Ellington At Newport 1956 [LIVE] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]

Duke Ellington

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 11, 1999)
• Original Release Date: April 27, 1999
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Live, Original recording remastered
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B00000IMYA
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,845 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording
When Duke Ellington took his orchestra to the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956, the band was in need of an uplift, some humongous event that would revitalize its image in the wake of bebop, hard bop, and so many more jazz currents. Ellington got the lift he needed when he called "Diminuendo in Blue" with set-closer "Crescendo in Blue" tacked on the end. Tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves got the nod from Ellington to segue from "Diminuendo" to "Crescendo," and he blew doors. With one rousing 27-chorus solo, Gonsalves blew a fever into the crowd and jump-started Ellingtonia for another generation. Trouble with all this is that the living document of the Newport show is almost fully manufactured, recorded in a studio with crowd madness dubbed in. So this two-CD historical correction is an awesome addition to the centennial-era reissues on Columbia (including Anatomy of a Murder, Such Sweet Thunder, First Time: Count Meets the Duke, and Black, Brown and Beige). The producers revisited the Newport gig after four decades because they discovered an extant Voice of America tape--the one whose microphone Gonsalves blew his solo into, and the VOA tape catches the whole Newport set in its organic glory. Alternately tender with layers of brushstroke orchestration and blazing with the band's well-seasoned tightness, this new Newport is one for the generalist and the Ellington completist. It's got the revived original gig as well as the original commercial release. And they make great siblings, illustrative of the live-event charm and the music industry's dogged labors in reinventing it on record. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A classic and a conundrum, December 3, 2002

By	N. Dorward "obsessive reviewer" (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a remarkable, historic release--a 1999 restoration of the classic 1956 Ellington Newport album which includes Paul Gonsalves' famous 27-chorus solo on "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue". Yet I find it hard to disentangle the rights & wrongs of this release.

First, the rights. The original release of the Gonsalves solo was badly flawed because it was played off-mike. Or so it was thought: in fact it turned out that Gonsalves had simply picked the wrong mike, which was hooked up to the Voice of America broadcast of the concert rather than the Columbia engineers' equipment. The VOA tapes were recovered, & engineer Phil Schaap has created a highly acceptable stereo mix by running the VOA recording in one channel, the Columbia recording in the other.

Columbia tried to get the Ellington band to secretly rerecord the entire disc in the studio. They did so, & the majority of the original LP was a studio recreation, with canned applause. Ellington angrily balked at forcing Gonsalves to recreate his original solo, however, & so the version of "Diminuendo and Crescendo" on the LP was indeed the flawed live version. (In addition, the LP included the live version of "Jeep's Blues", & spliced in Ray Nance's live solo on the "Festival Suite" to the studio rerecording. The rest of the LP was the studio recording, including faked emcee banter & announcements.)

So, this is an invaluable, almost miraculous restoration of the original 1956 Newport set; as an appendix, the studio session is included at the end. Yet my verdict would be mixed on whether the new version "improves" the old album. The verdict would be a resounding "Yes!" for the centrepiece of the album: "Diminuendo...". But what about the rest?

Well, the album starts bathetically enough. Four members of the band went AWOL before the planned start time for the set, & Ellington took the stage, played "The Star-Spangled Banner", "Black & Tan Fantasy" & "Tea of Two" with the partial band before giving up & aborting the set. Once the truant members had arrived, they returned to the attack with "Take the 'A' Train", before moving immediately to "Festival Suite". This was new music, written with Ellington's usual haste & clearly underrehearsed: the live performance is acceptable but has a lot of flubs, & in general the later studio version of these tracks is my preference. The rest of the concert is rather a ragbag--a nice "Sophisticated Lady", a rather annoying vocal number, "Day In Day Out", a couple numbers for Hodges ("I Got It Bad..." features a rare goof from him on the opening phrase--they thus rerecorded this piece in the studio too, though it wasn't on the original 1956 LP), the throwaway novelty number "Tulip or Turnip", a drum feature for Sam Woodyard called "Skin Deep", & the closing cooler "Mood Indigo". What the restoration of the concert largely reveals is that EXCEPT for "Diminuendo & Crescendo in Blue" this wasn't an especially remarkable concert. The flood of extra material, in other words, considerably dilutes the impact of the album. & also, the inclusion of every jot & tittle of the announcements & crowd noise & whatnot from the original concert further slackens the pace--do we really need _all_ of this? (By my count, there's about 12 minutes' worth of this "atmosphere" included among the live tracks.)

I feel rather guilty about giving this less than a 5-star rating, consideringly that this is an album with one of the greatest recorded solos in jazz. But I rather wish that Columbia had put out, in addition to this complete edition of the event & the studio sessions, a one-CD condensation that would appeal more to the casual listener. Sometimes less _is_ more.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Musical, Historical and Technological Wonder, February 6, 2000

By	Michael R. Lachance (Maine, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This re-issue of the Ellington set from the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival is simply the greatest jazz concert ever recorded. Recovering from the 'canned' studio concert which was originally released, this 2-CD set was painstakingly assembled from 2 complete (but unique) mono tape recordings that were originally set aside as 'flawed' and unusable by themselves. One recording from the Columbia microphones and one recording recently discovered from the Voice of America microphones. Upon assembling using modern digital technology, the result is the most amazing live (TRUE) Stereo recording you will ever hear. I have owned this CD for nearly a year and can still listen to it again and again, never tiring of its immense impact, musical genius and state of the art (full frequency!) audio quality. This is REQUIRED listening for any Ellington fan. This is a living, breathing document to seal Ellington in his place as the greatest Jazz icon of the 20th Century. If you listen closely, you will be astounded at the ambiance of this release, whispers and even the delay of the Newport sound system's own monitor speakers echoing through the crowd can be heard...SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensable, February 17, 2000

By	Dog Pile (Spokane, Washington) - See all my reviews

In the 1950s an aging Duke Ellington was floundering in the shifting currents of popular music. The emergence of bebop, cool jazz, and rock-and-roll made Ellington's big band stylings seem dated. Younger musicians scorned him; critics panned him; and audiences ignored him. But the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival gave Ellington his shot at redemption, and he took full advantage of the opportunity. With the world of jazz gathered at his feet, Ellington delivered a masterful performance that awed critics and musicians alike, and sent the audience of 7000 into a riotous frenzy. By skillfully blending rejuvenated versions of old standards (Black and Tan Fantasy, Take the A Train, Sophisticated Lady) with breathtaking new material (Newport Jazz Festival Suite), Ellington both reestablished his jazz credentials and proved his continuing vitality. And then he unleashed Diminuendo in Blue/Crescendo in Blue. For 14 transcendent minutes, Ellington rode the wild musical currents that had been threatening to drown him, and channeled them into a raging torrent that swept away the criticism, scorn, and indifference that he had endured for most of the 1950s. The band rocked wildly and swung subtly. They screeched loudly and moaned softly. They snarled obscenely and purred lovingly. And holding all of this together was a stunning, six minute sax solo by Paul Gonsalves that literally blew apart the phony barriers between jazz, blues, and rock-and-roll.

Columbia quickly released "Ellington at Newport" to capitalize on the Duke's success. But much of this supposedly live album was actually recorded in a studio two days after the Newport performance, complete with canned applause and spoken song introductions for the nonexistent audience. Some of the actual Newport performance made it onto "Ellington at Newport," but it too was dressed up with phony studio overdubs.

"Ellington at Newport 1956 (Complete)" gives jazz fans a chance to finally hear the Newport performance in its entirety, and without studio fakery. Columbia has married its original recording of the event to another recording made by Voice of America to produce a vibrant stereo mix that reveals previously hidden layers of nuance and detail. It's a technical marvel that provides a deeper look into the soul of America's greatest composer at his moment of deepest desperation and supreme triumph. No Ellington fan should be without this.