Music and Recording Features

Duke Ellington's death 50 years ago was a massive loss for American music. Elegantly attired, beautifully spoken, and always the picture of sophistication, the African-American icon was one of the greatest composers of American music ever, regardless of genre.

Edward Kennedy Ellington led the Duke Ellington Orchestra (pointedly not a band) from the piano for more than 40 years, using hands and facial gestures instead of a baton. He used charm, flattery, and a deep understanding of human psychology to bind his virtuosos to the orchestra and get the sounds he wanted. Often in collaboration with arranger/composer Billy Strayhorn, the great unsung hero of Ellington's story, Ellington composed music of all lengths and for all occasions for the orchestra he toured the world with from the 1920s into the 1970s.

So massive is Ellington's recorded legacy that it tends, much like Miles Davis's, to divide fans into groups committed to specific periods. Because his early manager, Irving Mills, had him record for a variety of labels, his recorded catalog of tracks has more than 1000 entries. He also had a penchant for recording live performances, further expanding his catalog. Today, his vast catalog is accessible across all corners of the planet, much of it on music-streaming services.

Looking for something comprehensive? Far and away the best survey on physical media, covering almost his whole career, is The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition, The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (1927–1973), which fills 24 CDs and was issued in 1999. An alternative intended for streaming sites is Sony's excellent Ellington in Order series, which is licensed across labels and includes material from his stints with RCA and Columbia.

This comparatively tiny sample of Ellington's music is meant to mark the 50th anniversary of the great man's passing. In researching this feature, I stuck to domestic (US) labels and widely available releases.

1. "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo," Duke Ellington & His Washingtonians,
from The Okeh Ellington, Columbia C2 46177 (CD), 1991; Ellington in Order, Volume 1 (streaming).

Featured in the 1984 Francis Ford Coppola film The Cotton Club among other places, this track captures the flavor of late-1920s, Prohibition-era jazz. Written by Duke and Bubber Miley, it's a showcase for Miley's growling, voice-like muted trumpet. For a while in the late 1920s and early 1930s, this was the band's signature tune and often their set-opening number. Known as a classic example of "hot jazz," it's a good example of Ellington's brief "jungle music" period. Recorded numerous times with minor tweaks in the arrangements for Vocalion, Brunswick, Bluebird, and Columbia, this moody, sinuous number conjures visions of wild nights in Harlem. It was Ellington's first charting single. Rearranged and rerecorded as late as 1956, the song earned a mention in William S. Burroughs's 1959 novel Naked Lunch and was covered by Steely Dan in 1974 on Pretzel Logic, much to the confusion of the band's fans.

2. "The Star-Crossed Lovers,"
from The Great Paris Concert, Pure Pleasure Records, PPAN SD 2-304 (180gm LP). 2010.

One of the chief strengths and pleasures of the Ellington band after 1928 was the alto playing of the great Johnny Hodges. While beboppers like Charlie Parker, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, Jackie McLean, and free jazz icon Ornette Coleman have retained greater notoriety, Hodges remains a towering presence on alto sax. Here, on a tune from the 1957 studio album Such Sweet Thunder, a 12-part suite based on themes from William Shakespeare, Hodges shows (hardly for the first time) why words can't do his virtuosity justice. His luscious, creamy, seductive tone, his economic choices, and his ability to hold legato lines like no one else show what an expressive jazz instrument the alto can be in the right hands. Ellington wrote many signature pieces for Hodges including "Jeep's Blues," "Prelude to a Kiss," and "Passion Flower."

Happily, sound quality has never been a problem with this early live recording. In 1989, 10 extra tracks were added to the original release, three of which are thought to be from other European concerts on the same tour. One additional track, "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," is a studio recording. Like the original album, these additions are just fine sonically, and all these performances remain wonderful examples of how potent Ellington's orchestra remained in the 1960s.

After many releases on Atlantic Records, in 2010, UK audiophile label Pure Pleasure released a 180gm LP reissue of the original album that is the best sounding version so far.

3. "Take the 'A' Train,"
from Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band 1940–1942, Bluebird 5659-1-RB (4 mono LPs), 1986; BMG 82876 50857 2 (3 CDs), 2003.

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, the diminutive Billy Strayhorn became Ellington's writing partner. In his 1973 autobiography Music Is My Mistress, Ellington called Strayhorn "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine."

Raised in the under-recognized jazz hotbed that was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which also produced Mary Lou Williams, Earl Hines, Roy Eldridge, and Stanley Turrentine, among others, Strays—or "Sweet Pea" as Ellington called him—wrote "Take the 'A' Train," which would become Ellington's most enduring classic. The refrain comes from directions Ellington gave Strayhorn when he arrived in New York, guiding him to the then-new subway line to travel north to the Ellington home. Joya Sherrill, a young singer who sang for the band for a time, wrote the lyrics (except Duke's directions).

The arrangement here is influenced by the work of Fletcher Henderson, a Strayhorn favorite. "'A' Train" has become a jazz standard, memorably recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus, and Sun Ra, among others.

The other epochal development in Duke world in 1939 was the arrival of tenor saxophonist Ben Webster and double bassist Jimmy Blanton. Their tenure marks the peak of the Ellington Orchestra's cohesion and musicality. For this reason and others, if there is one Ellington collection to own, The Blanton-Webster Band is the choice.

4. "Take the 'A' Train,"
from Ellington Uptown, Columbia Masterworks ML 4639 (LP), 1955.

Recorded for Columbia's prestigious Masterworks label (with the tagline "Originator of the Modern Long Playing Record"), this mid-1950s session—renamed Hi-Fi Ellington Uptown after 1956—contains a very different take on "'A' Train." Alto star Johnny Hodges is missing, at the end of his five-year stint when he went out on his own. The band's signature tune is sung here by Betty Roché, in a laconic style, complete with scat singing and a slow-fast, eight-minute arrangement obviously influenced by bebop. Roché first performed her version in a railroad car in the 1943 film Reveille with Beverly. This is yet another example of how Ellington never stopped looking back and refreshing his orchestra's book.