Blues in orbit

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Blues in orbit
Studio album by Duke Ellington

Publication
(s)

1960

Label (s) Columbia Records

Format (s)

CD, LP

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

11/19

running time

61:36 (CD)

occupation

production

Teo Macero , Michael Cuscuna

Studio (s)

Radio Recorders, Los Angeles, Columbia 30th Street Studios, New York City

chronology
Festival Session
1958
Blues in orbit The Nutcracker Suite
1960

Duke Ellington and his Award Winners - Blues in Orbit is a jazz album by Duke Ellington , which was created in five recording sessions between February 1958 and December 1959 with changing line-ups and was released by Columbia in 1960 . In 2004 the album was re-released on CD, expanded to include several alternate takes and pieces from previous sessions.

background

Like the album The Cosmic Scene: Duke Ellington's Spacemen , made a year earlier, the title of Blues in Orbit alluded to the enthusiasm for satellites and space in American society and Ellington. In the original liner notes , Teo Macero described the atmosphere of the nightly recording session in which most of the pieces on this album were created; it did not begin until midnight on December 2, 1959 at the Columbia studio on 30th Street, New York, because Ellington's tight schedule and bookings for the studio did not allow a different time. The purpose of the session was for the young producer Macero u. a. also to record a number of jukebox compatible pieces with which one wanted to follow up on the success of his appearance in Newport in 1956 .

Ellington and Strayhorn, some of whom were still working on the arrangements during the recording, put the band together for the session in full strength (15 musicians for the title track and track 360 ) and smaller ensembles of nine, eleven and twelve ensemble members, respectively. In the first piece, Jimmy Hamilton's Three J's Blues , the composer can be heard as an exception on the tenor saxophone. Its title refers to the three "Jimmys" present, namely Hamilton himself as well as Jimmy Woode and the drummer Jimmy Johnson , who represented Sam Woodyard , who was sick at the time . In Strayhorn's composition Smada , Gonsalves and trumpeter Ray Nance are the soloists. Pie Eye's Blues , a twelve-bar jazz blues , is a variant of the Flirtibird theme from the 1959 soundtrack of Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder , in which Ellington appeared as band leader Pie Eye .

C Jam Blues is a feature for Ray Nance on violin; Trombonist Matthew Gee, Gonsalves and Booty Wood can also be heard as soloists. In In a Mellow Tone Ellington first places percussive accents on the piano; then Harry follows Carney on the baritone saxophone. Matthew Gee was co-composer and baritone horn player on The Swingers Get the Blues, Too ; the up-tempo number The Swingers Jump was created during the recording and was therefore initially called "Last Minutes Blues".

Johnny Hodges , who toured with the Billy Strayhorn Band in early 1958, can only be heard in three tracks, Villes Ville is the Place, Man , the ballad Sentimental Lady and Brown Penny , the one from the Broadway revue Beggar's Holiday , which Ellington had written with John La Touche. Billy Strayhorn is the pianist in Blues in Blueprint , where Ellington leads the band with a snap of his fingers; Harry Carney plays the bass clarinet here .

reception

In his review of the album on Allmusic , Bruce Eder only gave three stars and admitted that Blues in Orbit lacks the intellectual format of the suites and concept albums that occupy a large space among Ellington's recordings of this period; nevertheless it is an album of its own worth, even if it is only about experiencing the band from a lighter side of their sound. The album forms the essence of this nightly session, which had more of the character of a jam session than a normal studio appointment, balanced between the spontaneity of the jam session and the technical high gloss of the studio session.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton gave the album the second highest rating of 3½ stars ( “a very fine album” ) and particularly emphasize the solo performances of Paul Gonsalves, who almost dominates the album, for example in Brown Penny (which is the earlier vocal version of Kay Davis imitate), in the sugar-sweet interpretation of Sentimental Lady (also I Didn't Know About You ) and in Smada , which was otherwise a feature for Jimmy Hamilton. This sounds rather anonymous on the tenor in Three J's Blues and Pie Eye's Blues . In the C Jam Blues he returned to the clarinet he was used to; There are also excellent solos by Gonsalves and the rather unknown Matthew Gee and Booty Wood . Favorable trends were also the newly created Ellington compositions Blues in Blueprint and The Swinger's Jump , which varied the easily predictable profile.

The French Académie du Jazz awarded the album in 1981 with the newly created Prix ​​Bill Coleman .

List of pieces

  • Duke Ellington and his Award Winners - Blues in Orbit (Columbia)
  1. Three J's Blues ( Jimmy Hamilton ) - 2:54
  2. Smada (Ellington, Billy Strayhorn ) - 2:38
  3. Pie Eye's Blues - 3:27
  4. Sweet and Pungent (Strayhorn) - 4:03
  5. C Jam Blues (Ellington, Barney Bigard ) - 4:52
  6. In a Mellow Tone (Ellington, Milt Gabler ) - 2:43
  7. Blues in Blueprint - 3:43
  8. The Swingers Get the Blues, Too (Ellington, Matthew Gee ) - 3:09
  9. The Swinger's Jump - 3:53
  10. Blues in Orbit (Strayhorn) - 2:29
  11. Villes Ville Is the Place, Man - 2:33
  12. Track 360 - 2:03 bonus track
  13. Sentimental Lady - 4:02 Bonus track
  14. Brown Penny (Ellington, John La Touche ) - 3:02 bonus track
  15. Pie Eye's Blues [alternate take] - 3:32 bonus track
  16. Sweet and Pungent [alternate take] (Strayhorn) - 3:52 bonus track
  17. The Swinger's Jump [alternate take] (Ellington) - 3:51 bonus track
  18. Blues in Orbit [alternate take] (Strayhorn) - 2:39 bonus track
  19. Track 360 [alternate take] - 2:01 bonus track

All compositions - unless otherwise stated, are by Duke Ellington.

The first two sessions took place at Radio Recorders, Los Angeles ; on February 4, 1958, pieces 12 and 19 were recorded; on February 12, 1958, tracks 10 and 18. The subsequent sessions took place at the CBS 30th Street studio in New York City; on February 25, 1959, piece 11, on December 2, 1959, pieces 1, 3–5 and 13–16, and on December 3, 1959, pieces 2, 6–9 & 17 were recorded.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. A Duke Ellington Panorama
  2. ^ Teo Macero: Original Liner Notes, 1958.
  3. a b Review of Rex Butters' album in All About Jazz
  4. ^ Cook & Morton, p. 460.
  5. a b c Patricia Willard, Liner Notes 2004.
  6. Hodges had already participated in its first performance in 1942
  7. Review of the album Blues in Orbit by Bruce Eder at Allmusic (English). Retrieved January 25, 2011.
  8. ^ Cook & Morton, p. 460.