It’s albums like this that remind me of 1) how shallow today’s music is because 2) Duke Ellington’s music is why I got into jazz, particularly since I am now at about the age that he was during this 1959 performance in Berlin. To put this gig into his recording perspective, Duke had just put out a soundtrack for the very hip flick Anatomy of a Murder, released his opus Black, Brown and Beige, and stepped away from the big band to do a couple very hip small group sessions with Johnny Hodges, namely Back to Back and Side By Side. In other words, Duke was on a roll…
He’s got his classic sax section here of Russell Procope, Jimmy Hamilton, Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsalves and Harry Carney along with brass men Clark Terry, Ray Nance, Cat Anderson, Britt Woodman, with ringers including Andres Marenguito/tp and obscure drummer Jimmy Johnson, who gives a fantastic workout to Louis Bellson’s “Skin Deep”, by the way. Whatever happened to this cat?
There are quite a bit of medleys here, but that’s one of the beauties of an Ellington concert; he plays for the audience and then takes them to uncharted waters. Procope and Jackson take you to the twenties on “Black and Tan Fantasy” and “Creole Love Call” and Ellington shines on “I Got It Bad” and the percussive “Caravan”. Vocalist Lil Greenwood does her best with “St. Louis Blues” and “Bill Bailey”, but sounds most at home on the more operatic “Solitude”.
The most fun are the more obscure pieces, such as the small group setting of “Basin Street Blues” with Nance sounding absolutely at home, Carney filling the room with his sonorous tone and circular breathing on “VIP Boogie” and Gonsalves digging in to the Preminger movie tune “Newport Up”. There are also a couple tunes from Ellington’s Such Sweet Thunder masterpiece, as the title tune stomps for Nance and the cleverly Shakespeare’d “Sonnet to Hank Cinq” has the polished brass calling out Stratford Upon Avon. Old, new, borrowed, blue-a joyful wedding of music!