Product Description

What makes this classic recording endure is the monumental level of intensity the band brings to each number. Ellington, in speaking of the band's competitive nature, recalled that they were all in a particularly fesity mode for this performance. That crackling energy translates to every number, and even extended to Count Basie's original drummer Jo Jones, who sat grinning from ear to ear in the front row, so moved by the swing of it all that he beat time for the band with arolled up copy of The Christian Science Monitor.
From Johnny Hodges' ultra-suave "Jeep's Blues", to Paul Gonsalves' epic tenor marathon on "Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue" (which set the crowd to dancing and screaming), ELLINGTON AT NEWPORT is one of the really great big band recordings.

Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Star Spangled Banner
2. Father Norman O'conner Introduces
3. Black And Tan Fantasy
4. Duke Introduce Cook & Tune
5. Tea For Two
6. Talk About The Festival
7. Take The A Train
8. Duke Announces Strayborn's A Train & Nance/Duke Introducess
9. Part I -Festival Junction
10. Duke Announces Nance & Procope
11. Part Ii-Blues To Be There
12. Duke Announces Nance & Procope
13. Part Iii-Newport Up
14. Duke Announces Hamilton,Gonsalves & Terry/Duke Introduce Car
15. Sophisticated Lady
16. Duke Announces Grisson & Tune
17. Day In,Day Out
18. Duke Troduce Tune(S) And Paul Gonstaves Interludes
19. Diminuendo In Blue And Crescendo In Blue
20. Announcements,Pandemonium
21. Pause Track

Disc 2:

1. Duke Introduce Johnny Holges
2. I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
3. Jeep's Blues
4. Duke Calms Crowd,Introduces Nace & Tune
5. Tulip Or Turnip
6. Riot Prevention
7. Skin Deep
8. Mood Indigo
9. Studio Concert
10. Father Norman O'connor Introduces Duke Eillington To
11. Part I- Festival Juncion
12. Duke Announces Soloists:Introduxe Part Ii
13. Part Ii-Blues To Be There
14. Duke Announces Nance & Procope,Introduces Part Iii
15. Part Iii-Newport Up
16. Duke Announces Hamilton,Gonsalves & Terry/Pause/Duke Introd
17. I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
18. Jeep's Blues
19. Pause Track

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13747 in Music
• Released on: 1999-05-17
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Live

Customer Reviews

A masterclass in bandleading and group playing
The reviews below are, IMO, pretty churlish for what is one of the great live albums of all time, in -any- genre.

The original 'Ellington at Newport' LP consisted of the legendary Diminuendo/Crescendo In Blue performance (of which more in a bit), plus some re-recorded stuff with overdubbed applause, a shoddy and largely faked document of what was reportedly one of the stonkingest live gigs in history. The Columbia team have hunted down the original tapes and reconstructed the entire concert, bum notes and all. (The bum notes were the reason why Columbia insisted on Ellington rerecording a lot of the stuff in the studio a few days later. This CD includes the re-recordings, but restores the original performances, so nobody feels left out.)

By the time Duke and his Orchestra hit the stage for their second set at 11.45pm, they were annoyed at having been pulled off after a short set hours earlier and being made to wait before they could play again. Ellington's critical stock was down in 1956; he was regarded as a pioneer whose time had passed. He must have felt that he had something to prove. Most of the first disc of this CD consists of the first half of the concert; the Orchestra makes tidy and slick work of a handful of Ellington standards, and they do a nice job on the suite composed specially for the Festival. Then Ellington announces the Diminuendo/Crescendo medley. It all goes smoothly enough until, Diminuendo having diminuendoed, Duke leads via a brief piano solo into Paul Gonsalves' tenor spot. Gonsalves starts obliquely and softly, then gradually gets more confident. By the sixth chorus he's starting to dig in. By the seventh chorus, everyone knows something unusual is happening.

What was happening was a good player having a moment of greatness. Gonsalves keeps going, with the increasingly vocal encouragement of the rest of the band, spinning out riffs and ideas and generally refusing to give up, and with the backing of the rhythm section he drags the entire performance from being a solidly professional gig into a once-off event. Gonsalves' solo is proof that, to make great music, you don't always have to be a technical wizard. In 1956 Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, to name but two, were more obviously genius tenor players than Paul Gonsalves. You just have to have the cojones to bring forth what's inside you, and trust that the musicians you're playing with and the audience you're playing to will go along with it, and this one time at least, Gonsalves pulled it off.

When Gonsalves finally yields the stand, and the band picks up with Crescendo In Blue, the tension rises even further to an ecstatic finale. The audience pandemonium when they finally stop is like something you'd expect from Beatlemania. It's one of the most incredible group performances ever recorded, and is the principal reason why anyone who loves music needs to have this album.

That's not even the end. Ellington judged that to leave the stage at that point would provoke a riot, so he called on Johnny Hodges to cool the crowd. Hodges plays beautifully, and the result would have normally been the climax of the concert, if Gonsalves hadn't already raised the roof with twenty-seven choruses. (Hodges himself had recently returned to Ellington's band after a sabbatical, and was reportedly a bit miffed that Gonsalves got all the press for this gig.)

The irony of the whole thing is that Gonsalves was normally a subtle, quirky and meditative player, not given to the kind of large-scale showboating that he does here, and for the rest of his career after this concert he used to resent the way that Ellington was always getting to him to stand up and play honking blues choruses every time the band played 'Diminuendo/Crescendo in Blue'!

A fantastically restored document of a great performance. Live music doesn't get much more live than this.

Riotous Assembly
'Ellington At Newport' turned out to be the best-selling album of the Duke's career largely due to the exceptional performances of the soloists on the album. But Ellington's compositions always gave great scope for improvisation by his band and it's his own enthusiasm and momentum that spurred the band on to great things that night.

On 'Black & Tan Fantasy' Cat Anderson's solo is a throwback to the era in which it was composed, while Willie Cook on 'Tea For Two' swings unstoppable. Ellington himself puts in some spirited piano playing at the beginning of 'Take The A Train' and 'Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue'. 'Festival Junction' is an inspired name for the opening part of the festival suite as it builds and builds in its thumping and sophisticated way, much like the rest of the concert. Then a slight respite with Russell Procopej's lilting clarinet on 'Blues To Be There', before back to the frenetic pace of the earlier part with 'Newport Up'. Here the notes and tempo seem to crash and burn against each other in a manner more reminscent of bepop than swing.

The there's the effortless, breezy solo of Harry Carney on 'Sophisticated Lady' and try as he might, poor Jimmy Grisham's vocal on 'Day In, Day Out' just doesn't match the power and sincerity of the backing instrumentation.

On Paul Gonsalves performance of his career, the rest of the band aren't slow in egging him on to greater and greater heights through enthusiastic shouts and claps. This appreciative support seems oddly lacking in the other soloists performances. After the riotous greeting of this number, Ellington seems to use Johnny Hodges laid-back playing on 'I Got It Bad' and 'Jeep's Blues' as a way of quietening the crowd. Ray Nance does slightly better than Grisham's earlier performance, with his satchmo-singing on 'Tulip or Turnip' before Sam Woodyard whips the crowd into a frenzy again with his remarkable drum soloing on 'Skin Deep'.

His riot control complete, Ellingtion slips away under the auspicies of 'Mood Indigo'.

First extended saxophone solo
This record is not in itself one of Ellington's best. It merits a place in this list for its historical importance: it documents the first extended live saxophone solo. There is a broad consensus now that it was unplanned. Indeed, it seems that the climax of the evening had been reserved for Johnny Hodges on "Jeep's Blues".

Paul Gonsalves was then Duke's principal tenor, though as a saxophone voice, Johnny Hodges' alto was far more distinctive and admired. The circumstances appear to have led to Gonsalves' protagonism on this occasion. He played a full 27 choruses as if he were reading from a score. Some claim that a woman dancing on stage propelled him and the band to do this, others that the veteran drummer Jo Jones was in the wings egging him on.

Either way, this raucous frenzy was entirely unexpected, and became the highlight of that year's Newport Festival, thus paving the way for the exuberant live saxophone solos of the 1960s and 70s. (It seems that Charlie Christian was known to solo for long stretches in the 30s, even with Benny Goodman, but no single solo like this one had ever, until that day, received so much attention).

Strangely, the record itself documents only some of that evening's music, and in the wrong order. For years the material was only available in this form, and now there is another volume circulating containing the rest of the music, but it's nowhere near as interesting. The solo is on "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue".