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Smått och gott / Bits and Pieces
Nästa klubbmöte
Nästa DESS-möte äger rum torsdagen den 7 december 2017. Fullständig kallelse finns i nästa nummer av Bulletinen.
Grundaren av skiv- och distributionsbolaget AdLib, Ivan Sundberg, kommer att bjuda på en musikalisk “Pytt-i-Panna à la Duke efter behag” och Stockholm Jazz Trio kommer att svara för den levande musiken.
Trion bestående av Daniel Tilling piano, Jan Adefelt bas och Jesper Kviberg trummor och den kommer att framföra något de kallar för History of Piano Trio Jazz med bl.a. musik av Duke Ellington och Billy Strayhorn.
Ivie Anderson
David Palmquists oumbärliga webbplats “The Duke – Where and When” (TDWAW) (http://tdwaw.ca) har nu försetts med en tillägssida fokuserad på Ivie Anderson.
Den har utvecklats tillsammans med Steven Lasker och Ken Steiner och innehåller mycket information om Andersons karriär och liv. Rekommenderas på det varmaste. Länken till den är http://tdwaw.ellingtonweb.ca/IvieAnderson.html.
Laurent Mignard Duke Orchestra
Den 29 april 2017 gav orkestern gav en Ellington-konsert i den legendariska studio 104 i Maison de la radio i Paris. France Musique sände en inspelning av den i två delar den 23 och 24 september. Länken till dem är https://www.francemusique.fr/personne/laurent-mignard. Men en sammanklippning av de båda utsändningarna finns också i radioavdelningen av Ellington-arkivet.
Ellington-serie på Sveriges Radio 1994 (1)
Den 10 januari 1994 sände Sveriges Radio det första av tio program om Duke Ellington och hans musik. Idén till serien kom från Lars Westin och Jan Bruér, som också ställde samman programmen och svarade för ”pratet”.
”Det var den planerade Ellington-konferensen i Stockholm i maj 1994 som gav oss impulsen att sända programserien”, säger Jan Bruér, ”och vi var glada att Jazzradions ledning – Bosse Broberg – ställde upp på idén”.
”Som Lars Westin säger i inledningen av det första programmet hade vi ingen brist på material. Utmaningen var i stället att ställa samman det så att vi gav en så mångfacetterad bild av Ellington som möjligt och också täckte hans olika epoker.”
”Vi hade också förhoppningen att programmet skulle nå bortom den inre kretsen av hängivna Ellington-vänner och hjälpa nya generationer att upptäcka Ellingtons storhet.”
Programserien sändes varannan vecka och avslutades den 19 maj 1994.
Varje program hade sin egen profil och det första programmet är lite av ett Ellington-kalejdoskop, som introducerar olika stilar, musikaliska ansatser och Ellingtons musiker.
Precis som när programserien ursprungligen sändes kommer webbplatsen att göra ett nytt program tillgängligt varannan vecka.
Det första programmet kallat “Kinda Dukish” finns nu tillgängligt för DESS-medlemmar i radiodelen av Ellington-arkivet.
Time Magazine Cover
Tomorrow, it is 60 years since Duke Ellington appeared on the cover of the Time Magazine and was featured in a five-page article.
He himself said that it was “the epic ride of Paul Gonsalves, which brought us on the cover of Time Magazine” (Music Is My Mistress page 191) but the true story is a little bit more complicated.
Back in the early 1990s, Charles H. Waters – the Ellington scholar and a DESOK member – stumbled upon the information that the portrait of Ellington, which appeared on the Time Magazine cover and was done by the Western artist Peter Hurd, had been done already in early June (between June 8 and 17), i.e. almost a month before the Newport Festival.
This triggered Waters to look into the story of the cover and he published an extensive article in Annual Review of Jazz Studies 6 (1993) based on thorough research.
He unfolded that the decision to write a cover story had been taken long before Newport – most likely in the late spring of 1956. The writer of the story, Carter Harman, interviewed Ellington in parallel to the painting of the project and at that time Ellington himself proposed that the peg for the article should be his appearance with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra in New Haven, Connecticut on July 12, 1956.
Harman was of course also present at the Newport Jazz Festival and he must have sensed the excitement that the performance(s) of Ellington (and Gonsalves) on the last night of the Festival created.
However, it was apparently Ellington’s press agent, Joe Morgan, who pitched the idea that Harman should use the Newport Festival as the hook to get his bosses to publish an Ellington cover story.
Harman took this to the assistant managing editor, Otto Fuerbringer – responsible for Time Magazine’s cover stories – and finally he agreed to run the story in the August 20, 1956 issue of the magazine.
In August 1956, Time Magazine ran cover stories also on the shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos, former U.S. President Harry Truman and the Egyptian President Nasser.
For Columbia Records and for Ellington, the timing of the article was perfect. The Newport Festival recordings including those of Ellington were going to be issued in September so Time provided some good promotion.
This was also done by Down Beat. It published its report on the Newport Festival also in the August 20, 1956 issue where Leonard Feather wrote the story on Ellington.
Members of DESS can read the full article in the Ellington Archive / Articles https://ellington.se/marknadsplatsen/ellington-arkivet/articles-and-documents/
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, 2 juli, 1956
Duke Ellington framträdde vid åtminstone tre olika tillfällen i Ann Arbor, Michigan. Första gången var den 15 november 1951, då han uppträdde tillsammans med Sarah Vaughan och Nat King Cole i en radiosänd show. Senaste gången var den den 16 januari 1974 då han framträdde vid en presskonferens vid University of Michigan.
Det enda kända tillfället då han uppträdde med hela orkestern var den 2 juli 1956, endast några dagar före det epokgörande framträdandet vid Newportfestivalen.Konserten ägde rum i Hill Auditorium, University of Michigan.
Med tanke på hur Ellington och Strayhorn arbetade, och med den uppgift de hade att komma med något nytt till Newport, skulle man lätt kunna tänka sig att man här skulle ha någon slags generalrepetition av materialet för festivalen, men så icke! En del alster blev inte klara förrän efteråt!
Första halvan av konserten den 2 juli var inkluderad i arikeln “Heading for Newport” den 3 juli 2016. Men nu finns den också som Månadsgodis i Ellingtonrummet för att underlätta nedladdning.
Innehållet består av Ellington-standards varvade med några mera sällan spelade nummer, som t. ex. Clarinet Melodrama, Theme For Trambeam, La Virgen De Macarena och Day In, Day Out.
Författare: Anders Asplund
New CD from Maison de Duke
Ellington ended the extensive European tour in January-February 1963 with taking on his role as artistic director of Reprise Records. He did so by supervising five recording sessions in Paris. One of them featured Svend Asmussen together with Stephan Grappeli and Ray Nance.
The result was only issued in 1976 by Atlantic Records. There are also some CD issues and the best in terms of sound is the one issued by Mosaic Records.
Tapes with the complete recording session, which took place February 22, 1963, has long circulated between collectors but now La Maison de Duke has taken the step to issue a CD with almost all the takes of the session.
Thanks to this, one can both enjoy the music on the original LP and get an insight into the creative process between an extraordinary group of musicians and how Ellington guided them to get the result he wanted. Asmussen is of course at the center but there is also good playing by in particular Stephan Grappelli.
The CD comes with a booklet written by Claude Carrière, which is thorough and enlightening in his usual detailed style. Unfortunately it is only in French.
The CD is a must for friends of Ellington, Svend Asmussen and violin jazz. However, it is only available to members of La Maison de Duke but a membership is equal to the price of a quality CD.
More on Duke Ellington Treasury Shows Series.
The release of the radio program “Your Saturday Date with the Duke” is a fascinating project. In 1981 the first LP in a series of 49 was issued and it took most of the 1980s before the whole series was available. After a break of more than 10 years, a re-release on CD started and as said in yesterday’s article, there are at least three more volumes to come.
So the project will have lasted more than 35 years before it is finished but then the worldwide community of Ellington fans and others will have access to a gold mine of Ellington music from 1943-1953 with excellent sound.
The DESS Bulletin 2011:4 includes a long and detailed article by Bo Haufman on the “Your Saturday Date with the Duke” broadcasts and the “Duke Ellington Treasury Shows” series. It is highly recommended.
DETS-artikel Bulletinen 2011:4
The first ”Your Saturday Date with the Duke” was broadcasted live with an audience on April 7, 1945 and then every Saturday until October 5, 1946.
The broadcasts were promotions to buy war bonds. Duke Ellington was a true patriot and spoke convincingly about the need to support the country and its war efforts.
Some broadcasts were released already in the 1950s but the quality of the sound was not very good.
The American Ellington scholar, record producer, record engineer and much more, Jerry Valburn, manage to collect all the transcriptions of the broadcasts and issued the whole series of them as the “Duke Ellington Treasury Shows” on LP in the 1980s.
Valburn announced this ambitious project to the members of his record club, Merritt Record Society, in December 1980 and the first three records were distributed in March-April 1981.
In the beginning there were new records almost every month but then there were longer and longer intervals between them and the last volumes became available only towards the end of the 1980s.
For the subscribers, it was not always easy to get the records delivered, possibly because of financial problems of the project. In the end, the best way to get the records was to call Valburn when one was in New York and go and get them. One of the last sets he delivered to me (Ulf) during a lunch at Eddie Condon’s Jazz Club on the last day of the club’s existence.
The sound engineer behind the LP series was Jerry Valburn’s close friend Jack Towers.He was responsible for the transfer of the transcriptions to tape and for the sound editing. In a fascinating interview with Rob Bamberger, Towers described his work which often meant to scrape magnetic particles off the tapes.
The interview is available to DESS members in the Ellington Archive
Already when the project was launched, Valburn announced that a book on the ”Your Saturday Date with the Duke”-broadcasts was to be published. It was to be co-written by Valburn and Benny Aaslund available to subscribers of the DETS-series at half price.
In mid-1982 Valburn reported that the book was more or less finished
However, this was apparently not the case because more than ten years later Valburn announced in DEMS 1994/2: “Duke Ellington and the Treasury Series: This 85 page book is completed and awaiting publishing later this year.”
But the years went on and no book appeared. There are some rumours that it was seen in one form or the other in the offices of Storyville in Copenhagen at the end of the 1990s.
Storyville Records started to issue the DETS-series (with a lot of bonuses added) in 2000. Valburn himself was involved in the beginning as was Jack Towers and he wrote the some of the first CD booklets.
But then this task was taken over by different members of the inner circle of Ellington scholars and collectors. The booklets are very well written and rich in information. If one has got all of them, there is really no reason to hope for a book as well.
The DETS series are available from several sources. The price for a new CD is about 17-18 EUR (Storyville, Amazon, JazzMessengers, Plugged Records) but one can find second-hand ones in shape as new for about 11-13 EUR (Amazon). The most expensive way is to download from iTunes, which charge 20 EUR.
Another way is to listen to the series at Spotify or Apple Music. Both of these streaming audio services offers most of the series but which ones seems to vary from time to time.
Authors: Ulf Lundin / Göran Wallén
Duke Ellington in 1956 – July
Ellington’s Newport Festival concert finished well after midnight. When he and the band left the following morning, they were faced with a full set of road bookings.
“As it had been for decades, it was a nonstop summer …. Newport had been only one gig among others” (John Fass Morton Backstory in Blue – Ellington at Newport ’56).
However, it was a little bit different than previous summers. The summer music festivals had entered the scene in full strength and the core of Ellington’s appearances in July were at such festivals. They had large audiences so Ellington managed to reach out quite well in addition to the success at Newport. Several of them was also recorded in one way or the other or broadcasted.
Ellington played the key pieces from the Newport concert quite a lot, particularily “Newport Jazz Festival Suite”. Surprisingly, “Diminuendo and Crescendo In Blue” was played less frequently.
After Newport Ellington and the band played at the Danceland Ocean Park in New London, Connecticut and then returned to New York.
Duke and Billy Strayhorn spent most of the morning of July 9 with George Avakian and his team in Columbia’s Studio D going over the tapes from Newport and in the afternoon the full orchestra joined them for the recording session, which was already agreed before the actual concert in Newport. The focus was “Newport Jazz Festival Suite” but also “Jeep’s Blues” was recorded. Fortunately, the initial idea to redo also “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue” was skipped.
Amazingly, Ellington managed to squeeze two other events into his calendar on July 9. He participated in a panel with other prominent jazz colleagues and recorded a promotional short film for Time-Life.
The following day, the tour of New England and Canada started. The first stop was New Haven, Connecticut, where Ellington participated in the Bowls Pop together with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
The next major stop was the Tanglewood Music Festival in Lenox, Massachusetts on July 15 and from there Ellington and the orchestra went to Ontario, Canada to perform at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario.
There they gave two concerts – July 18 and July 20. In between and after, Ellington performed in Burlington, Ontario and both concerts were broadcasted by CBC Radio.
Following this, Duke and the band returned to the U.S.A. to perform in Cleveland, Ohio with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra on July 25 after having given a concert in Buffalo, New York the day before.
The next major destination was Fairfield, Connecticut where Ellington and the orchestra appeared at the First Connecticut Jazz Festival on July 28. This was major event and Ellington shared the stage with Willie “The Lion” Smith, Chico Hamilton, Buck Clayton and others.
On July 29, they were back in New York and Ellington appeared on the Woolworth Hour playing a medley with the house band.
This post has been written using information from http://www.tdwaw.ca and http://www.ellingtonia.com – two absolutely invaluable sources of information on Ellington’s whereabouts and activities.
DR Ellington Broadcasts (5 and 6)
The 5th and 6th Ellington programs broadcasted by the Danish Radio in the mid 1980s are part of the “Goodies of the Month” offer for July-August.
The 5th program was broadcasted on December 30, 1984 and the 6th one week later on January 4, 1985. Both were presented by Bjarne Busk.
Program 5 focus on the Queen’s Suite and include the recordings made in February and April 1959, which were first issued on the Pablo label. The two interviews in the program have not been issued on LP or CD.
In program 6, a lot of music not issued on LP or CD so far was played. There are among other things a substantial segment from the January 3, 1956 stockpile recording session and two selections from the February 8, 1966 telecast from Circus in Stockholm. New York, New York was recorded on August 2, 1972 and is different from the one issued on Storyville 101- 8402, which was recorded on September 5, 1972.
A document with the discographical information for the programs (and others in the series) is available.Corrections are most welcome.