Jazzopaters

Ellington live I would dearly have loved to have seen was performed this Saturday last, 28 October by guitarist Nick Rossi leading The Jazzopaters, an 'Ellington unit'  dedicated to playing the music of Ellington's numerous small groups recording through the 1930s.  

The performance took place at Mr Tipple's Jazz Club, San Francisco, a venue which Nick says "strikes a balance between a classic nightclub atmosphere and a great listening space.

On Facebook, Nick wrote:

"I am unable to fully express how deeply grateful I feel for everyone who came out to Mr. Tipple's Jazz Club last night for two (nearly) sold out performances of our new project dedicated to the small group music of Duke Ellington. Thank you all SO very much for the support and community! And of course thank you to Jay Bordeleau and his fantastic team at the venue both for their willingness to put this on, but also for all of the extra effort they put into pulling it off. Most importantly, my most sincere thanks to the eight musicians who shared the bandstand with me last night. It's always an honor to perform Ellington's music, even more so in such truly great company.

"Here's a taste from last night's matinee show featuring Nathan Tokunaga on clarinet performing Harry Carney's PELICAN DRAG, written by Harry Carney and originally titled THE GASSER'S BLUES when it first recorded in February 1940 for CBS/ARC by an Ellington Unit led by Barney Bigard. Original arrangement likely by Duke himself, even though Billy Strayhorn had just recently stepped into the role of arranging the orchestra's small combo recordings. Transcription arrangement by Riley Baker.

"Band personnel (from left): James Dunning (trumpet), Rob Reich (piano, obscured), Remee Ashley (trombone), Nick Rossi (guitar), Riley Baker (drums), Nathan Tokunaga (clarinet), Mikiya Matsuda (bass), and Kamrin Ortiz (baritone saxophone). Patrick Wolff sat this one out as per the original instrumentation, but provided the band essential direction all performance long."

The music was transcribed by Pierre-Antoine Badaroux.

Again, courtesy of Nick Rossi, here is the set list for the two 'houses' given Saturday evening. For the record. There are rumours of a recording for YouTube - perhaps the whole performance. We live in hope!

C BLUES (Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn, 1941)**

PIGEONS AND PEPPERS (Duke Ellington & Mercer Ellington, 1937)

BARNEY GOIN’ EASY (Barney Bigard, 1939)*

FROLIC SAM (Cootie Williams, 1936)

A FLOWER IS A LOVESOME THING (Billy Strayhorn, 1947)*

CARAVAN - (Juan Tizol & Duke Ellington, 1936)

BOUDOIR BENNY - (Duke Ellington & Cootie Williams, 1939)

PELICAN DRAG - (Harry Carney, 1940)**

SQUATY ROO - (Johnny Hodges, 1940)**

READY EDDY - (Barney Bigard, 1940)*

SWINGIN’ IN THE DELL - (Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges, 1938)

MOOD INDIGO (Duke Ellington, Barney Bigard, and Lorenzo Tio, 1943)

**Denotes possibly Strayhorn involvement with the arrangement, but I could not find any solid proof in my reference materials

"While A FLOWER IS A LOVESOME THING may seem like an outlier," Nick wrote, "the song was composed by Strayhorn circa 1940 (originally titled PASSION) and was possibly in the Ellington band book by early 1941. The first commercial recording was for an Ellington Unit led by Johnny Hodges, cut in NYC for Sunrise Records during the first half (before June 7th) of 1947."