The Seventies: The River

The first two weeks of June saw Ellington completing work on recording sketches of the music for The River with his Orchestra. he had recorded some earlier 'takes' and some piano versions of the pieces but it is these recordings which were finally released in the late 1980s on Volume 5 of The Private Collection.

Here are the details of the recording sessions from the ever reliable ellingtonia.com discography:

DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA  New York City, NY     03 June 1970

Cootie Williams, Cat Anderson, Al Rubin, Fred Stone(t); Booty Wood, Julian Priester(tb); Chuck Connors(btb); Russell Procope(cl,as); Norris Turney(fl,cl,as,ts);

Harold Ashby(ts,cl); Paul Gonsalves(ts); Harry Carney(cl,bcl,as,bar); Duke Ellington(p); Joe Benjamin(sb); Rufus Jones(d)

THE RIVER     

70060301     -1           10. The Village Of The Virgins     LMR CD-83004

Add Davis Fitz(xy,ma); Walter E. Rosenberger(gl); Elayne Jones(tymp)

70060321     -9           02. The WhirlpoolLMR CD-83004

Davis Fitz, Walter E. Rosenberger, Elayne Jones out

70060340     -14         09. The Neo-Hip-Hop Cool Kiddies Community (Stud)            LMR CD-83004

70060342     -2           08. The River         LMR CD-83004

DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA  New York City, NY     15 June 1970

Cootie Williams, Cat Anderson, Mercer Ellington, Fred Stone(t); Booty Wood, Julian Priester(tb); Chuck Connors(btb); Russell Procope(cl,as); Norris Turney

(fl,cl,as,ts); Harold Ashby(ts,cl); Paul Gonsalves(ts); Harry Carney(cl,bcl,as,bar); Duke Ellington(p); Joe Benjamin(sb); Rufus Jones(d)

THE RIVER     

70061503     07*         11. The Mother, Her Majesty The Sea    LMR CD-83004

Russell Procope(cl,as); Norris Turney(fl); Harry Carney(bar); Duke Ellington(p); Joe Benjamin(sb); Rufus Jones(d)

70061504     08*         01. The Spring (Soft)        Sv 1018402, Sv 108-8617

From earlier posts in our series, The Seventies, You can read Stanley Slome's excellent essay on The River here. The discographical history of various recordings of the work may be found here.