There are numerous video and film clips with Duke Ellington available on internet. We have grouped some of the more unusual together in a video montage spanning from 1930 to 1970. Below is an example from Ed Sullivan Show from 1961 with Duke and Satchmo.

The following can be seen and listened to in the Goodies Room:

1   Extracts from the movie Check And Double Check from 1930, an Amos & Andy adventure. Various tunes are played, the only complete one being  Old Man Blues  other numbers are When I’m Blue, East St Louis Toodle-Oo and Three Little words. On the latter tune the singing is by The Rhythm Boys although the impression from the movie is that the trumpet players are doing this job. One interesting detail is that Juan Tizol’s face has been blackened,

2. 3. & 4. The following sequences are from Ed Sullivan Shows from 1959, 1965 and 1969.

5.  Titled Special Medley, this is a 1966 version of Satin Doll

6.  Duke Ellington with Edie Adams  in 1962, Edie is accompanied by an orchestra led by Peter Matz, reinforced by Ellington, Hodges and Carney. She sings an Ellington Medley and Satin Doll

7.  A rare footage from an Ellington’s concert in Palermo in July 1970, with a solo by Canadian fluegel horn player  Fred Stone

We hope that you will enjoy the performances!

A busy night at the Hurricane

We are continueing our presentations of rare broadcast recordings from the Hurricane in 1943. Here is a file with 35 minutes of music by Duke Ellington & His Orchestra.

Starting with a Mutual broadcast from May 1943, (Desor4315a-e)) where a couple of new names appear in the sax section, Sax Mallard on clarinet and alto sax, and Scotty Scott on alto, replacing Otto Hardwicke. The first tune is Cabin In The Sky, unfortunately incomplete, but with a nice solo by Ben Webster, followed by In A Mellotone and I Don’t Want Anybody At All, sung by Betty Roché. Two more numbers from this session are Barzallai Lou with a cornet solo by Rex Stewart and Don’t Get Around Much Anymore which was commonly played at this period to round off the broadcasts. Of these, Cabin In The Sky and Barzallai Lou have been previously issued on on LP, Caracol-435. (more…)

Photo from The Hurricane Restaurant in 1943

Duke Ellington and his orchestra spent many weeks playing nightly at the Hurricane in 1943, 1944 and after it was reopened as The New Zanzibar in 1945. A great number of broadcasts from the restaurant have survived and many have been issued on LP’s and CD’s. There are still many such recordings that were never issued commercially, but circulating among collectors, and we therefor would like to present some of these to the DESS-members. Sometimes the sound quality is not very good, but one realizes this could be the reason that they were never released commercially. We know however that some of these items could be interesting to listen to for some of our members.

The Hurricane was a venue that provided music for dancing, and the repertoire was especially suited for this, hence real jazz numbers were not so abundant, but vocal numbers in the romantic vein were common. During this period Ellington had a number of female singers in addition to boy singer Al Hibbler.

Below, you’ll find a program of approximately 25 minutes of music, coming from the Hurricane.

The first radio date we present is an MBS broadcast from April 7, 1943, (DESOR4305). We can listen to five more or less incomplete numbers: (more…)

Stockholm, October 28, 1973

Stockholm in the autumn of 1973

Since the start of this web-site we have published some 35 konserts that took place in Sweden, most of them complete. We have now only one remaining concert to offer the members, namely a Stockholm concert from Konserthuset, Oct 28, 1973. The sound files we use originate from a telecast by SR later in that year. It is not the complete concert, The telecast duration was about half that of the total concert.

Åke Persson in Tea For Two

The band on this occasion was the same as in Malmö 3 days earlier, but with guests omitted.

The complete telecast was as follows: *La Plus Belle Africaine*Take The A Train*Tea For Two*Caravan/How High The Moon*Basin Street Blues*Medley*Creole Love Call*Things Ain’t What They Used To Be*Woods*Lotus Blossom*

The program has been edited by SR, which means that the numbers are not in the original sequence. It also means that all vocal numbers have been edited out. (more…)

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…)

Liseberg, Gothenburg, July 8, 1970

2nd concert

Konserthallen, Liseberg where the concerts took place

Cat Anderson plays The Birth Of The Blues

A couple of weeks ago, the website published Ellington’s first concert at the Liseberg amusement park in Goethburg on July 7, 1970. Today, we also make available the second concert. DESS members can download and listen to it in the Goodies Room.”. NDESOR shows only the first part of this concert but after we had been able to locate the rest of the concert, a correction sheet was posted by DEMS. We enclose the comments from the 2nd last DEMS Bulletin, published in 2012 by Sjef Hoefsmit. (more…)

Liseberg, Gothenburg, July 8, 1970

1st concert

Duke at Lisebergshallen

In 1970 Duke Ellington & His Orchestra undertook three major tours: Japan, Australia & New Zealand and Europe. The European tour lasted more than a months, but there was only one concert date in Sweden. Two concerts were peformed at Konserthallen 8 July in Liseberg, Gothenburg’s famous amusement park.Since the previous vist to Sweden, Lawrence Brown had left while  Booty Wood and Malcolm Taylor were now part of the trombone section and also Joe Benjamin had joined on bass.

As was hinted about before, these concerts were recorded on a portable recorder, and therefore the sound quality is not very good. But we assume that this is the only source to this performance, and that it therefore could be of interest to the DESS-members.

Cootie Williams plays Portrait of Louis Armstromg

Since it is difficult to hear Duke presenting the different numbers, we list them below:

*C-Jam Blues*Summer Samba*Kinda Dukish & Rockin’ In Rhythm*Second Line*Bourbon Street Jingling Jollies*Aristocracy A La Jean Lafitte*Thanks For The Beautiful Land*Portrait Of Louis Armstrong*Take The A Train*In A Sentimental Mood*Wailing Interval*Medley*Birth Of The Blues*St. Louis Blues*April In Paris *Come Off The Veldt*Solitude*It Don’t Mean A Thing*Be Cool And Groovy For Me*Satin Doll*Things Ain’t What They Used To Be*Black Swan*

Apart from some traditional numbers in Duke’s repertoire, there are a number of new tunes from the recently recorded New Orleans Suite and some others like Birth Of The Blues and Black Swan.

You will find the complete concert –  with more than 100 minutes of the Ellington sound – in the Goodies Room!