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About Duke Ellington And His Orchestra
Instrument: Band / ensemble / orchestra
Duke Ellington And His Orchestra: The Treasury Shows, Volume 18
by Chris Mosey
As Duke Ellington leads his band into the opening bars of “Take The A Train," a mighty roar goes up from the radio audience. The moment comes four tracks into the first CD of this double Storyville release, after a somewhat shaky start. With it there's a marvellous feeling of being back in 1946 at the height of Ellington's popularity. The experience is worth having to put up with the patronising ABC Radio master ...
Continue ReadingDuke Ellington And His Orchestra: The Treasury Shows Vol. 17
by Chris Mosey
Don Lowe's exultant cry, “Here he is, and in person, the Duke himself!" kicks off the 17th of the Duke Ellington Treasury Show radio broadcasts, part of a massive reissue project by the Danish Storyville label. Anxious to show how hip, perhaps even hep, he is, the American Broadcasting Corporation announcer goes on to introduce “C-Jam Blues" as a number that's “really here to stay, but solid." In contrast, Ellington behaves with quiet dignity, ...
Continue ReadingDuke Ellington Orchestra: Big Bands Live
by Dan McClenaghan
By 1967, the heyday of the big band was over. Rock and Roll ruled as the popular music of the day, and the financial challenges of keeping a large ensemble together for recording--and especially touring--were huge. But Duke Ellington--one of American's finest bandleaders, pianists, and composers--was more than just a genius in the field of music. He also succeeded as a business man, keeping his orchestra not only busy on the road, but also creating his finest art--what he called ...
Continue ReadingDuke Ellington: Far East Suite
by Kurt Gottschalk
Duke Ellington's Far East Suite has never enjoyed the accolades lauded upon some of the Maestro's other major works. Black, Brown and Beige and Such Sweet Thunder are in the Ellington canon; Far East, it seems, was left behind.That may be due to its dated Orientalism. It was recorded in 1966, a strange few years when jazz was looking to other cultures for inspiration but not embracing ethnic traditions the way it would in the coming decades (witness, ...
Continue ReadingDuke Ellington: Masterpieces By Ellington
by C. Michael Bailey
Two Hundred Fifty-Plus Words on Ellington, Part I.Columbia Records waited until the end of 1950 before recording directly to tape, enabling pieces longer that the biblical three minutes to be recorded. All of this, in spite of the fact that long playing records debuted two years previously. This occasion was the first time in Ellington’s 25-year recording history that the maestro was able to slough off the 78-rpm format and record what he and his band played in ...
Continue ReadingDuke Ellington Orchestra: The Treasury Shows, Vol. 1
by Dave Nathan
On April 7, 1945, Duke Ellington begand a series of shows sponsored by the U. S. Treasury Department which ended 45 shows later on October 5, 1946. These albums were released by Sweden's Phontastic label's Nostalgia Series beginning in the early 1980's. Now almost 20 years later, Denmark's excellent Storyville label begins an undertaking to reissue all of these sessions on CD. Not a favorable commentary on our domestic labels when important sessions of this country's greatest composer have to ...
Continue ReadingDuke Ellington: Ellington At Newport 1956 (Complete)
by C. Michael Bailey
Eating Crow in the Snow These very words sprung from this critic's mouth: “Miles Davis was more important to American Music than Duke Ellington." Nothing could be further from the truth. Both men are important, essential artists to read about and listen to if one desires to understand American Music, specifically, Jazz. But my previous statement was foolhardy hero-worship. Within the electrons of this magazine space, I have my “Desert Island" top ten recordings. One of these is Ellington At ...
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