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Seventy Year Saturday: 1956, Part Two

Duke Ellington: Ellington at Newport

On July 7, 1956, the Duke Ellington Orchestra played the third annual Newport Jazz Festival, taking the stage as the first act of the third night of the festival — well, almost: several of his band members were running late, so Duke and the musicians that were there played a version of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and a truncated set of two numbers: “Black and Tan Fantasy” and “Tea for Two.” Duke and his band then stepped aside as several “cooler” and “more hip” acts took the stage: Teddy Wilson’s Trio, the Jimmy Giuffre Trio, the musically progressive Chico Hamilton Quintet (with Fred Katz on cello and piano and legendary guitarist Jim Hall), and dynamic “modernist” vocalist Anita O’Day, a flagship artist of the recently-formed Verve label, at the peak of her career following an April 1956 5-star review of her third studio album, eponymously titled Anita, released several months before Elvis Presley’s Elvis album. Elvis, I mean, Anita, was then possibly followed by the Bud Shank Quartet, but I am not sure of the order of the acts.

It is stated that the Duke fidgeted with anxiety backstage watching the more modernist acts, which made his own orchestra seem dated. However, when the time came for his orchestra to take the stage again, they were fired up to continue. Their set included the premier performance of a newly composed Ellington suite, which the band had not sufficiently rehearsed, and the defining moment of the concert: Paul Gonsalves’ 27-chorus solo between the two sections of Ellington’s “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” which, according to reports, incited near-pandemonium amongst the attendees and, as a result, generated a resurgence of public interest, single-handedly reviving the band’s relevance for a new generation of jazz fans.

However, when the time came to release the concert as an LP, Columbia Records had several challenges. The new suite clearly sounded under-rehearsed; saxophonist Johnny Hodges felt his playing was subpar in spots; Ellington was concerned about releasing a flawed representation of his orchestra; and Gonsalves, purportedly drunk during the concert, had misidentified which microphone to play next to, playing into the mic that the Voice of America had set up, making his crowd-stirring solo on “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” sound distant.

So with all those considerations, the band recorded new versions of those numbers that had been selected for the planned “live” album, and producer George Avakian and engineer George Knuerr added the fake crowd noise. The two spent two days in the studio combining live tapes and studio retakes, electronically boosted the live audio as needed, spliced in additional, more noticeable applause, and heavily layered the tracks with reverberation, negatively impacting the general sound quality — all for the purpose of creating a finished product that appeared to be a genuine live festival performance.

The album was released in November of 1956, becoming the best-selling album of Duke’s entire career. It was a true commercial juggernaut, one of the first jazz albums to sell over a million copies, with continuing robust sales worldwide for years after its release. It even reached the number 14 spot on the Billboard Pop Albums chart, sadly not coming close to contending with that aforementioned Elvis album, but doing extraordinarily well for a live big band concert album during those early days of rock n roll. The album created increased demand for the Ellington Orchestra and their recording opportunities, and Ellington famously quipped, “I was born at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956.”

In terms of critical acclaim, reviews of the album were filled with praise. Jazz critics, who had previously dismissed Ellington’s mid-1950s output as archaic and tired, completely reversed their stance. Reviewers in publications like DownBeat heralded it as a miraculous, irrefutable comeback.

And it’s important to note that the concert itself, even before the album was released, was a significant driving force of the band’s resurgence and no doubt helped drive the popularity of the album — the concert’s resulting press attention led Time magazine to put Duke Ellington on the cover of their August 20, 1956 issue, something never achieved by Elvis either in 1956 or in Elvis’s entire lifetime.

Now, although I purchased a copy of the Ellington at Newport album in CD format as well as a vinyl copy, something occurred that made me glad to set aside those versions, forever.

In 1999, two or three years after the discovery of tapes of the concert made by Voice of America, a 2-CD set was released which, through the aid of digital technology, merged together the original Columbia concert recordings and the VOA recordings to create a unified, amazingly crisp and detailed, stereo representation of the Ellington Orchestra performance.

And wow! Is it something. One can hear the rough spots, that’s true. For example, the first time I heard the beginning of Johnny Hodge’s solo on “I Got it Bad,” I physically cringed, involuntarily scrunching up my shoulders. I played the alto sax for a short time, and know that even though its pitch is controlled with fingered keys, one can make some uncomfortably embarrassing sounds — I never considered that one of the most disciplined alto saxophonists of all time, would ever inadvertently play such an off-pitch sound as was recorded for posterity that evening. And yet, the performance is still amazing. This is the case with that entire concert, making the true live version of the imperfectly three-part suite preferable to the cloudy-sounding 1956-released version. And for completists, the original material recorded in the studio for the doctored 1956 LP is included on the second CD, including a retake of “I Got it Bad,” played flawlessly by Hodges — and without any added crowd noise or reverb.

So yes, that original 1956 Ellington in Newport is one of the most historically significant albums in jazz, but the 2-CD 1999 version is one of the most musically enjoyable releases in big band jazz.

Jimmy Smith: Jimmy Smith At The Organ – A New Sound-A New Star Volume One, Jimmy Smith At The Organ – A New Sound-A New Star Volume Two, Jimmy Smith At The Organ Volume 3

Jimmy Smith recorded three studio albums in the first six months of 1956. The first, titled Jimmy Smith At The Organ – A New Sound-A New Star Volume One, has a strong rhythm and blues vibe, with a selection of standards, a very bluesy and soulful rendition of Horace Silver’s “The Preacher,” and Smith’s interpretation of Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” recorded on February 18, 1956, and released in 1956.

The second album, Jimmy Smith At The Organ – A New Sound-A New Star Volume Two, was recorded the next month on March 27, 1956, and released in 1956, and is closer to standard mid-1950s hard bop than the first. It starts with a rendition of Dizzy Gillespie’s “The Champ” that rivals any 1970s heavy metal rock track for sheer electrical power-driven invention and expression.

The third album, with a reassuringly shorter title, Jimmy Smith At The Organ Volume 3, recorded over two sessions, June 17 and June 18 1956, is similar to the second album, and contains only part of the tracks from those two sessions.

In 1997, a 2-CD set of a remastered version of these four sessions was released: A New Sound… A New Star… Jimmy Smith At The Organ Vol. 1-3, and unless you are committed to vinyl, this is the set to have. Jimmy Smith had an organ style like no other recording musician of 1956. His background was in Rhythm and Blues bands before transitioning to jazz. His approach is to lean into the melodic capabilities of the Hammond B-3 organ, emphasizing its electric-produced timbral options, and playing R&B-type chord textures when accompanying and when soloing, usually either playing primarily melodic passages with some interspersed chordal support or playing melodies over a walking bass. Though there is a general absence of any counter-melody or hints of polyphony, he is appropriately paired with electric guitarist Thornel Schwartz Jr., who continued to record with other notable Hammond B-3 organists, including the incomporable Larry Young. Schwartz provides the necessary polyphony and counter-melody phrases on Jimmy Smith’s solos, sometimes even providing the bass foundation underneath those solos. The interplay between these two is riveting, with Donald Bailey providing a crisp backbeat, a skip-style hi-hat, and propulsive snare accents that kept the high-energy bop driving forward. On slow passages, Smith and Schwartz showed how expressive their electric instruments could be, and Bailey provided a soulful R&B-style support. The 2-CD set puts the bonus tracks before the third album, and this works musically well, providing over a couple of hours of electric-driven soulful hard bop that influenced later jazz, R&B, and 1970s pop music — with influences well into the 1980s, with Quincy Jones requesting Jimmy Smith to play a Hammond B-3 MIDI organ solo on Michael Jackson’s Bad.

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jazz, Seventy Year Saturday

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Century Sunday: 1925; Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five; Berg: Wozzeck

Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, Duke Ellington, and a wealth of other great music.

In 1925, recording technology continued to improve with jazz bands across the USA making their first recordings, even if it was only one double-sided 78 record.

1925 was the year Armstrong transitioned from being the greatest 1920s jazz sideman to a leader of his own group. He began the year in New York with Fletcher Henderson and ended it in Chicago recording the first “Hot Five” tracks starting in November — some of my favorite jazz recordings of all time, and generally recognized as highly treasured musical landmarks.

Other notable names made recordings this year: the trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington with his group The Washingtonians, Bessie Smith, and Ethel Waters. The sides they recorded are still musical gems a hundred years later.

Lesser names recorded, of course. Some had big hits, including Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra’s original hit recording of “Sweet Georgia Brown” and Paul Whiteman’s symphonic jazz version of James P. Johnson’s “Charleston,” which became a popular representation of the vitality and character of the “Roaring Twenties.”

There were many lesser names with less known recordings that are worth checking out including the Original Crescent City Jazzers recording “Christine” and The Halfway House Orchestra’s “Pussy Cat Rag.” Yes, we still had rags being featured in both jazz and in written concert hall music, but ragtime was now a historical style, and most pieces titled rags in 1925 were jazz and not ragtime.

1925 was a diverse and productive year for concert hall music including George Gershwin‘s Piano Concerto in F, Edgard Varèse‘s Intégrales ,and Alban Berg‘s masterpiece, the opera Wozzeck.

Even rock fans will find 1925 abundant with gems that they would likely appreciate: “Cow Cow Blues” by Dora Carr and Cow Cow Davenport which is a blues recording enlivened with early elements of boogie woogie as well as Blind Lemon Jeffersons first recordings including “Black Horse Blues.” At the same time, many recordings of “pre-bluegrass” and “pre-country” music were recorded including Charlie Poole’s unrelenting, banjo-driven “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues” with traditional fiddle and rhythmic acoustic guitar.

All in all, 1925 had a wealth of music that any music lover can spend a few weeks, if not a full year, exploring.

Category:

Century Sunday, Classical Music, jazz, Music

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Fifty Year Friday: Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington

Recorded in December 1966, released in June 1967, and winning a Grammy for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance – Large Group or Soloist with Large Group in 1968,”Far East Suite” is one of the finest concept albums of the 1960’s. A collaboration between Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington, as is the case with much of the Ellington catalog between 1939-1967, this work is a set of reflections of the Ellington band’s 1963 world tour that included visits to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, and then later, their 1964 visit to Japan. All the music with the exception of the last track on the LP, “Ad Lib on Nippon”, is inspired by their 1963 exposure to locations of the Near East. This is not music based on music of those locations, but music inspired by impressions of these locations. The construction and quality of each composition blending crafted arrangements, colorful chords and chord voicings, and including solos that enhance and not detour from the arrangements, make this recording one of the gems of anyone’s LP or CD collection (the CD including alternative takes of tracks 1-3 and track 8.)

Track listing[from Wikipedia]

(All compositions by Ellington & Strayhorn except 9. by Ellington.)

“Tourist Point of View” – 5:09
“Bluebird of Delhi (Mynah)” – 3:18
“Isfahan” – 4:02
“Depk” – 2:38
“Mount Harissa” – 7:40
“Blue Pepper (Far East of the Blues)” – 3:00
“Agra” – 2:35
“Amad” – 4:26
“Ad Lib on Nippon” – 11:34

Personnel

Duke Ellington – piano
Mercer Ellington – trumpet, flugelhorn
Herbie Jones – trumpet, flugelhorn
William “Cat” Anderson – trumpet
Cootie Williams – trumpet
Lawrence Brown – trombone
Buster Cooper – trombone
Chuck Connors – trombone
Johnny Hodges – alto saxophone
Russell Procope – alto saxophone, clarinet
Jimmy Hamilton – tenor saxophone, clarinet
Paul Gonsalves – tenor saxophone
Harry Carney – baritone saxophone
John Lamb – double bass
Rufus Jones – drums

Billy Strayhorn initial inclinations were towards classical music, but the oppressive social barriers at the time made an entry into the classical realm much more difficult than one into the jazz world. Strayhorn was talented enough to excel in either, and given the nature of classical composition in the 1930s-1960s, it’s fair to comment that the more meaningful and relevant new music was being produced as jazz and not the “avant-garde” school music composed for the concert hall and academia, which received limited performance and provided limited commercial recognition and compensation.

Billy Strayhorn was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1964, and bravely fought on, continuing to compose, even at the end when hospitalized, with his last year including works like “Blood Count” and “U.M.M.G. (Upper Manhattan Medical Group).” On May 31, 1967, he lived his last day in Billy Strayhorn’s body, but continued to survive through his arrangements, compositions and recordings, with this memorial album, “… And His Mother Called Him Bill”, a timeless work of deep love and respect from Mr. Ellington and his orchestra, providing an everlasting, very personal homage to this great 20th Century giant.

On the original LP, the last track is a fortuitously captured recording of Duke Ellington reflectively playing Strayhorn’s “Lotus Blossom” with bass player Aaron Bell, however the chance recording only has one working microphone and captures only the piano portion of this private performance. Later, a trio version of this was recorded, but the producer found the spontaneous version more emotional and selected that. Both versions are particularly poignant with the solo piano version more personal and the trio version more polished. One can get both versions either in the Duke Ellington Centennial Edition 24 CD set or in the most recent (2016) CD reissue. The tracks on the original LP are all excellent and transcend any stylistic classification. If you love listening to the very best music, whether classical, jazz, rock or anything else, and attentively, actively listen to music, not just having it on as background but diving deeply into its innermost fabric, then you will find this album enormously rewarding.