The Ellingtonian: Duke in absentia

There is a persistent notion floating around - not necessarily false, mind you - that Duke Ellington's charges could never cut it on their own. Clive James notes that the very success of the marvellous Blanton-Webster period proved it's undoing: everyone became a star and they were all keen to show what they could do without the taskmaster present. While James doesn't go into it, I have to believe that Ben Webster's career path proved to be the kernel that triggered everyone else to follow suit: having worked alongside him - and in direct competition with him at the exact same time - did this light a fire under, say, Johnny Hodges, promting his departure from the Orchestra in 1951? A master manipulator, Ellington did little to difuse the friction amongst members of his Orchestra; the blow-back may have prompted everyone to emulate the success of their most renowned compatriot.

Cat Anderson wasn't a part of the early-forties peak, having joined Ellington in 1944 (possibly as a permanent replacement for Cootie Williams, who had fled to form his own orchestra, but I don't have sufficient resources at my disposal to say one way or another), but he still would have been privy to plenty of friction and ego. Much like later addition Paul Gonsalves, while he did clearly have the ambition to go off on his own, this was done much more sporadically and if this compilation is anything to go by he was out to prove just how intrinsic Duke was to his own sound.

But this is slightly less aparent earlier on. Chronologically speaking (for it doesn't come in until the second half of the disc), the first Paris session in 1958 takes a reasonable stab at 'Concerto for Cootie' before unleashing some steller solos on 'Black and Tan Fantasy' - about as individual and free of his boss as it gets. Anderson's patented trumpet plunger sound is present but not as often as one might expect. Russell Procope and Butter Jackson certainly keep pace with Anderson as well. The remainder - 'Blues for Laurence', an original, and versions of 'Ain't Misbehavin' and 'You're the Cream in My Coffee' - sound remarkably as if they were all Ellington arrangements in secret - a testament to Anderson's underrated abilities in this regard.he did have a pretty gifted mentor to show him the ropes.

The centrepiece of the collection, however, is the 1964 session and the people from the French division of EMI who put together the Americans Swinging in Paris series are right to place it first. With Gonsalves in tow but fewer members of the Orchestra over-all, Anderson plays well over some excellent blues (which is also a helpful reminder of just how soaked in the blues Ellington always was) by some of the finest sessioners baseed in France. 'C Jam Blues', for one, hasn't sounded better since the Blanton-Webster recording, the shuffling piano manuevers of US exile in Paris Joe Turner providing the perfect accompaniment to some superb soloing from Anderson, Gonsalves, Procope and Buster Cooper. On opener 'A "Chat" with Cat', we're treated to Gonsalves expertly mimicking Webster's signature heavy breathing tenor sax style and only when everyone comes together at the end to attempt to play over each other does one get the feeling that this may not meet the standards of Ellington.

Not to be confused with Ellingtonia*, another stab at honouring his boss, The Ellingtonian is in effect a Duke Ellington album with an overabundance of Cat Anderson solos. Making a virtue out of being trapped in an inescapable shadow, Anderson does an admirable job in the leader's chair, even if he's effectively acting as a proxy. Ellington may not have been there but he's very much present.

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* Cheers for adding to the confusion AllMusic.

Money Jungle: In His Solitude

I used to think of 1962 as Duke Ellington's great period of collaborations. And why not? He did, after-all, complete an extraordinary late summer putting together studio works with Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Mingus and John Coltrane respectively - themselves follow-ups on his Louis Armstrong and Count Basie team-ups from '61. I formulated this nice, tidy little theory a few years ago not realising that Ellington was always working in collaboration with someone and, particularly, between his own compositions and his arrangements and his arrangements. Ironically, this period of supposedly frenzied partnerships resulted in the only true solo album of his entire career.

Listeners accustomed to the spotlight being placed on Johnny Hodges or Ben Webster or Clark Terry or Cat Anderson may find it odd to discover that the star of the show is Ellington himself. After decades of composing and arranging for his famed Orchestra - not to mention the many small groups he worked with over the years - it's nice to get the feeling that he might have had himself in mind while composing and arranging the numbers here. Charlie Mingus and Max Roach do a fine job backing Ellington but that is all they're there for: bass solos are kept to a minimum and you just about don't even notice the drumming on some tracks. Ellington plays with a supple lightness in places ('Fleurette Africaine', 'Warm Valley'), a furious, demented pounding of the ivories in others ('Caravan' on which he sounds like Cecil Taylor playing in an Old West saloon) and a wonderful mix of the two elsewhere ('Wig Wise' which also features some of the best bass playing of Mingus' career, no wonder Rhino decided to include it on their Thirteen Pictures compilation). Only on a worn though pleasant 'Solitude' do you get the feeling that he's treading water, particularly when compared to the masterful renditions on both The Great Summit and Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins. Nonetheless, I get the feeling that he chose it - as well as fellow standards 'Warm Valley' and 'Caravan' -as a tribute to himself and his rich legacy.

A vanity project in the best possible sense, Money Jungle is ample evidence that Ellington could go it alone and thrive. The fact that he spent the bulk of his life putting the solo spotlight on his employees when he could have easily put it on himself speaks volumes about his musical generosity and the fact that he waited until his mid-sixties before embarking on a solo project indicates it was a low priority. How grateful we should be, then, that for once he decided to collaborate with himself.

Duke Ellington Plays Mary Poppins: You Can't Be Serious

On the surface, this would seem an odd outing indeed. The thought that jazz's preeminent composer and bandleader would summon his venerable, all-too loyal band just to toss off a dozen covers from a Disney movie seems laughable. Who could take this kind of thing seriously? This was, you see, 1964 and many of the jazz elite were keen to prove just how serious they were. While Miles Davis was busy on the austere, deeply cerebral E.S.P., his old cohort John Coltrane was out-squawking himself in his paean to the lord A Love Supreme. Not content to be harbingers of bop's unofficial No Dancing policy, these records almost assured the listener that they would never snap their fingers to a jazz record again.

The 1964 that often gets forgotten, however, is that of "Hello, Dolly", Louis Armstrong's surprise chart-topping single that briefly unified the community in celebration of usurping The Beatles. Sounding just as he had thirty years earlier, it sent the clear message that old school swing was still the popular choice. One of the other big jazz hits of the time was Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder", a furious ten minutes of unbridled pleasure. You could even dance to it.

Duke Ellington Plays Mary Poppins was in its own quiet way a legitimate player in this swing revival. If one can't quite dance to all of it then at least it provokes a certain amount of swaying. "Chim Chim Cheree" is a delightful shuffle, accompanied by a delicate piano solo from Ellington, "I Love to Laugh" features some appropriately humourous back-and-forth horns and reeds and "The Life I Lead" is a welcome slice of joie-de-vivre courtesy of sax star Johnny Hodges. Fun as it is to listen to, I suspect the real joy would have been to play on these sessions: rarely has Ellington's men sounded so relaxed and in such good humour. Throughout there's very much the sense that they're treating these compositions as though Ellington himself wrote them, indicating just how first rate these tunes of Richard and Robert Sherman's are.

Ultimately, the crying shame of this work is that it merely hints at what might have been had Disney and swing conspired when they were at their respective peaks. To think of what Count Basie Plays Dumbo or Cab Calloway Plays The Reluctant Dragon or Duke Ellington Plays Fantasia would have been like makes you wonder what took everyone so long. I'm still waiting for a cerebral rendition of Wynton Marsalis Plays Song of the South.