Today, 6 July, is the fiftieth anniversary of the original telerecording of Duke Ellington's appearance on Guy Béart's chat show Bienvenue.
The photograph at the top of the post shows Bill Coleman, featured in this extract, and Aaaron Bridgers, Billy Strayhorn's partner prior to the former's move to Paris in 1947.
Just days earlier in Ellington's recital for ORTF recording (see previous post), Duke had made reference to Bridgers' playing of Lotus Blossom being preferable to Billy Strayhorn than his own. A touching reference and one assumes that Ellington had much to catch up on when Bridgers was in the audience for this television show.
That same day found Paul Gonsalves busy in the recording studios (presumably Barclay) for an album released subsequently on the Riviera label. The Paul Gonsalves All Stars consisted of Cat Anderson, Norris Turney, Wild Bill Davis (appearing as 'Prince Woodyard'), Joe Benjamin and Art Taylor.
One of the numbers, Alerado, was a tribute to Alexandre Rado, a great friend to members of the Ellington entourage, Billy Strayhorn, in particular. Rado produced these sessions. A few days later, the title was also re-recorded by the entire Ellington aggregation in the so-called 'Conny Plank Session'.
The album, Paul Gonsalves and his All Stars, has so far appeared neither on CD nor for streaming.
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