jazz man
Skipping over #5 until I get it from Amazon.com...
Album #6... Ellington At Newport (1956) ~ Duke Ellington
Jazz in the studio is great, but I don't think anyone would argue that Jazz live is a whole other type of awesome. Interestingly, this album was originally released with studio versions of the songs performed at the Newport Jazz Festival. It wasn't until 1999 that some brave soul dug up the original recordings of the show, cleaned them up, made them stereo (!), and put together this awesome album. The music is fantastic. I like the orginal introductions and such in between the tracks, but I'll eventually just uncheck those in the iTunes, so that the album will play with just the music tracks in the future.
There is one intermediary track though that blows me away. It's on the second CD and it's called "Riot Prevention." It takes place as the organizers of the Festival are trying to close up shop. Ellington has got the crowd so wound up that they don't want to leave, and the more the organizers say, "No, really, that's it, we've got to go." The louder the crowd gets. It's turning into mayhem until Ellington says something like, "Oh yeah, we wanted to play this next song for you..." and they go into one last song, pacifying the crowd. Now, this is particularly amazing to me. I mean Big Band was pretty much dying (or dead) in the 50's. Ellington's heyday was over a decade before this concert, and yet, this crowd is totally and completely his. They can't get enough. It's amazing. Really amazing.
Album #6... Ellington At Newport (1956) ~ Duke Ellington
Jazz in the studio is great, but I don't think anyone would argue that Jazz live is a whole other type of awesome. Interestingly, this album was originally released with studio versions of the songs performed at the Newport Jazz Festival. It wasn't until 1999 that some brave soul dug up the original recordings of the show, cleaned them up, made them stereo (!), and put together this awesome album. The music is fantastic. I like the orginal introductions and such in between the tracks, but I'll eventually just uncheck those in the iTunes, so that the album will play with just the music tracks in the future.
There is one intermediary track though that blows me away. It's on the second CD and it's called "Riot Prevention." It takes place as the organizers of the Festival are trying to close up shop. Ellington has got the crowd so wound up that they don't want to leave, and the more the organizers say, "No, really, that's it, we've got to go." The louder the crowd gets. It's turning into mayhem until Ellington says something like, "Oh yeah, we wanted to play this next song for you..." and they go into one last song, pacifying the crowd. Now, this is particularly amazing to me. I mean Big Band was pretty much dying (or dead) in the 50's. Ellington's heyday was over a decade before this concert, and yet, this crowd is totally and completely his. They can't get enough. It's amazing. Really amazing.