Duke Ellington - Spotlight on Duke Ellington '2021

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. In A Sentimental Mood
02. Mood Indigo
03. Solitude
04. Lotus Blossom (Live At The Whitney Museum/1972)
05. Passion Flower
06. Prelude To A Kiss (Live At Cote DAzur, France, 7/28/1966)
07. Stompy Jones
08. Wabash Blues
09. West Indian Pancake (Live At Cote DAzur, France, 7/27/1966)
10. Limbo Jazz
11. Caravan
12. Sophisticated Lady / Solitude (Live At The Whitney Museum/1972)
13. My Little Brown Book
14. Loveless Love
15. Self Portrait (Of The Bean)
16. Satin Doll (Live At The Whitney Museum/1972)
17. Take The A Train (Live At Cote DAzur, France, 7/28/1966)
18. Day Dream
19. Weary Blues
20. Wanderlust
21. The Feeling Of Jazz
22. C-Jam Blues (Live At The Whitney Museum/1972)
23. Take The Coltrane
24. Cottontail
25. Diminuendo In Blue And Blow By Blow (Live At The Cote dAzur/1966)


 Read Full BiographyThe group gradually increased in size and came under
Ellingtons leadership. They played in what was called jungle style, their sly
arrangements often highlighted by the muted growling sound of trumpeter James
Bubber Miley. A good example of this is Ellingtons first signature song, East
St. Louis Toodle-oo, which the band first recorded for Vocalion Records in
November 1926, and which became their first chart single in a re-recorded
version for Columbia in July 1927.

The Ellington band moved uptown to The Cotton Club in Harlem on December 4,
1927. Their residency at the famed club, which lasted more than three years,
made Ellington a nationally known musician due to radio broadcasts that emanated
from the bandstand. In 1928, he had two two-sided hits: Black and Tan
Fantasy/Creole Love Call on Victor (now BMG) and Doin the New Low Down/Diga Diga
Doo on OKeh (now Sony), released as by the Harlem Footwarmers. The Mooche on
OKeh peaked in the charts at the start of 1929.

While maintaining his job at The Cotton Club, Ellington took his band downtown
to play in the Broadway musical Show Girl, featuring the music of George
Gershwin, in the summer of 1929. The following summer, the band took a leave of
absence to head out to California and appear in the film Check and Double Check.
From the score, Three Little Words, with vocals by the Rhythm Boys featuring
Bing Crosby, became a number one hit on Victor in November 1930; its flip side,
Ring Dem Bells, also reached the charts.

The Ellington band left The Cotton Club in February 1931 to begin a tour that,
in a sense, would not end until the leaders death 43 years later. At the same
time, Ellington scored a Top Five hit with an instrumental version of one of his
standards, Mood Indigo released on Victor. The recording was later inducted into
the Grammy Hall of Fame. As the Jungle Band, the Ellington Orchestra charted on
Brunswick later in 1931 with Rockin in Rhythm and with the lengthy composition
Creole Rhapsody, pressed on both sides of a 78 single, an indication that
Ellingtons goals as a writer were beginning to extend beyond brief works. (A
second version of the piece was a chart entry on Victor in March 1932.)
Limehouse Blues was a chart entry on Victor in August 1931, then in the winter
of 1932, Ellington scored a Top Ten hit on Brunswick with one of his
best-remembered songs, It Dont Mean a Thing (If It Aint Got That Swing),
featuring the vocals of Ivie Anderson. This was still more than three years
before the official birth of the swing era, and Ellington helped give the period
its name. Ellingtons next major hit was another signature song for him,
Sophisticated Lady. His instrumental version became a Top Five hit in the spring
of 1933, with its flip side, a treatment of Stormy Weather, also making the Top
Five.

The Ellington Orchestra made another feature film, Murder at the Vanities, in
the spring of 1934. Their instrumental rendition of Cocktails for Two from the
score hit number one on Victor in May, and they hit the Top Five with both sides
of the Brunswick release Moon Glow/Solitude that fall. The band also appeared in
the Mae West film Belle of the Nineties and played on the soundtrack of Many
Happy Returns. Later in the fall, the band was back in the Top Ten with Saddest
Tale, and they had two Top Ten hits in 1935, Merry-Go-Round and Accent on Youth.
While the latter was scoring in the hit parade in September, Ellington recorded
another of his extended compositions, Reminiscing in Tempo, which took up both
sides of two 78s. Even as he became more ambitious, however, he was rarely out
of the hit parade, scoring another Top Ten hit, Cotton, in the fall of 1935, and
two more, Love Is Like a Cigarette and Oh Babe! Maybe Someday, in 1936. The band
returned to Hollywood in 1936 and recorded music for the Marx Brothers film A
Day at the Races and for Hit Parade of 1937. Meanwhile, they were scoring Top
Ten hits with Scattin at the Kit-Kat and the swing standard Caravan, co-written
by valve trombonist Juan Tizol, and Ellington was continuing to pen extended
instrumental works such as Diminuendo in Blue and Crescendo in Blue. If You Were
in My Place (What Would You Do?), a vocal number featuring Ivie Anderson, was a
Top Ten hit in the spring of 1938, and Ellington scored his third number one hit
in April with an instrumental version of another standard, I Let a Song Go out
of My Heart. In the fall, he was back in the Top Ten with a version of the
British show tune Lambeth Walk.

The Ellington band underwent several notable changes at the end of the 1930s.
After several years recording more or less regularly for Brunswick, Ellington
moved to Victor. In early 1939 Billy Strayhorn, a young composer, arranger, and
pianist, joined the organization. He did not usually perform with the orchestra,
but he became Ellingtons composition partner to the extent that soon it was
impossible to tell where Ellingtons writing left off and Strayhorns began. Two
key personnel changes strengthened the outfit with the acquisition of bassist
Jimmy Blanton in September and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster in December. Their
impact on Ellingtons sound was so profound that their relatively brief tenure
has been dubbed the Blanton-Webster Band by jazz fans. These various changes
were encapsulated by the Victor release of Strayhorns Take the A Train, a swing
era standard, in the summer of 1941. The recording was later inducted into the
Grammy Hall of Fame.

That same summer, Ellington was in Los Angeles, where his stage musical, Jump
for Joy, opened on July 10 and ran for 101 performances. Unfortunately, the show
never went to Broadway, but among its songs was I Got It Bad (And That Aint
Good), another standard. The U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941 and
the onset of the recording ban called by the American Federation of Musicians in
August 1942 slowed the Ellington bands momentum. Unable to record and with
touring curtailed, Ellington found an opportunity to return to extended
composition with the first of a series of annual recitals at Carnegie Hall on
January 23, 1943, at which he premiered Black, Brown and Beige. And he returned
to the movies, appearing in Cabin in the Sky and Reveille with Beverly.
Meanwhile, the record labels, stymied for hits, began looking into their artists
back catalogs. Lyricist Bob Russell took Ellingtons 1940 composition Never No
Lament and set a lyric to it, creating Dont Get Around Much Anymore. The Ink
Spots scored with a vocal version (recorded a cappella), and Ellingtons
three-year-old instrumental recording was also a hit, reaching the pop Top Ten
and number one on the recently instituted R&B charts. Russell repeated his magic
with another 1940 Ellington instrumental, Concerto for Cootie (a showcase for
trumpeter Cootie Williams), creating Do Nothin Till You Hear from Me. Nearly
four years after it was recorded, the retitled recording hit the pop Top Ten and
number one on the R&B charts for Ellington in early 1944, while newly recorded
vocal cover versions also scored. Ellingtons vintage recordings became
ubiquitous on the top of the R&B charts during 1943-1944; he also hit number one
with A Slip of the Lip (Can Sink a Ship), Sentimental Lady, and Main Stem. With
the end of the recording ban in November 1944, Ellington was able to record a
song he had composed with his saxophonist, Johnny Hodges, set to a lyric by Don
George and Harry James, Im Beginning to See the Light. The James recording went
to number one in April 1945, but Ellingtons recording was also a Top Ten hit.

With the end of the war, Ellingtons period as a major commercial force on
records largely came to an end, but unlike other big bandleaders, who disbanded
as the swing era passed, Ellington, who predated the era, simply went on
touring, augmenting his diminished road revenues with his songwriting royalties
to keep his band afloat. In a musical climate in which jazz was veering away
from popular music and toward bebop, and popular music was being dominated by
singers, the Ellington band no longer had a place at the top of the business;
but it kept working. And Ellington kept trying more extended pieces. In 1946, he
teamed with lyricist John Latouche to write the music for the Broadway musical
Beggars Holiday, which opened on December 26 and ran 108 performances. And he
wrote his first full-length background score for a feature film with 1950s The
Asphalt Jungle.

The first half of the 1950s was a difficult period for Ellington, who suffered
many personnel defections. (Some of those musicians returned later.) But the
band made a major comeback at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, 1956, when
they kicked into a version of Dimuendo and Crescendo in Blue that found
saxophonist Paul Gonsalves taking a long, memorable solo. Ellington appeared on
the cover of Time magazine, and he signed a new contract with Columbia Records,
which released Ellington at Newport, the best-selling album of his career. Freed
of the necessity of writing hits and spurred by the increased time available on
the LP record, Ellington concentrated more on extended compositions for the rest
of his career. His comeback as a live performer led to increased opportunities
to tour, and in the fall of 1958 he undertook his first full-scale tour of
Europe. For the rest of his life, he would be a busy world traveler.

Ellington appeared in and scored the 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder, and its
soundtrack won him three of the newly instituted Grammy Awards, for best
performance by a dance band, best musical composition of the year, and best
soundtrack. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his next score, Paris
Blues (1961). In August 1963, his stage work My People, a cavalcade of
African-American history, was mounted in Chicago as part of the Century of Negro
Progress Exposition.

Meanwhile, of course, he continued to lead his band in recordings and live
performances. He switched from Columbia to Frank Sinatras Reprise label
(purchased by Warner Bros. Records) and made some pop-oriented records that
dismayed his fans but indicated he had not given up on broad commercial
aspirations. Nor had he abandoned his artistic aspirations, as the first of his
series of sacred concerts, performed at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco on
September 16, 1965, indicated. And he still longed for a stage success, turning
once again to Broadway with the musical Pousse-Café, which opened on March
18, 1966, but closed within days. Three months later, the Sinatra film Assault
on a Queen, with an Ellington score, opened in movie houses around the country.
(His final film score, for Change of Mind, appeared in 1969.)

Ellington became a Grammy favorite in his later years. He won a 1966 Grammy for
best original jazz composition for In the Beginning, God, part of his sacred
concerts. His 1967 album Far East Suite, inspired by a tour of the Middle and
Far East, won the best instrumental jazz performance Grammy that year, and he
took home his sixth Grammy in the same category in 1969 for And His Mother
Called Him Bill, a tribute to Strayhorn, who had died in 1967. New Orleans Suite
earned another Grammy in the category in 1971, as did Togo Brava Suite in 1972,
and the posthumous The Ellington Suites in 1976.

Ellington continued to perform regularly until he was overcome by illness in the
spring of 1974, succumbing to lung cancer and pneumonia. His death did not end
the band, which was taken over by his son Mercer, who led it until his own death
in 1996, and then by a grandson. Meanwhile, Ellington finally enjoyed the stage
hit he had always wanted when the revue Sophisticated Ladies, featuring his
music, opened on Broadway on March 1, 1981, and ran 767 performances.

The many celebrations of the Ellington centenary in 1999 demonstrated that he
continued to be regarded as the major composer of jazz. If that seemed something
of an anomaly in a musical style that emphasizes spontaneous improvisation over
written composition, Ellington was talented enough to overcome the oddity. He
wrote primarily for his band, allowing his veteran players room to solo within
his compositions, and as a result created a body of work that seemed likely to
help jazz enter the academic and institutional realms, which was very much its
direction at the end of the 20th century. In that sense, he foreshadowed the
future of jazz and could lay claim to being one of its most influential
practitioners. ~ William Ruhlmann

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