1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 5. Duke Ellington – Ellington at Newport. (1956)


Oh no. Jazz. Not my favourite genre, although it has to be said there are so many different forms of jazz, that statement isn’t entirely true because I do like some forms – it's the really broken-down free jazz styling that I’ve never really got on with. However, part of the idea of doing this series is to force me to listen to some albums that I probably wouldn’t gravitate towards normally. 

Ellington is a big figure in jazz, and judging by his Wiki bio, African American culture in general. This album comes quite late in his discography, and apparently helped revive a flagging career. A bit of background does help with this album – it's from a live event at Newport Jazz Festival, and there was a bit of argy-bargy where first some band members went AWOL at the start of the set, causing the whole set to start late, resulting in ructions between festival organisers who wanted to close the show, and the audience, who wanted it to go on. A legendary sax solo during Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue helped serve as some form of crowd control! 

There are two forms of the album. I chose the shorter one, actually released in 1956, which is in reality a studio re-enactment of the event with some crowd sound overlays. There’s a later version that remasters the entire experience including announcements, introductions, the riot, and so on. One for purists, I think. 

There are only five tracks on the original album, a suite of three on Side One form a “symphony” specially written for the festival. Ellington was big band and swing, which is definitely on show here, but apparently not only was the big band era from the 30s and 40s becoming seen as a bit stale, but new regulations concerning royalties was essentially pricing them out of the market. I think, despite the big band sound on display here, it’s a stripped-down outfit. And there are also musical elements of the newer 1950s cool jazz and bebop creeping in, with some extended improvised solos and the slower middle movement of the Festival Suite – Blues to Be There. 

Did I enjoy it? Yes, it’s exuberant fun and impossible not to, at the very least, do some head-bobbing or toe-tapping along to the faster numbers. There are some brilliant sounds achieved as well, by, I assume, the trumpeter Cat Anderson, who manages to get such a ridiculously high sound out of the instrument that it almost sounds like somebody madly tooting a party blower. And there’s some lovely use of what I guess to be a harmon mute, giving a great “wah-wah” sound that almost mimics human speech (maybe Charlie Brown’s teacher?). 

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