This discussion thread and the blog, Jazz in the Seventies (go here for a recent posting on the album Afro-Eurasian Eclipse), has made me want to start a similar project focussed on Ellington. Duke was, of course, the same age, virtually, as the twentieth century. The 1970s were his seventies. And, shockingly, those years are now half a century ago. As a five year project, then, I intend to follow the fiftieth anniversary of the first half of the seventies. It won't be possible to hit exact anniversary dates on the days themselves and this will be only an occasional series, but we shall try to cover the major works Ellington created, the major dates in the diary over that period of time. Extensive work on the composition Pockets and the approach to the fiftieth anniversary of The New Orleans Suite will be highlights in the project's first six months.
By way of introduction and some background, then, here are those thought provoking contributions to the Organissimo thread, the original source for which may be found here.
Please remember, the comments section its always open for your thoughts and opinions. Did you see the Ellington Orchestra in the 1970s? Please share and I will post your comments.
JSngry:
A thought about late/last Ellington - I've always found it interesting that the band in its last few years took on a sonic resemblance to an Archie Shepp type of ensemble - ragged, rugged, in your face and not really giving a damn. I realize that some of that was just a function of the personnel situation growing a little, uh..."unpredictable" as the years passed and Mercer having a challenge on his hands in getting steady players to play that kind of a schedule for that type of money.
But, still, Duke always wrote for the sounds of the players he had, and it seems like the raggedier the band got, the more he embraced it. Those last bands are all about the primacy of voice, and it's a voice that is as rugged as the most harsh blues singer/band. And in that, he reminds me of Shepp. In both cases, the primacy of "the blues feeling" is always there. Everything else happens from there.
There's a video of Shepp sitting in with Ellington, and it's pretty weak, Shepp was not yet developed enough in "traditional" harmonic improvisation to really dig in, but his tone and the tone of the last Ellington bands...I will posit that they are making some of the same conclusions after coming from some very different places. And Afro-Eurasian Eclipse seems to be daring us to hear otherwise.
To me, the most glorious aspect of Ellington's music is the raw sound of it, the shapes and colors and textures. It never stopped, no matter how "ragged" the band got. Never.
HutchFan:
To me, the most glorious aspect of Ellington's music is the raw sound of it, the shapes and colors and textures. It never stopped, no matter how "ragged" the band got. Never.
HutchFan:
To me, the most glorious aspect of Ellington's music is the raw sound of it, the shapes and colors and textures. It never stopped, no matter how "ragged" the band got. Never.
Re: that ^ sentence: Yes, yes, and yes. 100%.
As far as your comparison, I've never thought about Duke's sound in relation to Shepp, in particular. But I have wondered if Ellington hasn't gotten his due with regards to bringing an "African musical vision" into jazz -- way, way, way before the idea became fairly common in the 1970s. ... Which might be another way of saying the same thing that you're suggesting.
In other words, if you have a different vision (and different values), you'll produce a different sort of music. And traditional European ways of thinking about Duke's music aren't adequate to the task -- and perhaps miss the point entirely.
The fact that Duke was an autodidact also comes into play here. It's part of the mix as well, I think.
JSngry:
On 12/02/2020 at 7:08 PM, HutchFan said:
As far as your comparison, I've never thought about Duke's sound in relation to Shepp, in particular. But I have wondered if Ellington hasn't gotten his due with regards to bringing an "African musical vision" into jazz -- way, way, way before the idea became fairly common in the 1970s. ... Which might be another way of saying the same thing that you're suggesting.
In other words, if you have a different vision (and different values), you'll produce a different sort of music. And traditional European ways of thinking about Duke's music aren't adequate to the task -- and perhaps miss the point entirely.
Yeah, same way of saying about the same thing. and it really came to the fore in Ellington's music once the "mainstays" began to peel away/drop out/off/etc which also coincided with the rise of the Black Power movement, which was very much at the heart of Shepp's total esthetic (and of course, Shepp was totally into Ellington, I mean, anybody who wasn't....). So it's not so much that I hear a conscious influence either way, just that it seems that there was a road leading that way, and they were both on it.
Another thing to consider - as ragged as those last Ellington bands could sometimes (often) be, I gotta think that Duke could have instructed Mercer to get this raggedy shit outta here and hire some people who know how to play in a section. But he didn't. If anything, it seemed that he embraced that sound, wrote in ways that accentuated it. So...I just think that those last Ellington bands, there's a lot going on in that music that makes it a lot more "contemporary" to its chronology than the Jazz Conventional Wisdom has picked up on over the years, Duke not just as the Original Afro-Futurist or some such, but also one whose never veered off that path, ever, much less just established its place and then just sat there while everybody else paid tribute as they passed him.
Nobody passed Duke Ellington.
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