Customer Reviews

Live at Monterey

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If you ever tried to find a melody that fits seamlessly into a meter like 19/8 or 27/16 without sounding forced or predictable, you know how difficult this is to manage. Fluent improvisation in such a complex rhythmic context is, of course, an even harder task. Similar (and, mostly, less complex) experiments by other artists have sounded pretty acedemic; but that's not that kind of 'Well, let's try some new strange meter and see what comes out' stuff - and no 'difficult' or forbidding music, either. The main difference to some less successful records in a similar vein is that the Don Ellis Orchestra SWINGS LIKE HELL! Ellis's quarter tone trumpet in particular dances completely naturally above some of the oddest rhythmic structures you'll ever hear (without being polyrhythmic or free) - something that's quite common in some Eastern music cultures but has rarely been done in Jazz, at least not in such a fully convincing and stimulating way. Emotional highlights of the CD are 33 222 1 222 (the title describes the meter of the track - pretty tricky foot tapping... NB: This piece is not listed above, but it's on the CD!) and the previously unreleased 'Beat Me Daddy, 7 To The Bar', a boogie in 7/8 time. - If you ever considered Dave Brubeck's Time Out, Time Further Out and Time Even A Bit More Out albums (you get the idea) a shade too tame and cool - here's the real thing!

This album has great insight as to how Ellis and his band could capture an audience.

In the introduction by Jimmy Lyons, you can hear the smattering of courtesy applause from an audience that had no idea of what was about to happen. After the end of the first selection "33 222 1 222", it was clear that the crowd realized they were witnessing something amazing.

By the end of the performance, based on the reaction of the crowd, he not only had the audience hooked, he had 'em landed, cleaned, filleted and fried!

"Concerto for Trumpet" is my favorite selection because I had the chance to hear Don perform it live. It's the piece that got me and the audience "hooked" in 1969.

He was an absolute genius at his craft. Imagine what he could have done with another 20 years?

I got Live at Monterey in my CD collection so I could hopefully scratch a Don Ellis itch that I've been having. Unfortunately, I really need to hear "Tears Of Joy" on CD to really get relief. I have it on vinyl, but it doesn't do a bit of justice to the softer parts, as I hear the needle running through the groove better than I can hear the string quartet.

"Tears Of Joy" really needs to be released onto CD! It's a phenomenal live recording, and it's just not my opinion that it's Ellis' best work.

Look on the web. Do a search on "Tears Of Joy" and you'll get sites that say "my personal favorite" and other similar statements. Then tell Koch Jazz to get busy on getting it out!!

The Don Ellis Orchestra burst onto the national scene at the Monterey Jazz Festival on August 16, 1966. Ellis and his band captivated the Monterey audience by performing compositions in meters with 5, 9, 11, 19, and 27 beats to the bar. The performance is documented on this live recording, which includes the impromptu verbal introductions Ellis delivered before each selection. Ellis addresses the audience as though he was speaking to a gathering of devoted supporters. His descriptions combine technical explanations of the music with off-the-wall humor.

In describing a composition composed with a 19/4 time signature, Ellis says, "The first number we have is one that is based in what we call the 'traditional 19,' nineteen beats to the bar. Let me give you the subdivision here, it is 3-3-2-2-2-1-2-2-2. Of course, that's just the area code."

The performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival was a triumph for Ellis and his new ensemble. Live at Monterey recording ultimately went on to earn a Grammy award nomination.

Who can take a time signature like 18/9 32/16 and make it swinging ear candy. Don can. That's Mister Ellis to you. `=

This is actually not nearly implausible as I faciously made it sound. Let me back up just a second.

People who know a little about music may know meters like 7/8 or 11/4. You usually encounter these in 70s art rock like King Crimson. The signitures sound bumpy, because phrases end where we are not used to. Clap your hands seven times and you want to clap once more. Eight is a nice round number becuase most music we here works like this. Right? I mean, listen to any basic rock chorus and your counting to eight.

Alright, so Don the madman comes along with these extended time messures. But notice, 18 can be three, it is just three six times. So his meters don't sound as odd as they may look on paper.

These are what Indian musicans used to play ragas. They work well in Ellis' music, because he likes to play long statements at fast tempos. My guess, they were probably a lot harder for him and his band to play then for you and me to hear. The phrases may be long, but Ellis makes them sound natural. Each bar and solo has a neat ending, and does not have the jerkiness of the art rock stunts mentioned before.


You can catch this sound throughout this album, in numbers like the opening track, or Crete idea, or Beat Me Daddy, ten to the bar. Listen, and you would never know how weird these subdivisions are. Ellis's execution is smooth as silk. The popping bongos and flashing brass bursts let you know right away, this is living, swinging music, not some time signature lab rat.

For years, Frank Zappa has always come up when I write about Ellis. I never could put my finger on the reason. Finally, listening to this album, I understand why. Listen to Ellis' horn charts, especially around this period, and those punchy brass bursts could be from Batman, The Mod Squad, or even Carson's Tonight show. His advanced work has the coloqialisms of 1960s pop culture. He is just putting these into a more advanced context.

Like Zappa, Ellis made the alien everyday, and the everyday far out. With albums like this, you'll want to go far out everyday, too.

Leave it to Don Ellis for composing music that has energy and swings like mad whilst utilizing odd time signatures, something that, frankly, is quite difficult to pull off. As other posters here have mentioned, he makes the melodic components fit with the irregular meter of his music fit like a glove, resulting in some of the most exciting, innovative, and simply dynamic jazz recorded within the genre's history, in this writer's opinion.

I don't think anything like what Don and his group were doing on that stage in Monterey, CA in 1966 had ever been attempted before in jazz and so effectively, hence the extremely positive reception they received from the audience after performing the first song on the album. Don was a pioneer of jazz in every sense of the word, not just with exploring unconventional time signatures, but incorporating other elements quite alien to jazz at the time, such as quarter-notes, and scales belonging to Middle Eastern and other foreign styles of music.

That first track, "33 222 1 222" (the pattern of the beats per bar, essentially 19/8 time) has such a intense energy to it that it gives the song a vividly cinematic quality (proving that Don also had the chops, exemplary in themselves to begin with musically, for film scoring, since he would later compose & record the soundtrack for "The French Connection"). I'd love to see "33 222 1 222" used in a movie :). "Passacaglia and Fugue" mixes classical elements (the title indicating such) with some of the most swingin' arrangements to make Benny Goodman blush, while "Concerto for Trumpet"'s 5/4 time gives it such a rhythmic, and almost bossa-nova-esque, lilt, in addition to its initial clarinet and flute arrangements which build up to a full crescendo with the group in full gear simply going gangbusters!

The album, engineered by the legendary Wally Heider (also founder of one of the major recording studios in LA in the 60 & 70s, Wally Heider Studios), sounds crisp and full and fully captures the group's sound, but there are two small anomalies that I noticed when listening to the MP3 (and possibly CD) version of the album: one is the presence of a quiet 60 Hz hum (with a few high harmonics) in quiet passages of the sound, and second, the sound has a bit of tape print-through (noted by a faint "pre-echo" before loud passages of the music). This is totally understandable, because print-through can happen to any tape that's been stored for a certain amount of time, especially considering how long ago the performances on this album were recorded. Print-through happens to any tape that's been stored for a number of years, and I'd assume any tape stored for 31 years before being unearthed from the vaults in 1997 (when this album was remastered for this CD) would be in the same shape. But these two faults are rather minor, only concerning audio geeks like me, and hardly affect the listening experience of the album overall.

Summing things up, this is an album that should be definitely be in every jazz aficionado's collection. I enjoyed this album so much, that I went out and got the original '66 vinyl release of it!!!

The Don Ellis Orchestra was like an aberration of physics. How could so many musicians swing w/ such precision over such ambitious arrangements and in such odd meters? I'll play "Live at Monterey" and "Electric Bath" for my friends, and their reactions are always the same as mine--giddy, stunned disbelief. Ellis was a helluva fine trumpet player, but the other soloists are quite good, too. I can almost imagine the concertgoers having to catch their breath at the end of "33 222 1 222." It's that amazing a performance. In the liner notes, Stanley Feather makes a comment to the effect that the stage was like an inferno by the end of the Orchestra's set. He nails it right on the head.