Friday Night Jazz: Duke Ellington
An excellent WSJ article on Duke Ellington (by Nat Hentoff, former Village Voice music critic) has me all excited about a new box set: The Duke Box.
Here's Hentoff's comments:
"I now have a sense of what heaven could be like. For those of us for whom Duke Ellington is rejuvenatingly contemporary, Storyville -- the legendary Danish label, a cornucopia of ageless jazz -- has released "The Duke Box," available on Amazon.com and in record stores. The 1940s Ellington orchestra (his most exhilarating) is heard entirely in "live" performances -- in dance halls (where, as Duke told me, the dancers became part of the music), nightclubs, concert halls, and on radio remotes from around the country.
In the 40-page booklet -- with photographs by Herman Leonard and William Gottlieb, masters of decisive jazz moments -- Dan Morgenstern notes that the sound of Ellington "live" is more vividly realistic than "the dead (non-resonant) studios of that time." (Those studio recordings also do remain essential because Duke insisted on no more than two or three takes a song for maximum immediacy.) But, as I can attest from having been at some of the dance halls and concerts, Ellington and his wondrously distinctive sidemen were most memorably heard in person."
The WSJ was kind enough to move the entire article over to free WSJ as a courtesy to the weekend linkfest (Thanks, Dave!).
C Jam Blues (which sounds an awful lot like Duke's Place)
Satin Doll
Caravan
>
Source:
Ellington's Band Is Heavenly In These 'Live' '40s Recordings
NAT HENTOFF
WSJ, March 28, 2007; Page D11
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117504091320151076.html
Friday, March 30, 2007 | 06:30 PM | Permalink
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Comments
Uncle Barry?... what's a "record store?"
Posted by: Robert Coté | Mar 30, 2007 7:35:26 PM
Jazz is vastly overrated. It only became listenable when Heavy Metal bands began putting Jazzy beats(riffs) on the classical European scale with the electric guitar.
P....Pe....Per.....Per......PER.......PERTS PERTS PERTS!!!!!!
Posted by: Lenny Perts | Mar 30, 2007 8:55:10 PM
Oh No, Lenny -- say it aint so!
Posted by: Barry Ritholtz | Mar 30, 2007 9:09:59 PM
My favorite version of "Caravan" is the one played by James Carter on "J.C. on the Set"
Posted by: microtherion | Mar 30, 2007 10:14:23 PM
"C Jam Blues (which sounds an awful lot like Duke's Place)"
I think they are the same piece--alternate names.
Posted by: Tom B | Mar 30, 2007 11:22:45 PM
Here's one for you, Barry:
John Zorn won the McArthur this year. Some of his stuff is wierd; some is really interesting.
Posted by: Tom B | Mar 30, 2007 11:34:48 PM
"Here's one for you, Barry:
John Zorn won the McArthur this year. Some of his stuff is wierd; some is really interesting."
My post didn't embed. I'll paste the URL:
www.youtube.com/v/Ajl28OdWqtc
Posted by: Tom B | Mar 30, 2007 11:36:28 PM
Tom B...thank you.
Posted by: S | Mar 31, 2007 1:44:32 AM
since no one else has mentioned it, let me say thanks for alerting me to this boxed set, barry.
if the entire recorded history of jazz were to disappear overnight, you could reconstruct every significant element of the music simply by working from the complete ellington.
if i could only pick one ellington album, though, it wouldn't be from the '40s, great as those bands were: it would be the Far East Suite from the mid-'60s, followed by the roughly 1960 (can't recall offhand) "great summit" of armstrong and ellington together....
Posted by: howard | Apr 1, 2007 7:32:57 PM
