ellis made a few changes from the standpoint of his trumpet leadership, too. His bright post bop technique, with its fluid syncopation, continued to lead with ...

Don Ellis: Essence

by Michael McCaw
September 2, 2005

Essence is a gem of an album that warranted reissue long before now. Originally pressed for Pacific in 1962, it's firmly rooted in a lot of the sounds developed during the sixties--one foot steeped in the tradition and the other lunging towards new ideas. And like the best music, it retains its excitement some forty years later.Don Ellis' early recordings usually featured trumpet-led ensembles full of the angles that permeate his more recognized big band work that emerged ...

Don Ellis: Live At Montreux

by Jim Santella
July 4, 2004

Recorded 27 years ago, this album from the Don Ellis library contains all the rhythmic and polyphonic excitement that you’d expect from such a pioneer in modern big band jazz. With this CD release, the original LP has been augmented by the addition of three previously unreleased tracks that came from the same Montreux performance.

With his trumpet in hand, and an instrumentation that exceeds the norm, Ellis gave the world a remarkable sound. His compositions and ...

Don Ellis, Dave Douglas, and the 'Progression' of Jazz

by Marshall Bowden
October 28, 2003

A few weekends ago I was watching reruns of the old Ed Sullivan Show on my local PBS station, when who should appear but Don Ellis. I had been a bit of an Ellis fan in my rock-influenced teenage years, and it was interesting and a bit surreal to suddenly see him on my television screen leading his big band, dressed in full sixties sartorial regalia. During the end of the 1960s and into the '70s, Ellis led ...

Don Ellis: Live at Montreux

by C. Michael Bailey
September 20, 2002

Living and Dying in 7/8 time...

Don Ellis no more gave a damn about the status quo in Jazz than the man in the moon did. He was not so much an iconoclast as a creative, happy-go-lucky creator of interesting music who was not so much out to make a point as to try something new and different and maybe make some descent music at the same time. Koch Jazz and re-released Ellis’ last recording, Live at Montreux, in an ...