Malmö, Nov 10, 1971

Malmö Stadsteater, where the concert took place in the evening of Nov 10, 1971

At this point in time, we are close to the end of our stock of Duke Ellington concerts in Sweden.The day before Duke and the band had played two concerts in Uppsala, and the 2nd of these had only ended in the small hours of  the 10th of November, which was the date set for the Malmö concert. These two cities are not exactly neighbors. The night-morning trip to Malmö must have covered some 600 km or so.

The exciting thing about this concert is that we get a glimpse of a Swedish female singer, Lena Junoff, in a rare rendition of I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart in which also Ben Webster plays a short solo.

Lena sings the text in both English and Swedish

The only issued recording of Lena Junoff singing with Duke Ellington is from the Conny Plank session in 1970, where she performs wordless singing in Afrique.

As can be heard from music example above, the sound quality is not the best, since it obviously comes from a private recording. The performance in Malmö is partly similar to that of the Uppsala concert, mixed with a few additions. The complete program is as follows: (more…)

The Uppsala Concerts, Nov. 9, 1971

The concert venue: Uppsala University

During Duke Ellington’s 1971 concert tour in Europe, there were only two concert dates in Sweden, Uppsala on Nov. 9 and Malmö on Nov. 10. We have presented the first concert in Uppsala on these pages before and we can now present the 2nd concert together with some rare extra material.

The changes in band personell from the 1970 tour mainly concerned the trumpet section with Money Johnson, Eddie Preston and John Coles replacing Cat Anderson, Fred Stone and Nelson Williams, while Harold Minerve had been added to the sax section. Due to a long Medley and a performance of HARLEM, this,  second concert that night, went well into the small hours of January 10. (more…)