Ellington Treasury Shows

[sidewinder]

Maybe the assumption of these companies is that purchasers will do a one off load of the material into a NAS drive or such like and then stream it, ditching the CD. If so - that sucks.

[king ubu]

Yup, possibly ... and I guess true for many, but not for yours truly

Got Vol. 15 and it's a proper CD.

Still waiting for some lower volumes that I expect to be all CD-R: Vol. 3-4, 7-9, 11 - I've got Vol. 5 for real, I think thanks to @brownie, and already got that darn CD-R of Vol. 6, Vols. 12-18 are all here, hopefully none of the later ones will be CD-R ... of those I'm missing Vols. 19, 20, 23-25. So far the line runs somewhere between Vol. 6 and Vol. 15, Vol. 11 is the one I'm curious about.

--

Other thing: where has the used CD online market gone? (Most likely answer: Amazon killed it with their exalted fees and stopid "service" and shipping restrictions and all that ...)

[Ken Dryden]

Everything I've led is that a CDR does not have the life expectancy of a manufactured CD, which is why I avoid them.

Discogs.com is a better alternative than Amazon, for both buying and selling. Amazon (like half.com after the clowns of ebay bought that site) ruined their site for individual sellers with stupid restrictions (like calling all sawcut product promos, when they are frequently closeouts to prevent retails from returning product for full refunds), insane fees for sellers, plus inflated shipping rates of a flate fee per disc (even when buying several items from the same seller) or lowballing the seller in the case of larger boxed sets. The last straw was Amazon's asking of sellers what their sources of new products were. That was hard to answer, as I've bought duplicates in error, gotten gifts of items I already owned, or occasionally found factory sealed CDs at low prices locally that I thought would resell online at a beter price.

On Discogs, there are a lot of options, including allowing a buyer to make an offer, matching up with the exact version of the item you want to sell or buy, customized shipping rates, etc. The few disappointments I've had with quality of some items purchased have all been settled with no hassle.

Edited July 21, 2018 by Ken Dryden

[brownie]

On 23/12/2003 at 6:59 AM, brownie said:

These are essential Ellingtons. I had the DETS series when it was released on LPs.

Getting the Storyville double CDs now. They include some additional material. This was one of the great Ducal band and what they did offer on those broadcasts is pure joy!

Just got volume 8. This will be my Christmas music.

Agree with Lon, the sound is excellent!

On 23/12/2003 at 6:59 AM, brownie said:

These are essential Ellingtons. I had the DETS series when it was released on LPs.

Getting the Storyville double CDs now. They include some additional material. This was one of the great Ducal band and what they did offer on those broadcasts is pure joy!

Just got volume 8. This will be my Christmas music.

Agree with Lon, the sound is excellent!

Just received volume 25. It completes my  CD series.

Hard to grasp there is no more coming....

Wish there will be more material made available like the broadcasts that fill disc 2 of that final  volume.

[king ubu]

I actually scored real CDs of several of the lower numbers, too (and I haven't forgot your help with several of these @brownie  ) - but about four or five I've not (yet) attempted to find real ones (via Discogs would indeed be the best chance, I guess ... but then you'd have to rely on vendors being honest and knowledgeable enough).

Two of the ones I've got are really weird, they look like a mix of CD and CD-R - the colour is less bluish/greenish than with the clearly-CD-R ones, and on the inner ring, there is the usual black serial number (CD-R), but then there is also printed stuff like the catalogue number (which would indicate CD) - I wonder if CD-R printers have become so good that they can reproduce all of that stuff (label, catalogue numbers etc.) by now?

[ghost of miles]

Revisiting this series because of a Night Lights show I'm working on that will focus on the April-August 1945 broadcasts while the war was still under way (covered in DETS volumes 1-10).  I think the run of DETS releases might provide the most comprehensive extended-stretch portrait that we have of a particular Ellington orchestra in performance--and one that's still operating IMO close to the same elevated realms of the 1939-43 band.  

[Big Beat Steve]

Digging up this thread for a reason ....
I continued digging through the jazz collection that a local record shop got in not long ago (which is where I scored the Complete Keynote Collection box set, as reported elsewhere ), and while digging I noticed the previous owner  must have been an Ellington completist (of sorts).
And among the records where you start wondering "How many Ellington vinyl does any one man need, let alone how many Ellington LPs can a shop shift within any reasonable time span?" there sit lots and lots of the "D.E.T.S." LPs with their generic white covers (that remind you of the Meritt label, paper inserts and all - probably they came from the same stable (Jerry Valburn?)).
It may not be the complete run of the 48 (or so) LPs but certainly several dozen. Priced at 2.50 EUR each. Which looks like a steal.

Now my question:

Even at that price and considering that storage space isn't unlimited , how much of an Ellington fetishist would one have to be to shell out for this series?

FTR, although Duke Ellington is not really at the top of my listening habits I already own quite a few of his recordings on vinyl, including the entire "Complete RCA" series on French RCA, the entire Columbia series reissued by CBS in the 70s, the "Brunswick Recordings" of the early 30s, some Musicrafts, a fair amount of 40s transcriptions (including all 5 "Uncollected" LPs), the Fargo, ND 1940 date, as well as assorted other non-commercial 40s and early 50s recordings - plus a cross-section of his later works up to the early 60s.
So I am wondering where to reasonably draw a line ...

 

Edited July 31, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[jazzbo]

I can't help you, sorry. I had a few volumes on LP, and then bought all 25 two cd sets Storyville put out, which reissues all the Treasury Shows and also other contemporaneous shows to fill out the discs. That's a lot of music. . . but it's music I like!

[kh1958]

23 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

"How many Ellington vinyl does any one man need, let alone how many Ellington LPs can a shop shift within any reasonable time span?"

You need all the Ellington you can find.

[EKE BBB]

2 hours ago, kh1958 said:

You need all the Ellington you can find.

+1

[Hoppy T. Frog]

I was a completist for this series when it ran. Never enough Ellington for me. The music was life. 

[gmonahan]

On 8/6/2023 at 5:21 PM, Hoppy T. Frog said:

I was a completist for this series when it ran. Never enough Ellington for me. The music was life. 

As was I. A great series with some fine, fine music.

 

[hopkins]

Eddie Lambert wrote a lengthy chapter on the treasury broadcasts in his book "Duke Ellington: A Listener's Guide"

I copied it on my (very modest) "blog", and included the list of the 25 CDs with the recording dates so you can listen to the tracks that are highlighted by Lambert.

https://paulstephane.github.io/2024/06/20/Ellington-Treasury-Broadcasts.html

Edited June 21 by hopkins

[hopkins]

Here's an article on the Hurricane club, from which so many of these broadcasts were made, with some pictures of Duke & the orchestra: https://exploringoldnewyork.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/a-legendary-hurricane/

[ghost of miles]

On 6/20/2024 at 10:51 AM, hopkins said:

Eddie Lambert wrote a lengthy chapter on the treasury broadcasts in his book "Duke Ellington: A Listener's Guide"

I copied it on my (very modest) "blog", and included the list of the 25 CDs with the recording dates so you can listen to the tracks that are highlighted by Lambert.

https://paulstephane.github.io/2024/06/20/Ellington-Treasury-Broadcasts.html

That Lambert book is invaluable in so many ways.

Here’s the Night Lights show, which focuses only on the first several months of the broadcasts, while war was continuing in the Pacific Theatre:

The Duke Is On The Air: Duke Ellington’s Summer 1945 Treasury Department Broadcasts
 

 

[medjuck]

26 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

That Lambert book is invaluable in so many ways.

Here’s the Night Lights show, which focuses only on the first several months of the broadcasts, while war was continuing in the Pacific Theatre:

The Duke Is On The Air: Duke Ellington’s Summer 1945 Treasury Department Broadcasts
 

 

I 'm of the belief that the first two shows were not actually Treasury Shows-- i.e not sponsored by the Treasury department until show 3.  (Of course show 2-- the Roosevelt memorial  show wouldn't have had commercials anyway.) 

[Ken Dryden]

The only Duke Ellington that I don't need are those crappy audience recording bootlegs put out on various forgettable small labels on LPs, some of which have reappeared on those worthless Squatty Roo bootleg CDRs, which look like they were made and printed in someone's basement. The only Ellington song that I don't want hear any new versions of is Tony Watkins singing the forgettable "One More Time For The People." No wonder that Cootie Williams stormed off stage when that song was called.