Duke Ellington Presents (2014 Remaster) Duke Ellington

• 1Summertime (2014 Remastered Version)02:12
• 2Laura (2014 Remastered Version)04:12
• 3I Can't Get Started (2014 Remastered Version)04:26
• 4My Funny Valentine (2014 Remastered Version)04:50
• 5Everything but You (2014 Remastered Version)02:59
• 6Frustration (2014 Remastered Version)03:51
• 7Cotton Tail (2014 Remastered Version)02:54
• 8Day Dream (2014 Remastered Version)03:41
• 9Deep Purple (2014 Remastered Version)03:39
• 10Indian Summer (2014 Remastered Version)03:03
• 11Blues (2014 Remastered Version)07:08
• Total Runtime42:55

Info for Duke Ellington Presents (2014 Remaster)

This is a little-known piece of the Duke discography mosaic. Surprisingly, there are only four original compositions among the eleven tracks, otherwise standards from ‘Summertime’ to ‘Laura and “My Funny Valentine” to “Deep Purple” are given the typical Ellington touch. The album's concept, which explains the title, is that one member of the orchestra gets the spotlight in each number. Sometimes Cat Anderson, sometimes Ray Nance (who first sings and then takes up the violin in ‘I Can't Get Started’), Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges, Russell Procope or (the second vocal number) Jimmy Grissom; Jimmy Hamilton and Paul Gonsalves are each allowed to take the lead twice. At the end, there is a grand finale with the seven-minute ‘Blues’, to which most of those mentioned contribute another solo. Definitely worth discovering.

"This unusual set only has four Duke Ellington compositions among the 11 songs. He features a different soloist on most of the songs (which include seven standards not associated with Ellington's music). There are showcases for trumpeter Cat Anderson, Ray Nance (who sings and plays violin on "I Can't Get Started"), singer Jimmy Grissom, baritonist Harry Carney, and the altos of Johnny Hodges and Russell Procope, as well as two apiece for clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton and tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves. The closing "Blues" gives many of the players an additional opportunity to be heard. Although this set is not essential, the music is quite enjoyable and it is interesting to hear Duke Ellington playing such tunes as "Laura," "My Funny Valentine," and "Indian Summer." (Scott Yanow, AMG)

Duke Ellington, piano
Cat Anderson, trumpet
Willie Cook, trumpet
Ray Nance, trumpet
Clark Terry, trumpet
Quentin Jackson, trombone
Britt Woodman, trombone
John Sanders, valve trombone
Jimmy Hamilton, clarinet, tenor saxophone
Johnny Hodges, alto saxophone
Russell Procope, alto saxophone, clarinet
Paul Gonsalves, tenor saxophone
Harry Carney, baritone saxophone
Jimmy Woode, bass
Sam Woodyard, drums
Ray Nance, vocals, violin (track 3)
Jimmy Grissom, vocals (track 5)

Digitally remastered

Duke Ellington
called his music 'American Music' rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as 'beyond category. He remains one of the most influential figures in jazz, if not in all American music and is widely considered as one of the twentieth century's best known African American personalities. As both a composer and a band leader, Ellington's reputation has increased since his death, with thematic repackaging of his signature music often becoming best-sellers. Posthumous recognition of his work include a special award citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Duke Ellington influenced millions of people both around the world and at home. He gave American music its own sound for the first time. In his fifty year career, he played over 20,000 performances in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East as well as Asia.

Simply put, Ellington transcends boundaries and fills the world with a treasure trove of music that renews itself through every generation of fans and music-lovers. His legacy continues to live onand will endure for generations to come. Winton Marsalis said it best when he said 'His music sounds like America.' Because of the unmatched artistic heights to which he soared, no one deserved the phrase “beyond category” more than Ellington, for it aptly describes his life as well. He was most certainly one of a kind that maintained a lifestyle with universal appeal which transcended countless boundaries.

Duke Ellington is best remembered for the over 3000 songs that he composed during his lifetime. His best known titles include; 'It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing', 'Sophisticated Lady', 'Mood Indigo', “Solitude', 'In a Mellotone', and 'Satin Doll'. The most amazing part about Ellington was the most creative while he was on the road. It was during this time when he wrote his most famous piece, 'Mood Indigo'which brought him world wide fame.

Duke Ellington's popular compositions set the bar for generations of brilliant jazz, pop, theatre and soundtrack composers to come. While these compositions guarantee his greatness, what makes Duke an iconoclastic genius, and an unparalleled visionary, what has granted him immortality are his extended suites. From 1943's Black, Brown and Beige to 1972's The Uwis Suite, Duke used the suite format to give his jazz songs a far more empowering meaning, resonance and purpose: to exalt, mythologize and re-contextualize the African-American experience on a grand scale.

Duke Ellington was partial to giving brief verbal accounts of the moods his songs captured. Reading those accounts is like looking deep into the background of an old photo of New York and noticing the lost and almost unaccountable details that gave the city its character during Ellington's heyday, which began in 1927 when his band made the Cotton Club its home. ''The memory of things gone,'' Ellington once said, ''is important to a jazz musician,'' and the stories he sometimes told about his songs are the record of those things gone. But what is gone returns, its pulse kicking, when Ellington's music plays, and never mind what past it is, for the music itself still carries us forward today.

Duke Ellington was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1966. He was later awarded several other prizes, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969, and the Legion of Honor by France in 1973, the highest civilian honors in each country. He died of lung cancer and pneumonia on May 24, 1974, a month after his 75th birthday, and is buried in the Bronx, in New York City. At his funeral attended by over 12,000 people at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Ella Fitzgerald summed up the occasion, 'It's a very sad day...A genius has passed.'

" class="ng-binding ng-scope">Duke Ellington And His Orchestra

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