I am currently in the midst of preparing another presentation for the Duke Ellington Society UK video cast series Uptown Lockdown entitled From Chelsea Bridge to Hammersmith Flyover, look at the various connections between Duke Ellington, His Famous Orchestra and London.
In the course of my researches, I happened across a reference to this album, Ellington For Strings with The Leon Young String Chorale. The album was released/ recorded during the period I am principally interested in for my presentation, 1963/64. It's interesting to note (and I could wish for a larger scan of the album covers)the inclusion of What Else Can You Do With A Drum? This is a fairly obscure Ellington song from his album A Drum Is A Woman, recorded in 1956 but I suspect only just, or still, current in the UK some eight years later.
With the exception of his brief involvement with NBC;s Symphony of the Air in 1955 and the album related in terms of repertoire from (again) 1963, The Symphonic Ellington, Duke had little time for strings (Ray Nance's violin aside), believing he could say all he wished to say through the instrumentation of his band. The presence of British tenor Tony Coe on these sessions, a disciple of Paul Gonsalves in many respects, would surely have given Ellington pause for thought here.
I imagine this album, recorded at the famous Lansdowne Studios, Holland Park (and more about that in my Uptown Lockdown presentation)was destined for the 'easy listening' market rather than the 'jazz fan'. The presence of a 'jazz' musician on the session, however, his no surprise, these sorts of recordings bread and butter for musicians such as Tony Coe and his contemporary Tubby Hayes. There is a fascinating series of posts about the jazz musician's uneasy relationship to easy listening on Simpon Spillett's highly recommended blog, the first of which may be found here.
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