Duke Ellington

INCLUDES FREE MP3 ALBUM DOWNLOAD

PERSONNEL:

DUKE ELLINGTON & His Orchestra plus Guests.

Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Cat Anderson, Harold “Shorty” Baker, Fats Ford [aka Andrés Merenguito] (tp), Ray Nance (tp, vln, vcl), Britt Woodman, Quentin Jackson, John Sanders (tb), Jimmy Hamilton (cl, ts), Russell Procope (cl, as), Johnny Hodges (as), Paul Gonsalves (ts), Harry Carney (bar, cl, b-cl), Duke Ellington (p), Jimmy Jones (p on “Hello Little Girl” only), Jimmy Woode (b), Sam Woodyard (d), Jimmy Rushing (vcl on “Hello Little Girl” only), Morris Goldenberg, George Gaber, Elden C. Bailey, Chauncey M. Rosengarden, Walter E. Rosenberger, Bradley Spinney, Milton Schlesinger (percussion).

Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York, February 19, 1959.

[Note: Some sources claim part of the album was recorded on February 25.]
Original session produced by Irving Townsend.

SIDE A:

01 MALLETOBA SPANK [featuring the percussion section]
02 TOOT SUITE:
- RED GARTER [featuring Britt Woodman]
- RED SHOES [featuring Jimmy Hamilton & Shorty Baker]
- RED CARPET [Part 1] [featuring Russell Procope & Quentin Jackson]
- RED CARPET [Part 2] [featuring Russell Procope & Quentin Jackson]
- RED CARPET [Part 3] [featuring Russell Procope & Quentin Jackson]
- READY GO! [featuring Paul Gonsalves]

SIDE B:

01 SATIN DOLL
02 U.M.M.G. [ [featuring Dizzy Gillespie]
03 ALL OF ME [featuring Johnny Hodges]
04 TYMPERTURBABLY BLUE [featuring the percussion section]
05 FILLIE TRILLIE
06 HELLO LITTLE GIRL[featuring Jimmy Jones, Jimmy Rushing & Dizzy Gillespie]

A November 8, 1943 World Transcription session survives from Diz’s early experience as a member of Ellington’s band, although Gillespie is not widely featured. The second recorded encounter of the two musicians would take place nearly a decade later. It consists of Duke’s second November 14, 1952 Carnegie Hall concert featuring Diz as a special guest on a version of “Body and Soul”. Gillespie would also make a guest appearance with the orchestra on the June 24, 1957 session from the Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington songbook series. He backed Ella on “Take the ‘A’ Train” along with other members of Duke’s band (and Ellington himself on piano).

Both Duke and Diz were present for the 1959 Timex All Stars TV show, but they only performed together there on one number; a crowded and noisy version of “Perdido” that featured all of the bands participating on the show playing together simultaneously (with nearly forty musicians on stage), thus little is heard of each of them.

Ellington and Gillespie made their only serious collaboration on February 19, 1959, when Diz participated on Duke’s Columbia album Jazz Party, reissued here, and which also includes one of the few appearances of singer Jimmy Rushing with the Ellington band. Dizzy and Duke would share the stage on many other occasions over the following years, although they would be recorded together on just one other time, during the September 18, 1965 concert at the Monterey Jazz Festival, when Dizzy again joined Ellington’s orchestra.