The Great Paris Concert

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The Great Paris Concert
Live album by Duke Ellington

Publication
(s)

1973

Label (s) Atlantic Records

Format (s)

CD, LP

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

10/30

running time

118: 34

occupation

production

Nesuhi Ertegün , Ilhan Mimaroglu and Bob Porter

Studio (s)

Live recording from Olympia (Paris) and previous concerts

chronology
Afro-Bossa
1963 		The Great Paris Concert The Symphonic Ellington
1963

The Great Paris Concert is a jazz album by Duke Ellington that was recorded live at the Olympia in Paris between February 1 and 23, 1963 . After parts of the recordings appeared on Reprise Records at the end of 1963 , the live album under this title was released in 1973 with most of the pieces from the concerts on Atlantic Records . In 1989 the recordings of both publications were combined in a revised edition at Atlantic.

The Paris concerts

In the cover text of the album, Stanley Dance went into the deep connection of Ellington with Paris ; as early as 1930 he had accompanied Maurice Chevalier there . Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, he gave a concert in the Palais de Chaillot . In 1960 he had worked in Paris for eight weeks while working on the film Paris Blues . The great public success of the first two Ellington concerts in early 1963 prompted the organizers to schedule two additional dates with the Duke Ellington Orchestra three weeks later.

The program on the four evenings included the classic band repertoire such as Don't Get Around Much Anymore , Perdido or Rockin 'in Rhythm , jazz standards such as All of Me and Jimmy McHugh's On the Sunny Side of the Street, as well as two longer works, one of them Suite Thursday , which premiered in 1960 at the Monterey Jazz Festival , and A Tone Parallel to Harlem . New to the repertoire at that time was the theme song written by Ellington for the television series Asphalt-Dschungel (1960) and The Star-Crossed Lovers on the Shakespearean Suite (1958), which was featured by Johnny Hodges .

To get in the mood, the concert begins with Kinda Dukish , who plays Ellington with a piano trio and immediately turns into Rockin 'in Rhythm , with which the whole orchestra begins. With this and the following numbers, all soloists are highlighted with pieces specially written for them - the clarinet solo has first the co-composer Harry Carney , followed by the plunger trombone Lawrence Brown and the wah-wah trumpets by Cootie Williams and Ray Nance . The following three pieces, On the Sunny Side of the Street, All of Me and The Star-Crossed Lovers put Johnny Hodges in the foreground. The theme from “Asphalt Jungle” is followed by two features for Cootie Williams, the very slowly played Concerto for Cootie (1940) and the Tutti for Cootie from 1960.

The subsequently played suite Thursday - named after John Steinbeck's sentimental novel Sweet Thursday from 1954 - which Ellington wrote with Billy Strayhorn , consists of the four parts Misfit Blues, Schwiphti ( swifty ), Zweet Zurzday and Lay-By , the latter with a violin solo by Ray Nance.

The concert continues with Juan Tizol's classic Perdido , in which Ellington highlights Jimmy Hamilton and Paul Gonsalves , who also play the unison introduction. Strayhorn wrote the composition The Eighth Veil especially for Hamilton ; it follows The Rose of Rio Grande with Lawrence Brown as the main soloist. Cop Out is another vehicle for individual improvisation, here by Paul Gonsalves; in the following Bula , which Ellington advertises as a Gutbucket Bolero , clarinets and muffled trumpets dominate the mood.

Cat Anderson, ca.1947. Photo Gottlieb .

Like a gallery, Jam with Sam presents all band soloists that Ellington introduces by name. After Happy-Go-Lucky Local , one of Ellington's railroad pieces from the Deep South Suite (1946) and here a feature for Cat Anderson , follows the 14-minute longest piece of the concert, the Tone Parallel to Harlem (also Harlem Suite ), a self-contained commissioned work that Ellington had composed in 1950 for the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Arturo Toscanini , initially laid out as a concerto grosso for jazz band and symphony orchestra and first appeared on the album Ellington Uptown . It unfolds a panorama of Harlem (night) life, "a colored picture of life in a city within the city," says Stanley Dance:

" Spanish Harlem , a parade, jazz, a floorshow and chorus line, church, sermon, funeral, 'chick chick' stopping traffic, a Sunday promenade, and orators making Civil Rights 'demandments'"

According to Collier , the Harlem Suite is “brimming with wonderful moments [...]:

The description of Harlem begins with a trumpet rendering the word in a falling minor third . This is followed by a joyride through Harlem on a Sunday in which no fewer than eighteen incoherent snapshots are presented in a span of fourteen minutes. "

In the pieces that were added to the CD edition as bonus tracks, the classical band repertoire predominates; Don't Get Around Much Anymore is played in a newly arranged version without vocals, while in Do Nothing till You Hear from Me Milt Grayson is the band vocalist. Ellington announces the following three tracks as vintage oldies , Black and Tan Fantasy (1927), Things Ain't What They Used to Be (1941) and Pyramid from 1938. The song comes from Ellington's suite Black, Brown and Beige (1943) The blues that Milt Grayson sings again. After Echoes of Harlem , which came back into the band's repertoire when Cootie Williams returned to the orchestra, follows Satin Doll , which - written in 1953 - with its catchy melody was one of the hits of the Éllington Orchestra of those years.

Edition history

With the exception of four tracks, all of the album's material was recorded at three concerts at the Olympia in Paris; only Do Nothing till You Hear from Me , Things Ain't What They Used to Be and Satin Doll came from previous concerts on this tour in 1963. Don't Get Around Much Anymore is a studio recording.

Six pieces, which were recorded at the concerts in Paris in 1963, first appeared in November 1962 on Frank Sinatra's Reprise label , to which Ellington had switched after his contract with Columbia ran out . This was the ten-track compilation Duke Ellington's Greatest Hits (RS 6234). Most of the other recordings did not appear until 1973 on the double LP The Great Paris Concert (SD 2-304). For publication in CD form in 1989, the pieces on the Greatest Hits LP were combined with the recordings from the double LP on a double CD (Atlantic 7567-81303-2).

reception

Bruce Eder wrote in Allmusic about the album, which received the second highest rating (4½ stars): The recordings on The Great Paris Concert are rough and largely unedited, but the Ellington Band is in an extraordinary form. He also points out that the output of the reprise pieces is softer and more intrusive, while the sound of the Atlantic releases is rougher and more realistic; It is therefore to be hoped that the original tapes of these recordings will be found in order to obtain a complete edition of the Paris concerts in an integrated version.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton gave the album the second highest rating of 3½ stars ( "Great! Very nearly." ) And emphasized that the quality of this album lies less in the solo performances of Ellington's musicians, but in the ensemble playing that is screwing up to unpredictable heights. The Thursday suite is an unexpected gem; Also worth highlighting are the versions of Rose of Rio Grande and the Asphalt Jungle theme.

Pieces of the album

  1. Kinda Dukish - 1:52
  2. Rockin 'in Rhythm ( Harry Carney , Ellington, Irving Mills ) - 3:47
  3. On the Sunny Side of the Street ( Dorothy Fields , Jimmy McHugh ) - 2:58
  4. The Star-Crossed Lovers (Ellington, Billy Strayhorn ) - 4:18
  5. All of Me ( Gerald Marks , Seymour Simons ) - 2:35
  6. Theme from the Asphalt Jungle - 4:08
  7. Concerto for Cootie - 2:31
  8. Tutti for Cootie (Ellington, Jimmy Hamilton ) - 2:31
  9. Suite Thursday: Misfit Blues (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 3:39
  10. Suite Thursday: Schwiphti (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 2:50
  11. Suite Thursday: Zweet Zurzday (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 3:55
  12. Suite Thursday: Lay-By (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 6:25
  13. Perdido ( Ervin Drake , HJ Lengsfelder, Juan Tizol ) - 5:22
  14. The Eighth Veil (Ellington, Strayhorn) - 2:33
  15. Rose of the Rio Grande (Ross Gorman, Edgar Leslie , Harry Warren ) - 2:41
  16. Cop Out - 6:58
  17. Bula - 4:42
  18. Jam With Sam - 3:51
  19. Happy Go Lucky Local - 3:25
  20. Tone Parallel to Harlem - 14:05

More pieces from the 1989 CD edition

  2. Don't Get Around Much Anymore (Ellington, Bob Russell ) - 2:33
  3. Do Nothing till You Hear from Me (Ellington, Russell) - 4:33
  4. Black and Tan Fantasy (Ellington, Bubber Miley ) - 2:43
  5. Creole Love Call - 2:08
  6. The Mooche - 5:38
  7. Things Ain't What They Used to Be ( Mercer Ellington , Ted Persons) - 2:53
  8. Pyramid (Ellington, Irving Gordon , Mills, Tizol) - 3:25
  9. The Blues - 3:36
  10. Echoes of Harlem - 3:32
  11. Satin Doll - (Ellington, Mercer, Strayhorn) - 2:27
  • Unless otherwise stated, all compositions are by Duke Ellington.

literature

Web link

Remarks

  1. ^ The suite was first released in 1960 coupled with the Peer Gynt Suite on Columbia.
  2. ↑ Here JL Collier (in his review of the original recording of the suite) particularly emphasized the Schwiphti part ; “An eccentric piano solo by Duke is followed by a well-conceived passage by the whole band with interjections by the growl trumpet and baritone saxophone.” Quoted from Collier, p. 414 f.
  3. ↑ The piece later became even more popular as Night Train in Jimmy Forrest's version . Forrest was there as his composition, as revenge for his expulsion from Ellington. See James Lincoln Collier : Duke Ellington , pp. 407 f.
  4. ↑ The work was premiered on June 20, 1951 on the occasion of a charity concert; See Hans Ruland, Duke Ellington , Oreos, p. 108.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Cf. Stanley Dance, Liner Notes 1973.
  2. ↑ Information about the album at warr.org
  3. ↑ Information about the Harlem Suite at Jazzcom ( memento of the original from November 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jazz.com
  4. ↑ Quoted from JL Collier, Ellington , p. 409.
  5. ↑ Liner Notes of the CD from 1989.
  6. ↑ review of the album The Great Paris Concert by Bruce Eder at Allmusic (English). Retrieved January 29, 2011.
  7. ↑ Cook & Morton, p. 461 f.