Duke Ellington, Carnegie Hall, 1944

[PristineAudio]

Take a listen to this:

"The Blues" - Duke Ellington Orch., Marie Ellington (vox), 19 December 1944, Carnegie Hall

I've rarely enjoyed listening to one of my remastered recordings as much as I have this one - it's a real classic and has come up a treat:

Duke Ellington at Carnegie Hall, 1944

Big band jazz can't really get better than this, can it?

Duke Ellington - leader, piano, arranger

Rex Stewart, Taft Jordan, Cat Anderson, Shelton Hemphill - trumpets

Ray Nance - trumpet, violin, vocal

Tricky Sam Nanton, Lawrence Brown, Claude Jones - trombones

Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Otto Hardwicke, Al Sears, Jimmy Hamilton - reeds

Fred Guy - guitar

Junior Raglin - bass

Hillard Brown - drums

Kay Davis, Marie Ellington, Al Hibbler - vocals

Billy Strayhorn - assistant arranger

Disc One

1. Blutopia (4:25)

2. Midriff (4:03)

3. Creole Love Call (6:34)

4. Suddenly It Jumped (2:53)

5. Pitter Panther Patter (3:00)

6. It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) (3:59)

7. Things Ain't What They Used To Be (5:21)

8. Perfume Suite: Introduction (0:55)

9. Sonata (3:17)

10. Strange Feeling (5:13)

11. Dancers In Love (2:35)

12. Coloratura (3:26)

Disc Two

1. Black, Brown And Beige: Work Song (7:05)

2. Black, Brown And Beige: The Blues (5:29)

3. Black, Brown And Beige: Three Dances (6:33)

4. Black, Brown And Beige: Come Sunday (11:56)

5. The Mood To Be Wooed (4:51)

6. Blue Cellophane (3:18)

7. Blue Skies (Trumpets No End) (3:37)

8. Frankie And Johnny (8:14)

Recorded live at Cernegie Hall, 19th December 1944

Restoration and XR remastering by Andrew Rose, February 2008

Notes on this release:

This excellent recording from mainly clean acetate discs has really opened out thanks to the application of the XR remastering system. I took several modern recordings of music by Ellington as starting reference points with the aim of finding as much authentic fidelity as possible in the older recording. I was also able to deal with the mild surface noise, scratches etc., as well as correcting pitch thanks to the detection of residual 60Hz mains hum in the original - previous issues of this recording ran slightly fast.

[papsrus]

Hi PristineAudio,

Sounds like a fantastic album. Always nice to have Ellington coming through loud and clear. Have you seen the Duke Ellington Corner in the Artists section?

[PristineAudio]

I hadn't - but will post a copy of this announcement there if it's appropriate. Thanks! I should add that there's more Ellington on the way over the next few weeks...

[PristineAudio]

I've made a modest donation to the board - my apologies for not realising this was a requirement and if this is the condition for letting people know about these releases I won't bother in future as it's not really worth the time and effort:

So far we've sold a grand total of six copies of this recording, none of which appears to be connected to my posting on this forum.

I just thought you'd all be interested to hear about the music - if not, let me know and I'll post elsewhere.

[ejp626]

I just thought you'd all be interested to hear about the music - if not, let me know and I'll post elsewhere.

I think many/most of us are interested in hearing about new releases. We also like to see BB members post on other topics, not simply tell us about their releases (and acting like spammers). I've noticed you posting on several threads, so I say welcome aboard, great to have you.

[PristineAudio]

Thank you - I'd like to have the time to contribute more but a lot of the restoration and remastering work is intensive, hands-on stuff! I'm also running a business and website more or less single-handedly (except for CD manufacture and distribution and some aspects of the book-keeping) so it's hard to keep up with everything. I do check in to a number of forums as regularly as I can though...

[A Lark Ascending]

Hi PristineAudio,

Looks fascinating to me - I have the Prestige version. I'd certainly welcome your information on the work you're doing.

[AllenLowe]

nothing wrong with posting about your work - there is a sense that it's basically a floating advertisement, especially as you also don't answer private emails -

[jazzbo]

You'd probably get some American sales if you had an American distributor. . . .

[PristineAudio]

...you also don't answer private emails

I don't believe I've ever received one from you, Allen - there was a PM which I'm sorry I didn't get around to replying to, but never an e-mail. To be totally honest, because I run an online business and don't have anyone to deal with e-mails for me, if I did answer in full every last e-mail I got I would genuinely never get any work done, though I do try to answer as many as I possibly can, if at times briefly.

Sorry to be such a bore, but I regularly work from perhaps 6 or 7 in the morning until well into the evening, 6 or 7 days a week - there simply aren't enough hours in the day to attend to absolutely everything! My list of urgent "to-do's" never seems to get any shorter!

So let me apologise for not responding to your PM - by the time I got it the question you'd asked was out of date as the clip you'd referred to on our website had been and gone. In answer to the question you posed, the recording you referred to is only available to subscribers...

You'd probably get some American sales if you had an American distributor

Right now all our sales are online downloads or mail order only (from France). Thanks to US copyright laws this isn't likely to change in the Jazz realm in the near future, I'm afraid.

[PristineAudio]

Looks fascinating to me - I have the Prestige version. I'd certainly welcome your information on the work you're doing.

With regard to Duke Ellington, there are a couple more recordings in the pipeline - the 1946 Carnegie Hall concert (also on Prestige, and similarly capable of much improvement in sound quality), and a 'rarities' issue which should contain the following:

Fargo, North Dakota, November 7 1940

11 tracks

Hollywood, January 15, 1941

Take The 'A' Train - original unissued recording

Hollywood, 17 September 1941:

Chelsea Bridge - unissued take with Blanton on bass

"C" Jam Blues - unissued full-band version

Chicago, November 10 1946:

Improvisation on Tiger Rag

Blues

Improvisation No. 2 (Reinhardt)

Honeysuckle Rose

These four featuring Django Reinhardt on guitar.

I'm not yet sure which will come first - work on both is underway, but at one release a week and a lot of classical and blues fans to keep happy too it may be a little while yet...

[mikeweil]

You will receive an order from me after my vacation! (After the Easter Holidays, that is.)

So finally there will be a board-related order ... and your posts qualify as spam ...

Edited March 1, 2008 by mikeweil

[PristineAudio]

Sorry this thread has all got sidetracked over issues of spam or otherwise. That's not my intention and, as I've said, if you'd rather I didn't mention anything we release here, I'll go away and let someone else perhaps make note of it.

Could I just, for a moment, say a few words as a music-lover (and occasional mediocre pianist), please?

I've spent this evening listening to this recording as a listener, not as a sound restorer (a week or two of listening closely to flaws and trying to fix them isn't really that wonderful, I promise) or as someone with a vested interest in sales. So what I'm writing is from the heart.

I'd not really figured big band jazz before now. I have just about everything Miles Davis has ever issued up until 1975. I have a decent collection of small-group jazz from the be-bop era onwards. But this stuff had largely passed me by until this week. This was the week that I finally 'got' it, thanks to this recording. To hear something as phenomenally good, so ridiculously good as this, and sounding as clear and alive as this now does has to be a part of it I'm afraid, has tripped the switch and turned the lights on for me.

And that is what it's about for me - that's why I quit a well-paid job at the BBC in London to work in relative poverty in an obscure corner of a foreign country where I could afford to do so - to discover and revel in music like this, and to be able to do something small but (I hope) important to make it happen for others, is such a privilege and a joy.

So my apologies if I may have appeared a little emotional earlier in this thread...

[papsrus]

Sorry this thread has all got sidetracked over issues of spam or otherwise. That's not my intention and, as I've said, if you'd rather I didn't mention anything we release here, I'll go away and let someone else perhaps make note of it.

Could I just, for a moment, say a few words as a music-lover (and occasional mediocre pianist), please?

I've spent this evening listening to this recording as a listener, not as a sound restorer (a week or two of listening closely to flaws and trying to fix them isn't really that wonderful, I promise) or as someone with a vested interest in sales. So what I'm writing is from the heart.

I'd not really figured big band jazz before now. I have just about everything Miles Davis has ever issued up until 1975. I have a decent collection of small-group jazz from the be-bop era onwards. But this stuff had largely passed me by until this week. This was the week that I finally 'got' it, thanks to this recording. To hear something as phenomenally good, so ridiculously good as this, and sounding as clear and alive as this now does has to be a part of it I'm afraid, has tripped the switch and turned the lights on for me.

And that is what it's about for me - that's why I quit a well-paid job at the BBC in London to work in relative poverty in an obscure corner of a foreign country where I could afford to do so - to discover and revel in music like this, and to be able to do something small but (I hope) important to make it happen for others, is such a privilege and a joy.

So my apologies if I may have appeared a little emotional earlier in this thread...

No apologies necessary, from where I sit. I'm somewhat in the same boat as you are in regard to "discovering" Ellington in particular, but also other big band music ... and the journey continues.

Yours sounds like a great -- if sometimes detailed -- job (hardly seems right to call it a 'job'). Count yourself lucky, even if in "relative poverty." I'm guessing you do. ...

[medjuck]

Looks fascinating to me - I have the Prestige version. I'd certainly welcome your information on the work you're doing.

With regard to Duke Ellington, there are a couple more recordings in the pipeline - the 1946 Carnegie Hall concert (also on Prestige, and similarly capable of much improvement in sound quality), and a 'rarities' issue which should contain the following:

Fargo, North Dakota, November 7 1940

11 tracks

Hollywood, January 15, 1941

Take The 'A' Train - original unissued recording

Hollywood, 17 September 1941:

Chelsea Bridge - unissued take with Blanton on bass

"C" Jam Blues - unissued full-band version

Chicago, November 10 1946:

Improvisation on Tiger Rag

Blues

Improvisation No. 2 (Reinhardt)

Honeysuckle Rose

These four featuring Django Reinhardt on guitar.

I'm not yet sure which will come first - work on both is underway, but at one release a week and a lot of classical and blues fans to keep happy too it may be a little while yet...

Are A-Train and Chelsea Bridge different takes from the released Standard Transcriptions? If there is a C-Jam Blues from 9/17/41 it is a real find and not listed in DESOR.

[PristineAudio]

The takes came to me with the following e-mailed notes from the collector:

"I also have some rare and wonderful live performances by the Ellington band that could make a third CD. Twelve of these are tracks recorded at Fargo, North Dakota on November 7, 1940 by early sound wizard Jack Tower. The sound is simply astonishing: here is the famous Jimmy Blanton-Ben Webster band in high fidelity! But, there is surface crackle and the discs could use some of your help (wink, wink). Selections are:

Ko-Ko

Pussy Willow

Slap Happy

Sepia Panorama

The Shiek of Araby

Chatterbox

Across the Tracks Blues

Rockin' in Rhythm

Stardust

St. Louis Blues (vocal: Ivie Anderson)

Warm Valley

As addenda to this CD, you might want to consider four of the rarest live Ellington tracks of th 1940s. These were privately recorded, and not terribly well, on November 10, 1946. The attraction? They are the only known recorded performances of the Ellington band with Django Reinhardt on guitar!

Improvisation on Tiger Rag

Blues

Improvisation No. 2 (Django Reinhardt, guitar solo)

Honeysuckle Rose"

...and in a second e-mail...

"As fillers on the extra Ellington disc I'm sending you, I thought it would be a neat idea to include three long-lost takes of Ellington clasics. One is the original recording of his theme song, "Take the 'A' Train," made exactly one month before the famous commercial recording. Ray Nance plays an entirely different trumpet solo, which leads one to wonder how this would have impacted its reception had it been in fact released commercially. The second is "Chelsea Bridge." Billy Strayhorn wrote this as a showpiece for Ellington's brilliant young bassist, Jimmy Blanton, but by the time it was recorded commercially in December 1941, Blanton had to leave the band due to his illness from tuberculosis. Thirty-six years ago, however, a short-lived series of French RCA LPs included a take of "Chelsea Bridge" recorded on September 17, 1941 with Blanton. The same session also produced a big-band version of "C-Jam Blues" featuring Nance on violin, Rex Stewart, Ben Webster, Tricky Sam Nanton and, of course, Blanton. The sound quality of all three is a little rough but, since these were commercial recordings and not junky amateur tapes, I'm positive that you could make them sound much better than they are."

If this sheds any further light do let me know - the previous details are as copied from the notes that came with the disc I was sent. As you're aware, I'm not an Ellington expert, yet...

[mjzee]

I'd love for you to redo the "From Spirituals To Swing" box set. That stuff never sounds good, even after working from the master discs.

[mmcgerr]

I downloaded the Flac version of the Pristine Audio 1944 Carnegie concert: I think it's excellent. I a/b'ed it with the Prestige cd: the Pristine Audio is brighter, with detail I hadn't heard before. The source material, like almost any live recording from the period, has inherent limitations; despite the famed Carnegie Hall acoustics, the recording was a bit muffled and thin. But the Pristine Audio version is a real step forward in hearing and appreciating a wonderful example of the Ellington band. Well worth the download.

[PristineAudio]

What is interesting to me as someone who's done a huge amount of live and broadcast sound mixing in the past is hearing the sound balance coalesce during the first number. At the very opening of the concert it all sounds pretty mediocre and out of focus, but within three minutes it's been gradually tweaked and refined until it's actually very good. Thereafter it does continue to improve very slightly, I believe, though it's much less noticeable.

I can only conclude that there was little or no opportunity to set up levels and so forth in rehearsal such a way as to be able to carry on with exactly the same settings in the concert itself. I'm guessing there'd be about 6 mics or so in total, with live concert-hall sound to worry about (for announcements, violin solos and vocals) as well as the recorded sound, so not necessarily that simple with the technology of the day...

[montg]

I downloaded the Flac version of the Pristine Audio 1944 Carnegie concert: I think it's excellent. I a/b'ed it with the Prestige cd: the Pristine Audio is brighter, with detail I hadn't heard before. The source material, like almost any live recording from the period, has inherent limitations; despite the famed Carnegie Hall acoustics, the recording was a bit muffled and thin. But the Pristine Audio version is a real step forward in hearing and appreciating a wonderful example of the Ellington band. Well worth the download.

The download sounds really fantastic...a lot of detail from a live 40s recording! The earlier comment about having no US distributors because of copyright laws has me confused a little bit. Is it legal for a US customer to purchase this type of material directly from the European source, but not legal to purchase if from a US source?

[PristineAudio]

Is it legal for a US customer to purchase this type of material directly from the European source, but not legal to purchase if from a US source?

Yes, that is correct. What you're doing is importing a copy of a recording where the original is in the public domain in just about every country in the world except the USA, and hence can be sold without applying for licensing from the original (but now expired outside of the US) copyright holder.

If you look at the market for historic Classical music recordings following the court case between Naxos and Capitol (EMI) a few years ago, you'll find collectors buying CDs from the likes of Amazon and specialist record stores in Canada, the UK, Japan, Germany etc. by post or over the Internet and getting them shipped to the States - after Naxos removed their historic stock from the shelves of US stores. You'll also find discs from the record company Music and Arts Programs of America (based in LA and successfully operating for over 25 years) which state on the disc cover that they're not for sale in the USA - this doesn't stop them from being reviewed in US magazines, and from US collectors ordering them from outside of the country.

Yes, it's madness (legal madness!), but that's music copyright laws for you, all being gradually ratcheted up (if the major record companies get their way) to preserve income from The Beatles et al.

So exportation from France is effectively what we're doing with these downloads - though if you're in any doubt about this particular system of delivery you can of course order CDs instead.