Paul Gonsalves Centenary

Paul Gonsalves, born one hundred years from today.

The Seventies: Sock it to them...

In 1970 Duke Ellington played a company gig for the 75th anniversary of the sock and stocking factory Falke in Schmallenberg, a small town (population: 25,000) in the Sauerland region of (then West‐) Germany, halfway between Kassel and Cologne. At one point we were asked about the concert and became curious about why and how it happened in the first place. We wrote to Franz‐Otto Falke, together with his brother Paul one of the co‐owners of the factory since 1951, and asked for the details. It took a couple of weeks, then we received an envelope containing a report by the Falke employee Klaus Fenger who in 1970 was working for Falke in advertising, had been assigned the task of finding an appropriate jazz ensemble for the event and who now shared his very personal memories of how it all came about. We contacted Klaus Fenger in Zambia, Africa where he lives today, organizing bush safaris, to ask him for permission to translate and share his memories of that special event in his earlier career, and he gladly agreed. Franz‐Otto Falke provided a copy of the program as well as some photos from the concert and dinner afterwards. Here, then, is the story behind Duke Ellington's concert at Schmallenberg's municipal auditorium on 10 July 1970...

Read the whole thing here.

The Seventies: The Cosmic Seen

GRÖNLAND RECORDS · Duke Ellington & His Orchestra - Afrique (take 3 vocal)

 

One never knows, do one? to quote Fats Waller, where one's explorations may lead?

In our golden anniversary celebration of Duke Ellington in the seventies, we reach 9 July today. On this day in 1970, Ellington and the Orchestra were in the Rhenus Studio in Köln, West Germany. For Ellington, it was just another stopover and a recording session for his private 'stockpile'. The engineer on this occasion, however, was Conny Plank and the 'discovery' of the tracks laid down that day created quite a media storm when they were copied to CD for release in 2015. You can read my earlier posts on the release of this disc here.

Quite the most intriguing aspect of this session was not so much the Kraftwerk engineer Conny Plank, but the presence of a vocalist Ellington seems to have acquired on his travels, Lena Junoff, pictured here with Maestro...

I am still trying to track down a copy of her autobiography/ cookbook (!), primadonnan från Hisingen. Some indication of its contents are in this post, Off The Wall,  here.

Miss Junoff is still pursuing her singing career, it seems, and I discovered the following video of her group called Cosmic Ellington Girls which I post here as a remarkable post script to the story of Ellington's Köln recording date...

An altogether more sober assessment of the relative musical merits of the so-called Conny Plank Session may be found at Michael Leddy's excellent blog Orange Crate Art.

Golden Feather

The Duke Ellington Story hosted by by Leonard Feather was reposted recently to Youtube at the behest of his daughter, Lorraine.

Here is the film...

Feather's presentation is drawn from two earlier Universal music 'shorts', A Salute to Duke Ellington and Symphony in Swing. Here are both of those pictures...

The Seventies: Bienvenue

Today, 6 July, is the fiftieth anniversary of the original telerecording of Duke Ellington's appearance on Guy Béart's chat show Bienvenue. 

The photograph at the top of the post shows Bill Coleman, featured in this extract, and Aaaron Bridgers, Billy Strayhorn's partner prior to the former's move to Paris in 1947.

Just days earlier in Ellington's recital for  ORTF recording (see previous post), Duke had made reference to Bridgers' playing of Lotus Blossom being preferable to Billy Strayhorn than his own. A touching reference and one assumes that Ellington had much to catch up on when Bridgers was in the audience for this television show.

That same day found Paul Gonsalves busy in the recording studios (presumably Barclay) for an album released subsequently on the Riviera label. The Paul Gonsalves All Stars consisted of Cat Anderson, Norris Turney, Wild Bill Davis (appearing as 'Prince Woodyard'), Joe Benjamin and Art Taylor.

One of the numbers, Alerado, was a tribute to Alexandre Rado, a great friend to members of the Ellington entourage, Billy Strayhorn, in particular. Rado produced these sessions. A few days later, the title was also re-recorded by the entire Ellington aggregation in the so-called 'Conny Plank Session'.

The album, Paul Gonsalves and his All Stars, has so far appeared neither on CD nor for streaming.

The Seventies: Radio Diffusion Télévision Français

2 July 1970 saw Duke Ellington in Paris in the television studios of Radio Diffusion for a remarkable piano recital. It is a measure of the high esteem in which Duke's music was held in France that a broadcast of such exceptional quality was arranged. 

The date of the recording is often misrepresented. This was because, in part, the programme was only broadcast some three years later, 7 August, 1973. Further confusion arises because some of the music, recorded in superb stereo, was released on CD in Italy, where the location was given as Dusseldorf, Oostende. An earlier post covered this issue here.

The piano portion of the disc is available here for your listening pleasure. I have also included the re-broadcast of the recital which Australian Broadcasting Commission television network carried. 

Everything available of this remarkable appearance, the fiftieth anniversary of which falls today, is therefore published here. An edited version of the ABC video, with just the Ellington recording is also available on the Facebook page for Ellington Live. The page is public and an account with Facebook is not necessary. Go here.

The Subject Is Jazz still(s)...

Read more about The Subject is Jazz here.