Featuring: Willie Cook, “Shorty" Baker, Ray Nance (tp), “Booty” Wood, Dickie Wells, Vic Dickenson (tb), Johnny Hodges (as), Paul Gonsalves (ts, g), Harold Ashby (ts), Harry Carney (bs), “Ram” Ramírez, Sir Charles Thompson (p), Aaron Bell (b), Sam Woodyard (d)

Spanning over five decades (1923-1974), the Duke Ellington orchestra was nursery, proving ground and finishing school for dozens of jazzmen. Three of the greatest, Harry Carney, Mitchell “Booty” Wood, and Paul Gonsalves, here front all-star groups on three albums produced by celebrated jazz critic Stanley Dance. They add up to an engaging example of the unpretentious kind of jazz these musicians liked to play when they were “stretching out”: adventurous but not avant-garde, traditional but not old-fashioned, free-ranging in its moods and full of that sound of surprise which is the lifeblood of jazz—the kind of timeless music, beyond fad and fashion, forever associated with the Great Ellingtonians.

Track Listing:

CD1
01. Tree Of Hope
02. Blues For Blokes
03. Baby Blue
04. Jeepeers Creepers
05. Rock Me Gently
06. Hand Me Down Love
07. Mabulala 3
08. Five O’Clock Drag
09. Hang In There
10. New Cambridge Blues
11. Easin’ On Down Piccadilly
12 Ohso

CD2
01. Snowstorm
02. Blues In Bones
03. Sunday
04. Our Delight
05. Out Nowhere
06. Swallowing The Blues
07. London Broil
08. Midnight Sun
09. Squeeze Me
10. Blue Skies
11. Jeeps Blues
12. You Can Depend On Me

All sessions recorded in New York between September, 1960 and January 1961