Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 73

Record label: RCA Bluebird

Produced: Brad McCuen

Recorded: RCA Victor, Studio A; December 19–21, 1966

Released: 1967

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Cootie Williams; William ‘Cat’ Anderson; Herbie Jones; Mercer Ellington (t); Lawrence Brown, Charles ‘Chuck’ Connors, Buster Cooper (tb); Johnny Hodges (as); Russell Procope (as, clarinet); Paul Gonsalves (ts); Jimmy Hamilton (clarinet, ts); Harry Carney (bs); Duke Ellington (p); John Lamb (b); Rufus Jones (d)

Track listing: Tourist Point Of View; Blue Bird Of Delhi (Minah); Isfahan; Depk; Mount Harissa; Blue Pepper (Far East Of The Blues); Agra; Amad; Ad Lib On Nippon

Running time: 43.51

Current CD: Bluebird 82876556142

Further listening: Such Sweet Thunder (1957); Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Duke Ellington Songbook (1957); New Orleans Suite (1970)

Further reading: Beyond Category: The Life And Genius Of Duke Ellington (John Edward Hasse, 1993); Duke Ellington Reader (Mark Tucker, 1993); www.dukeellington.com

Download: iTunes; HMV Digital

It’s hard to overstate Duke Ellington’s stature as a 20th-century musician. Honoured by world leaders, respected by ‘legit’ cats and revered by jazz musicians of all styles and generations – Miles Davis once famously suggested that ‘all musicians should get down on their knees and thank Duke.’ His 2000-plus pieces of lovingly, compellingly crafted Negro Music (Ellington preferred the term to ‘jazz’), composed between 1923 and 1973, ranged from solo piano miniatures through art songs, pop novelties, tone parallels (his own term) and sprawling suites for jazz orchestra and choir, all characterised with discernible Ellingtonian wit, density and intelligence.

What makes his output doubly miraculous is that he kept an orchestra on the road his whole professional life. Financed by his own songwriting royalties, it was his travelling composer’s workshop, enabling him to try things out as soon as he had written them. Rarely doing anything other than sleeping, eating, fornicating (he was a confessed ‘sexual intercourse freak’), performing, writing and travelling, he would compose on trains or at recording sessions and often rehearse after performances into the morning in an amazing sustained feat of unreasonable dedication. ‘It’s our hobby,’ he would say, smiling.

Inspired by ‘that big, wonderful and beautiful world’, the band visited the Middle East and Japan in 1963–64. Ellington and his friend and co-composer Billy Strayhorn fashioned first the four-movement Impressions Of The Far East, developing it into the nine-movement Far East Suite which ranks among their greatest achievements. Densely colourful and vividly exotic, it is at the same time archetypal Ellington with blues forms, impressionistic swing and characterful jazz solos, taking care not to over-utilise ethnic musical material. Ellington explained that other musicians had already copied the rhythms and scales of these places and he preferred to absorb the essence of an influence and ‘let it roll around, undergo a chemical change and then seep out on paper in a form that will suit the musicians who are going to play it’. Those mighty players included tenorist Paul Gonsalves, serpentine and voluptuous on Tourist Point Of View, clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton, fleet and playful on Blue Bird Of Delhi, and altoist Johnny Hodges, magnificently sensual on Isfahan (where Ellington observed ‘all was poetry’), an unspeakably beautiful piece which must take its place within the top hour of all Ellingtonia. Strayhorn died months after the recording and though Ellington continued to produce rigorous work, the loss of his intimate musical confidant since 1941 signified the end of an era.