Birthday Presence: Duke at 120

29 April, 2019 marks the 120th anniversary of Duke Ellington's birth. His music has brought us all Many Happy Returns. Incredible to think that the video clip below, posted here by way of a Birthday card, celebrating Duke's seventieth birthday is itself now half a century old...

I shall be spending Duke's birthday at work but, when the five o'clock whistle blows, I would hope to catch at least some of WKCR-FM's (Columbia University’s non-commercial student-run radio station)annual 24 hour birthday broadcast celebration live-streamed here. 

Armory and the man...

            

NEW FINDS

A contributor to the Organissimo Jazz Forum called russes01 recently and very generously posted links to recordings of Duke Ellington and his Orchestra he had acquired on acetate. He wrote:

"Free to download - Ellington in Duluth 1946 - from broadcast acetates I found last summer.  Third is an interview with Duke and Strayhorn. Interesting snapshot of an average workday."

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C1ryHA4GAJSN1ZolMpPAS1BZaqFh7Atb/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NjkejroQ7NIYTVW7ZF8dqFYM4Ro__0BF/view?usp=drivesdk

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10i22GP-WiKfB27riKcK1xxdVXlbalWhG/view?usp=drivesdk

Dated 20th June, 1946, these recordings were previously unknown and have not appeared in any Ellington discography to date. 

The nearest recordings in time already known are from 9 July, 1946. Here is the orchestra's personnel at that date:

Taft Jordan, Shelton Hemphill, Cat Anderson, Francis Williams, Shorty Baker (tp),
Ray Nance (tp, vln, vcl) Joe Nanton, Lawrence Brown, Claude Jones, Wilbur DeParis (tb), Jimmy Hamilton (cl, ts) Johnny Hodges (as) Russell Procope (as, cl) Al Sears (ts), Harry Carney (bar, b-cl, cl) Duke Ellington (p), Fred Guy (g), Oscar Pettiford (b), Sonny Greer (d), Kay Davis, Al Hibbler (vcl)

The contents of the uploaded music files, each of which is approximately fifteen minutes in duration are as follows:

1. Take The 'A' Train
Announcement
Take The 'A' Train
Transblucency (KD, vcl)
C Jam Blues
I’m Just A Lucky So-and-So (AH, vcl)
Announcement
Riff Staccato (cut off)

2. Riff Staccato (cut in)
Come Rain Or Come Shine (KD, vcl)
Blue Skies
Things Ain’t What They Used To Be
Outro
Intro Of Interview
Start Of Interview    

russes01 says that he "figure(s) it should be out in the world". This is a very generous gesture and adds to our knowledge of Ellington's broadcasting activities.

From David Palmquist's incomparable Duke Where and When site, it seems the venue for this broadcast was The Armory, Duleth, Minnesota.

I'm all ears...

In the virtual auction house recently, this item was for sale: Noel Arnaud's surreal treatise on Duke Ellington with illustrations by Max Bucaille. Helpfully, the vendor has included pictures allowing us to see more than the front cover of this publication. I would have to spend quite a bit of time on Google Translate to understand the extracts here shown. The date 1950, however, certainly ties the publication to Ellington's trip to Paris two years earlier with Ray Nance and Kay Davis, featured here in this booklet. 

Ellington and Strayhorn's relationship to Paris is a source of perennial fascination, the city of light inspiring some of the artists' best work and a rich field for further research...

NOEL ARNAUD 

DUKE ELLINGTON

  A PARIS 

"LE MESSAGER BOITEUX DE PARIS"

 1950

TRES RARE EXEMPLAIRE IMPRIME PAR REVUE SURREALISTE FONDEE PAR ARNAUD ET CHABRUN AU SORTIR DE LA SECONDE GUERRE MONDIALE ICI CONSACRE AU JAZZ ET A DUKE ELLINGTON VUS SOUS LE PRISME DU SURREALISME DE NOEL ARNAUD, JACQUES BUREAU, MICHEL PHILIPPOT ET MAX BUCAILLE... 

DES ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXTE EN NOIR PAR MAX BUCAILLE.

 TRES BON ETAT. BROCHE. INSOLATIONS EN COUVERTURES. PAPIER JAUNI AVEC ROUSSEURS. FORMAT: 21,5 x 14 cm. 12 PAGES .

FORT RARE !!!

Liberté, Fraternité, Turcaret!

A major release of Ellington recordings new to CD was published recently by the Parisian Ellington association La Maison du Duke. The disc comprises performances recorded for theatre, television and cinema. Highlight of the collection is the extremely rare set of recordings for the 1960 stage production of the comedy Turcaret, music for which was composed by Ellington and Strayhorn. They worked with an orchestra of French musicians and, as has been remarked, they conjured a particularly Ellingtonian performance from the players. Here are scans of the booklet and liner notes. Further details of this exciting release are included below...

The Ellington discographer and expert Brian Koller has identified the sources for the tracks. His superb Ellington discography may be found here.

MDD01: Comments by Brian Koller

I purchased a copy of the latest La Maison Du Duke CD, Theatre - TV - Cinema. I compared it to the New Desor, and came up with this:

Paris studio recordings for the French play Turcaret, Dec. 30, 1960.

The CD liner notes state the session was on the night of Dec. 29/30, past midnight. The CD includes one take for Ouverture (6037a) while the New Desor lists three takes with the final two being brief piano solos.

Both Ellington and Strayhorn were present, as they were collaborating for the film soundtrack to Paris Blues, but Duke plays most if not all of the solos during the Turcaret session. The introduction to Ouverture is the same as Band Call, which was in vain since the Ellington Orchestra was

not even in France.

The CD has five takes for Frontin. The first three are unlisted in the New Desor. Track 5 has both of the New Desor takes, 6037d and 6037e. The remaining tracks of the session correspond to the New Desor, except take 1 of Chevalier (first half of track 15) was excluded from the New Desor since it was deemed too short. After the Turcaret titles were cut, Ellington and Strayhorn play the latter's piano duet Tonk, a surprise given its omission from New Desor session 6037.

The titles listed in the CD sometimes differ from their New Desor counterparts: M. Turcaret (CD) is Turcaret (New Desor)

Colore de M. Turcaret (CD) is Turcaret (New Desor)

Mme. Turcaret (CD) is Madame Mathilde de Turcaret (New Desor)

Tracks 23 and 24 of the CD are snippets of a recording of a performance of the play Turcaret in January 1961. The snippets demonstrate that Ellington's prerecorded score was played during the play; Track 23 includes Frontin, and Track 24 includes Madame Mathilde de Turcaret.

Track 25 has the Turcaret session masters edited together.

Tracks 26 and 27 are Ellington solo piano titles from his Dec. 17, 1960 appearance on the Jean Sablon television show.

Track 28 has Ellington accompanying actor Vittorio Gassman on the later's dramatic reading (in Italian) of Hamlet's famous soliloquy, recorded following an Ellington Orchestra and Ella Fitzgerald concert on Jan. 30, 1966. Ellington is playing Such Sweet Thunder. This can be seen on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPI-udDB8YA

Track 29 is the Ellington soundtrack to an American Airlines promotional film, previously released on the Extreme Rarities LP Hot Jazz on Film Volume 4 but in improved sound quality here. All of the titles from the soundtrack are edited down from the studio recordings, to synchronize with the promotional film. The soundtrack marks the first appearance of Igoo, the second movement of

Ad Lib On Nippon.

Track 30 has Ellington's July 30, 1963 appearance on the Today Show, hosted by Hugh Downs. The "session" isn't in the published New Desor, but is instead a New Desor correction available at http://depanorama.net/desor/1109.pdf

The CD titles and their New Desor counterparts: 

1. 6037a

2. "6037xa"
3. "6037xb"
4. "6037xc"
5. 6037d, 6037e
6. 6037f
7. 6037g
8. 6037h
9. 6037i
10. 6037j, 6037k
11. 6037l
12. 6037m
13. 6037n
14. 6037o
15. 6037-unlisted, 6037p
16. 6037q
17. 6037r
18. 6037s
19. 6037t
20. 6037u
21. 6037v
22. "6037w"
23. 6037e
24. 6037u
25. 6037a, 6037h, 6037s, 6037k, 6037v, 6037u, 6037e, 6037m, 6037o 26. 6035a
27. 6035b
28. 6609a
29. 6455r, 6455t, 6455y, 6455q, 6455ap, 6455u, 6455au, 6455aw, 6455as 30. 9102a, 9102b, 9102c, 9102d, 9102e

The previously unknown appearance by Duke Ellington on the Today Show was discovered by this writer. Details of the provenance of this particular recording are here...

Mills update

I got in touch with the vendor of the eBay tapes who kindly sent photographs of the remaining boxes of tapes said to be owned by irving Mills. Here are the contents...