Find Sweet Thunder

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Find Sweet Thunder
Studio album by Duke Ellington

Publication
(s)

1957

Label (s) Columbia Records

Format (s)

CD, LP

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

12 or 22

running time

76:25 (CD)

occupation

production

Irving Townsend

Studio (s)

Columbia 30th Street Studios, New York City

chronology
A Drum Is a Woman
1956 		Find Sweet Thunder Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook
1957

Such Sweet Thunder (dedicated to the Shakespearean Festival, Stratford , Ontario ) - so the full title - is a jazz album by Duke Ellington , recorded in five recording sessions from August 7, 1956 to May 3, 1957, released on Columbia Records in Year 1987. It contains u. a the Shakespearean Suite .

The album

Such Sweet Thunder (originally called Shakespearean Suite ) is one of the most important with Black, Brown and Beige (with Mahalia Jackson 1958), the Far East Suite (1966), the New Orleans Suite (1970) and the Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971) Recordings of longer suites by the band leader since the Duke Ellington Orchestra's comeback in 1956.

Since his tour of England in 1933, where he visited William Shakespeare's birthplace, Duke Ellington was concerned with the idea of ​​writing a longer suite on the work of the English poet. His acclaimed appearance at the Shakespearean Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada in July 1956 led him to the first ideas for the suite Such Sweet Thunder while he was working on another work, the suite A Drum Is a Woman . On April 28, 1957, the finished work was performed publicly at a concert in New York's "Town Hall". The title of the suite is based on a line of text from Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream in the first scene of the fourth act: I never heard so musical a dischord, such sweet thunder .

The suite was planned by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn as a twelve-part work in the form of portraits of Shakespeare characters, the tragic, heroic and comic figures such as Cleopatra VII (to whom Ellington dedicated the title piece), Julius Caesar , Hamlet ( Madness in Geat Ones ), Lady Macbeth , Heinrich V. ( Sonnet to Hank Cinq ) or "Puck" ( Up and Down, Up and Down ) from Midsummer Night's Dream. Even if Ellington claimed to have dealt with the poet's work for a long time, his biographer James Lincoln Collier doubts this ; he has the impression that Ellington's (and Strayhorn's) knowledge was rather superficial, that many parts of the suite pre-existed, and that Ellington and Strayhorn assigned them in the best possible way to the work of Shakespeare and his characters. Nevertheless, a work of impressive quality was created. Especially the ballad " Star-Crossed Lovers ", the piece about Romeo and Juliet, which is impressive thanks to the solo by Johnny Hodges , developed into a jazz standard . John Edward Haase comments on the suite in his study of the work of Ellington: Like Shakespeare, Ellington wrote only for his troupe .

For the special "Centennial Edition", which was released on Ellington's hundredth birthday in 1999, the CD was expanded to double the length of the approximately 35-minute original LP with additional material that had been created during the 5 recording sessions. Originally, both mono and stereo versions of each part of the suite were recorded.

Impact history

Richard Cook and Brian Morton awarded the album the top four stars in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD .

The titles

Title of the album

  1. "Such Sweet Thunder" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 3:22
  2. "Sonnet for Caesar" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 3:00 am
  3. "Sonnet to Hank Cinq" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 1:24
  4. "Lady Mac" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 3:41
  5. "Sonnet in Search of a Moor" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 2:22
  6. "The Telecasters" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 3:05
  7. "Up and Down, Up and Down (I Will Lead Them Up and Down)" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 3:09
  8. "Sonnet for Sister Kate" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 2:24
  9. "The Star-Crossed Lovers" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 4:00 am
  10. "Madness in Great Ones" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 3:26
  11. "Half the Fun" (also: "Lately") (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 4:19
  12. "Circle of Fourths" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 1:45

Additional titles from the 1999 CD edition

  • "The Star-Crossed Lovers" (also: "Pretty Girl") (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 4:15
  • "Circle of Fourths" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 1:47
  • "Suburban Beauty" (Ellington) - 2:56
  • "A-Flat Minor" (Ellington) - 2:33
  • "Café au Lait" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 2:49
  • "Half the Fun" ( Alternate take ) (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 4:08
  • "Suburban Beauty" (Alternate take) (Ellington) - 2:56
  • "A-Flat Minor" ( Outtake ) (Ellington) - 3:49
  • "Café au Lait" (also "Star-Crossed Lovers") (Outtake) (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 6:21
  • "Pretty Girl" (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 8:54

Literature / sources

  • Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD . 6th edition. Penguin, London 2002, ISBN 0-14-051521-6 .
  • Stanley Dance: Liner Notes for "The Private Collection Volume 1 - Studio Sessions, Chicago 1956"
  • Hans Ruland: Duke Ellington - his life, his music, his records . Gauting, Oreos (Collection Jazz) 1985
  • Phil Shaap: Liner notes for Such Sweet Thunder (1999)

Remarks

  1. ↑ cf. Cook & Morton in their article on Duke Ellington.
  2. ↑ cit. according to the liner notes
  3. ↑ SM Buhler Form and Character in Duke Ellington's and Billy Strayhorn's Such Sweet Thunder
  4. ↑ cf. JL Collier: Duke Ellington. Genius of jazz . Ullstein, Berlin 1999, p. 411
  5. ↑ The quote "Star-Crossed Lovers" comes from the prologue of Shakespeare's drama "Romeo and Juliet": "From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-cross'd lovers, take their life."
  6. ↑ cit. according to the liner notes