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1978 Hindsight records
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The final volume of Duke Ellington radio transcriptions from Hindsight records cover performances from June 9 and 10, 1947 with one chorus of "Take the 'A' Train" from March 26, 1946. Though this material may not be considered essential Ellington listening, there is the wonderful playing of his sidemen and the arrangements which are truly amazing in themselves. To view the other posts on Ellington's uncollected volumes, and then some, select the label "Duke Ellington".
The band includes Shelton Hemphill, Taft Jordan, Harold Baker, Francis Williams, Ray Nance, and Wilbur (Dud) Bascomb on trumpets, Tyree Glenn, Lawrence Brown, Claude Jones, and Wilbur DeParis on trombones, Russell Procope, Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Hamilton, Al Sears, and Harry Carney on saxophones, Ellington on piano, Fred Guy on guitar, Oscar Pettiford on bass, and Sonny Greer on drums.
Like on the last volume, Ellington rethinks four standards songs: "How High The Moon" contains some hemiola figures à la "It Don't Mean A Thing" and trumpeter Shorty Baker's masterful take on the melody. As with most arrangements on this album, the backgrounds are telling a story and they continually develop as we hear solos from Jimmy Hamilton on clarinet and Harry Carney on Bari. Ellington likes to add transitional figures between choruses and as if that weren't enough, there's a coda with new material and whole-tone-ish harmonies.
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1977 UK cover
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"Blue Lou" is a Swing Era standard and this is a good example of the unpredictable arranging by Ellington: the saxes are featured first on the melody (including a quote from "Perdido"), followed some trumpet flourishes before quieting down to a piano solo accompanied only by bass. After a short transition section, the band comes back in alternating ensemble hits with a bass solo. I'm under the impression that those charts did not have a lot of repeat sings.
"Royal Garden Blues" featuring contrasting trumpets with Baker's open horn before Ray Nance's raucous, extroverted muted wa-wa sound. He basically plays the way Clark Terry (or maybe it's the other way around or...). The backgrounds again are exciting and seem to be developing the melody of the tune---every soli sounds like the opening melody but develops into something else. The highlight is trombonist Lawrence Brown's solo who plays loud and proud blues against a shuffle rhythm. The performance ends with build up towards a polyphony of backgrounds.
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Kay Davis
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"Embraceable You" is the other standard and is in some ways fairly standard, consisting of one chorus of vocalist Kay Davis. But a spare bass and drum accompaniment is decorated by Ellington's supportive accompaniment that spans from the middle to the high register of the piano and low, quiet horns playing ominous sounding pads. It's simple but effective.
These bolder arrangements with straight-forward dance material with good swing grooves and a repetitive melodies and backgrounds such as Fred Fisher's "Blue in the Night". Ellington's "Frisky" sounds like it could easily have been a standard but is little known, perhaps because the melody is more instrumental than vocal.
My interest in this period of the band is due to the presence of bassist Oscar Pettiford and he has many solo spots on this record. Ellington recognized his facility on the instrument and it seems to be less about a feature than the bass being another tone color for Ellington to choose from. The bass and piano introduction to "Swamp Fire" feature Pettiford playing some fire. But even when it seems to be Ellington's turn to solo, Pettiford will not hesitate to interject some fills and the pianist will let his bassist play as he does so here. He also does this on the blues "Park at 106th".
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| Cover from "Essentially Ellington" |
There are a plethora of tonal colors on Mercer Ellington's "Jumpin' Punkins", another tune of this period, including piano theme accompanied by chords on the bass, drum fills scattered throughout (Sonny Greer also gets a short spotlight on "Swamp Fire"), bari sax solo against trombone backgrounds and responses, clarinet soli, and bass fills leading into a bass solo. It's one of the longer tracks at 3:54, but still there's a lot going on. It's still grooves very around, but the more I listen to this period of Ellington the more it seems like the band was a laboratory for his (and Strayhorn's?) ideas.
I emphasize Ellington more with the arrangement because on Strayhorn's tunes, "Violet Blue", and others from the uncollected series, are so distinctive from the other tunes. A ballad, it contains some terrific writing and an eye for beautiful tonal colors, but there's something more haunting and mysterious about Strayhorn's works. After a short solo piano intro, the eight-bar theme is played by Hodges and the band,. Another short solo piano interlude leads into Hodges' solo this time on a twelve-bar blues with some nice harmonic twists. The second chorus of solo features more tradition chord changes with repeated trombone backgrounds before returning to the main theme (the 'Violet' section?). It swings really hard, but is played so quietly and delicately. Truly one of the undersung performances and arrangements by the Ellington band and Strayhorn.
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2001 compilation from Spain containing all material from
the Uncollected Duke Ellington volumes 1-5 |
Hodges co-wrote "Far Away Blues" with Ellington. The melody led by Hodges features plenty of bending and repetition reminiscent of train sounds. The out head is decorated with bass fills from Pettiford. "Jump For Joy" is the title tune from Ellington's 1941 "socially conscious" musical revue and features Nance on vocals. The down-home vibe is accented with simpler harmonies (triads).
"Frustration" follows in the tradition of "Sono" as another concerto for Harry Carney, who would record both piece with string accompniment. The oddly-titled piece has gorgeous voicings and a balanced tonal palette alternating trombones with cup muted trumpets and upper register piano chords. Carney's solo tells a great story and strangely, there is another story in the backgrounds. The finale includes some crunchy trumpet voicings followed by the nasal clarinets with muted trumpet.
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