Every so often I tell myself I’ll work through the works from the 20s through to the 70s. But I always get stuck on the extraordinary late 20s recordings and the even more extraordinary 1940-42 band.
For someone to maintain such a high level of consistency over 50 years is amazing. For that person to not only write a major portion of the bands repertoire but also run it, rehearse it, play excellent piano in it and just manage to keep it together is mind-boggling.
And those peak periods contain recording after recording that deserve to be called masterpieces. I love big band music but Ellington’s best music has a magic that puts it in a class of its own. Fletcher Henderson developed the standard style of big band arrangement and perhaps Benny Goodman perfected the stylish presentation of that standard kind of performance. But Ellington simply amazes, not with size or power but with the ability, again and again, to write a line that is breathtaking in it’s simplicity yet utterly sublime melodically, harmonically and texturally.
Ellington was surely the greatest American musician of the 20th century by quite a margin. Armstrong, Coltrane and Parker introduced breathtakingly new technical innovations but, almost immediately, proved fairly easy to copy with reasonable credibility. Ellington is one of a kind.
Duke was so great on so many levels. He was so confident that his band’s theme song (Take the A train) was one of very few of his band’s standards that he didn’t write or co-write. And he was always quick to give Billy Strayhorn the credit for it. His songs always worked well in many contexts, too, whether as songs, usually with pretty decent lyrics, or as instrumental pieces. I have a disc called “Masterpieces by Ellington,” which was his band’s first LP, and possibly the first ever to make use of the LP format. It has four pieces on it, “concert arrangements” of three standards (Mood Indigo, Sophisticated Lady, Solitude) and a piece from the 50’s called the Tattooed Bride. These are all great pieces of music, but, given 10-15 minutes, his talents all shine through – composer, lyricist, arranger, and, possibly most of all, he assembled an awesome array of musicians, many of whom had been with him for 20 years by 1950, when the recording was made.
But even the 1920’s recordings, all 2-3 minutes long, replete with pop and hiss, are as good as anything ever done. The music speaks for itself.
Don’t forget, of course, Billy Strayhorn who wrote or co-wrote with Ellington most of the biggest hits of the thirties and forties like “Take The A Train” and “Lush Life” . I once heard a radio interview with Ellington who was talking about Strayhorn. The way he talked about Billy Strayhorn you would think that they almost were one soul inhabiting two bodies.
Mike
The Duke did a suite of songs for the Stratford (Ontario, Canada) festival called Such Sweet Thunder. Unreal. Rare. My copy is on stretched 1/4 tape, so if anyone’s got it i’d give…
Christmas is coming, so keep your ears peeled for Ellington’s version of The Nutcracker Suite. All the fun of the original, but without all those silly violins.
Just kidding. I’m just jealous 'cause fiddlers can breathe anywhere they like.
