Duke Ellington - Four symphonic works

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.