Jazz Articles about Harry Carney

About Harry Carney

Album Review

Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Fitzgerald Live at Falkoner Theatre Copnhagen 1966

Read "Ella Fitzgerald Live at Falkoner Theatre Copnhagen 1966" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
July 2, 2026

The night before Ella Fitzgerald's historic concert with Duke Ellington in Stockholm, she played two concerts in Copenhagen. For Ella Fitzgerald, this was like playing at home because she had an apartment in the city. It was one place where she felt relaxed and it shows in the music. It is Fitzgerald at her most at ease. In fact, she sings more at this concert than she did in Stockholm The tape emanates from a Danmarks Radio broadcast, ...

Album Review

Duke Ellington: Copenhagen 1964

Read "Copenhagen 1964" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
March 3, 2026

All Duke Ellington concerts offered music of substance. Audiences listened patiently through the medleys and Tony Watkins' vocals. Some performances, however, stood apart because they contained material that was fresh--music not yet worn thin by repetition, where both the thinking and playing could still surprise. Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, and the orchestra toured Asia (the “Far East") in 1963. Rather than immediately writing new compositions, they deliberately allowed the impressions of the journey to settle, preferring that the process ...

Extended Analysis

Duke Ellington's Concert of Sacred Music

by Chuck Lenatti
June 1, 2025

In 1964, Dean D.J. Bartlett and the Reverend John S. Yaryan invited Duke Ellington and his orchestra to present a concert to consecrate the renovated Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill in San Francisco during a year-long festival of Grace. At first, Duke demurred. In his autobiography, Music Is My Mistress (Da Capo, 1976), Ellington explained why he changed his mind: It has been said once that a man who could not play the organ or any ...

Extended Analysis

The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concerts: January 1943

by Chuck Lenatti
November 20, 2024

Duke Ellington was one of the most popular and successful jazz musicians of the first half of the 20th century and according to composer Gunther Schuller and musicologist and historian Barry Kernfeld, “the most significant composer of the genre." Radio broadcasts from his residency at New York's Cotton Club beginning in 1927 extended Ellington's orchestra's national exposure and a parade of hit records, from “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" in 1926 to “C Jam Blues" in 1942, among many ...

Album Review

Duke Ellington: Copenhagen 1958

Read "Copenhagen 1958" reviewed by Ken Dryden

by Ken Dryden
September 9, 2024

Duke Ellington left a formidable discography at his death at the age of 75 in 1974, and it has expanded greatly with the number of concerts that have been uncovered and issued since then. This CD is drawn from two 1958 concerts at KB Hallen in Copenhagen, though they are not sourced from the original, long lost broadcast tapes, but dubs evidently made by a fan. What makes this a valuable find is that the band is in top form ...

Album Review

Duke Ellington: Copenhagen 1958

Read "Copenhagen 1958" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
May 23, 2024

Duke Ellington hated flying so, in 1958, Ellington and Co sailed into Southampton UK to prepare for a tour of Europe. Before going on to Copenhagen, Ellington completed a tour of the UK, taking in Leeds where he met Queen Elizabeth, an event which eventually resulted in the “Queen's Suite." Earlier in the year, his strange obsession with royalty had produced a piece for Princess Margaret, “Princess Blue'" The band was particularly strong in this part of its ...