Take The "A" Train: Classics 1!17: Duke Ellington 1950

Classics 1217Duke Ellington and His Orchestra1950Release Date: 2002Other notable musicians in this CD: Wild Bill Davis, Billy Strayhorn, Mercer Ellington and other usual Ellington gang members.Label(s): Mercer, ColumbiaNumber of sessions: 6Unissued materials: NoneTrack Highlights: a 12 minutes The Tattooed Bride, a 15 minutes Mood IndigoAbout the period: Undeniably the early 1950s were difficult years for Duke Ellington.

espite having a sign with Columbia the ring was rather infrequentlyrecorded. In addition, the peaks ofEllington's creativity have alwaysparalleled the level of public adoption of his compositions andgeneral appreciation of his band. Never since the early twenties. hadthe wider public cared less for big bands than around 1950. In spite ofhis economical problems Ellington continued to read music of very highquality.The Album: Opens with ten tracks for Mercer. Eight of these suffered a strange fate, Originally conceived as 78 singles, they were made at a sentence when the diligence was gradually switch to LPs and were so issued on a very obscure 10-inch LP, which had limited distribution as Mercer left business shortly after. This medicine was next re-issued in 1964 on Riverside just before this mark also stopped issuing records. This same LP was ultimately again on the marketplace in the mid-eighties - when CDs came along. No wonder these outstanding piano-duo shave attained near mythical reputation. Two extra tracks were issued under Wild Bill Davis' name with the Duke sitting in on Things Ain't What They Used To Be. The three next performances for Columbia are not very easily known either. Love You Madly features a vocal by Yvonne Lanauze and a fine tenor solo by Paul Gonsalves.

Paul Gonsalves

November 1950 session must be one of the first (if not the first) Gonsalves appearance with Duke on record. Ellington, who had been having difficulty with the tenor saxophone chair, finally stabilized it for the following two decades with the accession of Gonsalves. He easily filled the gap that followed Webster`s departure. Gonsalves had a breathy, rich look that identified him as a Coleman Hawkins disciple, and had put in tours of responsibility with Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. "When he came in the band, he knew every Webster solo by heart," later said Harry Carney. Gonsalves himself once stated, "If I die tomorrow, I`ll consider I`ve been successful, because when I began to read it was with the idea of existence with that band."

Flamingo, Ellington& Strayhorn on piano, Wendell Marshall on bass, N. Y. C. October 3, 1950.

Other Major Replacements

Gonsalves was one of so many replacement in Ellington's orchestra, from 1949 to 1950. The form of the orchestra during this point is difficult to plot, the changes inside the circle being so numerous. The office can be summarized briefly: Fred Guy left and was not replaced, Ellington having subsequently kept his rhythm section down to three pieces. Ben Webster left and Paul Gonsalves came. The trumpets wavered between 4 and 5 pieces, sometimesthe band having to take two head men owing to Al Killian's lip trouble. Quentin Jackson came to the trombone section in lieu of Claude Jones, but Tyree Glenn ceased to be a regular member of the band. For the European tour of 1950 (with the entire band this time, but omitting England from the itinerary owing to the federal ban) Ellington was without Tyree Glenn and he brought two drummers with him, Greer and Butch Ballard. The tenor sax chair was vacant so he signed up ex-Basie tenor man Don Byas, who was resident in Europe, for the length of the tour. Oscar Pettiford had left and been replaced by Wendell Marshall, cousin of the late Jimmy Blanton into whose old chair he now moved. This was a bad period for big bands and bothCount Basie and Woody Herman, Duke's keenest rivals since the mid-forties, had been constrained to dissolve their groups. In February, 1950, he was presented with an award from the magazine Downbeat, in gain to which he was presented with a parchment scroll commemorating the fact that Ms was the sole leading band from the magazine's 1949 poll still in existence!Sessions:

• BILLY STRAYHORN TRIO:

Duke Ellington (p), Billy Strayhorn (p), Wendell Marshall (b).New York, October 3, 1950.Cotton Tail5710CJam Blues5711Flamingo5712Bang-Up Blues5713

• WILD BILL DAVIS AND HIS REAL GONE ORGAN:

Duke Ellington (p), Wild Bill Davis (org),Johnny Collins (g), Jo Jones (d).New York, late October, 1950.Things Ain't What They Used To BeM-4023

• WILD BILL DAVIS AND HIS REAL GONE ORGAN:

Wild Bill Davis (org),Johnny Collins (g), Jo Jones (d).New York, late October, 1950.Make No MistakeM-4024

• BILLY STRAYHORN TRIO:

Duke Ellington(p), Billy Strayhorn (p), Joe Shulman (b).New York, November 1950.TonkM-2479Johnny Come latelyM-2480In A Dark Summer GardenM-2481Great TimesM-2482

• DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA:

trumpet section: Harold Baker, Nelson Williams, Cat Anderson, Andres Merenguito and RayNance (also Vln)Trombone: Lawrence Brown, Quentin Jackson.Jimmy Hamilton (cl,ts), Johnny Hodges (as), Russell Procope (cl, as), Paul Gonsalves (ts), Harry Carney (cl, barsax), Duke Ellington (p), Wendell Marshall (b), Sonny Greer (d), AI Hibbler (voc), Yvonne Lanauze (voc).New York, November 20, 1950.Build That RailroadCO-44662-1Love You MadlyCO-44663-1Great TimesCO-44664-1

• DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA:

Mercer Ellington (flugel horn),Tyree Glenn (tb), Billy Strayhorn (p).New York, December 18, 1950.The Tattooed BrideCO-44749-1Mood IndigoCO-44750-1Total Time: 66 mins. (approximately)