Duke Ellington: Ellington Uptown (1952)

It really was my next acquisition after this. It just took me a while to write about it.

The music currently available as Ellingtown Uptown is: versions of "Skin Deep," "The Mooche," "Take The 'A' Train," "A Tone Parallel To Harlem (Harlem Suite)," "Perdido," and "The Controversial Suite," all recorded between December 1951 and July 1952, plus "The Liberian Suite," recorded in May/December 1947. All of this is happening in the early days of the lp record. "Liberian Suite" was released as a 10-inch lp in 1948, while "Skin Deep," "Mooche," "'A' Train," "Harlem Suite," and "Perdido" were released as a 10-inch lp in 1952. The latter was also issued in a 12-inch version that substituted "Controversial" for "Harlem Suite," if I understand it right.

So this is really music from two different periods, with considerable differences in the lineups. The Uptown material is mostly rerecordings of classic material, and it benefits from the new format. Ellington and his orchestra can stretch out and develop solos and themes more than they could on a 78. "Mooche" is six and a half minutes of hypnotic groove, while "A Train" nearly becomes a suite in its own right, with the addition of a vocal section courtesy of Betty Roche. "Skin Deep," meanwhile, gets to devote three minutes to one of the most explosive drum solos this side of Keith Moon. Really, nobody needs me to tell them how great Duke Ellington is. And this is great Duke Ellington. And it sounds great: still mono, but compare it to the prewar versions of these songs. Night and day.

"Liberian Suite" even lacks a little in the fidelity department compared to the later material. It's brilliant stuff, though. I guess I have to say I prefer the longer tympani solo in the LCJO version, and it's a sheer toss-up on the vocalists (Al Hibbler's creamy croon or Milt Grayson's stately recitation? they're both awesome). But listen to the violin-trumpet tango in "Dance No. 3." The little drum fills behind the vibraphone solo in "Dance No. 2." The way the horns blend everywhere.

Life is richer with Duke Ellington's music in it.

Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis: Live In Swing City: Swingin' With Duke (1999)

So this release makes me want to take back some of the sanguine things I said about the LCJO in my review of They Came To Swing. This is a pleasant enough record, but I don't see much argument for its existence. LCJO had already done Ellington once. That was a satisfying disc, and a good starting point for a recording program by this outfit. But the direction their next two discs took was a promising one, mixing jazz from many (not quite all) eras together, demonstrating their credo that "all jazz is modern," making Monk and Coltrane rub shoulders with Jelly Roll Morton and Dizzy Gillespie and the Duke. But a few years later, here they are releasing another all-Ellington album. Why?

It's a pleasant enough disc, as I say. Good, polished renditions, with some very nice moments here and there, such as the last number, "Portrait Of Louis Armstrong," where Marsalis's delta-dragging trumpet is juxtaposed against some very McCoy Tyner-ish playing by pianist Cyrus Chestnut.

But on the whole the disc is just not as eye-opening as the first, because it doesn't try as hard to revive obscure, epic, late Ellington. A lot of the selections are pretty standard. And yes, I realize this began as a PBS project, not a full-scale recording project. But still...

No, no "but still." I think the PBS connection is probably the clue. The "Great Performances" episode this documents was 1999; "Ken Burns' Jazz" was just around the corner. It's hard not to hear this as part of a reactionary turn. A shrinking of at least the recording side of the LCJO's sense of mission - a shrinking of the outfit's conception of what jazz is.

Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra: Portraits By Ellington (1992)

Picked this up because I'm going to see this outfit next week. Have one of the LCJO's albums, which I bought after seeing them once in '95 or so, and I always meant to pick this one up.

It was recorded live in 1991. It's old: back from when the LCJO was concentrating on (re)establishing Duke at the head of the classic jazz canon. Back when it was still concentrating on trying to (as Stanley Crouch put it in the notes to their next release) "create a viable jazz canon." I'm sure that's still one of their goals, but now they've moved on to include other composers. Duke's place is secure.

The whole album's good listening, but the centerpiece and masterpiece is the "Liberian Suite." Jaw-dropping, this. Twenty-seven minutes of slow-burn soul. What instrumentation! Solos for vocalist (Milt Grayson, sounding like a bow-tied version of Leon Thomas), clarinet, vibes, violin, and timpani, in addition to the standard saxes and brass (the best trumpet solo on the record, by the way, isn't by Wynton Marsalis: it's by Lew Soloff, in the suite).

And each one of these unusual instruments cuts deeper than the last. By the time you get to the timpani (yes, timpani) solo, you've been so worked over, body and soul, that the timpani doesn't have to thunder. It whispers. Who would've thought a timpani could make you want ot cry? This one does.

The only way to really judge this record would be with knowledge of Duke's original versions of these tunes. Not an easy thing, since many of these are rather obscure pieces, at least to a novice like me. I know I love what I'm hearing, but I haven't heard an Ellington recording of "Liberian Suite," so I don't know if what I'm loving is the performance or the composition. At this point I guess it doesn't matter. I think Duke's will be my next acquisition, which is probably mostly what LCJO was aiming for here.

Duke Ellington: Rockin' In Rhythm

The Tanuki doesn't usually write about jazz, because he doesn't know how to write about jazz. He likes jazz, but doesn't have enough music theory to listen to it intelligently, much less write about it: he approaches it like Faulkner's illiterate preacher does the Bible - with faith.

But here's a moment of genius. Duke Ellington's 1930 recording of "Rockin' In Rhythm" (released under the pseudonym The Harlem Footwarmers - sweet!). If you can handle ram files, you can hear it here; youtube has lots of different versions of it, but not the original, and later versions seem to be taken at a faster tempo. The original swings along at this nice easy pace like fingers walking up your shoulder to tickle you behind the ear.

The genius bit - the whole thing's genius, of course, but the bit I'm talking about - is the unison theme that starts the whole thing off. Yes it's an exquisite sound, a perfect blend of saxes and clarinets, with a little dirty trumpet adding a remark here and there. And that's genius. And yes the rhythm here is bite-your-lip sensual, bass, banjo, and funky drums all scooching it along like a pat on the ass. And that's genius too.

But dig this: the figure at the end of the theme. The unison line goes up, up, hits its sweet spot, then does this eight-note descending thing to bring us down into the solo spots. But what's genius is, you think it's done after those two bars, and then they keep descending for another two bars, softer.

That's the stuff.