Duke Ellington

All the riches of mid-40's Ellington are captured in this series mastered magnificently from never-before-released radio transcriptions. The music on Volume 1 was recorded at New York City. March 28, 1946, the same year Ellington became first to win both the Swing and Sweet band divisions of the Down Beat poll. Duke Ellington freely acknowledged that he faced very heavy competition. By the 1970's his challengers, he claimed--through a peculiar musical mitosis, perhaps--were not Count Basie or Stan Kenton but rather the Ellington bands of the 20s, 30,s 40,s 50,s and the 60,s. Especially the 40s! This is the band with Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Otto Hardwicke, Jimmy Hamilton, Al Sears, Lawrence Brown, Joe "Trick Sam" Nanton, Claude Jones, Wilber DeParis, Cat Anderson, Taft Jordan, Francis Williams, Shelton Hemphill, Bernard Flood, Oscar Pettiford, Fred Guy, Sonny Greer and Duke.

Tracks:

01 Take The A Train (Theme)
02 Cross Town
03 Passion Flower
04 Magenta Haze
05 Everything Goes
06 The Eighth Veil
07 Riff N' Drill
08 Blue Abandon
09 Transblucency
10 Rugged Romeo
11 Jennie
12 Sono
13 Jeep Is Jumpin'