Duke Ellington - Four symphonic works

Agree that Ellington is one of the elite musical giants of the 20th century.

With digital remasters and all, there is so much for music and audio buffs to explore with Duke Ellington these days!

I have: The Ellington Suites, Ellington Indigos, Side by Side (Duke Ellington & Johnny Hodges), Back to Back (Duke Ellington & Johnny Hodges) and Duke Ellington, Piano in the Background and they are all very good....to my taste.

For a list of Ellington CDs, go to
http://ellingtonweb.ca and click on "CD Cross-referenced Song Lists" on the left.

Duke's music was incredibly varied - to hear a sampling that shows his early development and a variety of his styles, by no means complete, click the next link, "Ellington 78 RPM Record Labels," and listen to the sound clips for the following:
Creole Love Call (DE2709c)
Black and Tan Fantasy (DE2710c )
Mood Indigo (DE3015b)
Eerie Moan (DE3301e)
Daybreak Express (DE3313d)(this one started me on his music)
Caravan (DE3611e)
Ko-Ko (DE4005d)
Flamingo (DE4036b)
John Hardy's Wife (DE4105d)
I Got It Bad, and That Ain't Good (DE4115b)
Moon Mist (DE4201d)

The DE numbers are a reference to the New Desor discography, and I've added them here so you'll exactly which recording I refer to.

I've sorted the labels by period, so use the first two digits after DE as a clue to the page they're at.

If you prefer symphonic jazz, most of these won't do it for you, but listen a couple of times and you may find yourself hooked anyway. The man was a great composer and he surrounded himself with top performers. Traditional they were not.



t will show you the variety of his music are Black and Tan Fantasy (1920s)

Here's some commentary and a book review about Ellington from a recent "New Yorker" article. It talks about how he composed pieces and puts some perspective on how difficult it was for him to perform for most of his career.