This is the track after my favourite track (which is very favourite, and has already appeared here) on Duke Ellington's New Orleans Suite and it isn't one I often play; but yesterday, as I pulled the LP from its lovely thick gatefold sleeve, fancying a bit of a listen as the Sunday potatoes roasted, this happened, for a change, to be the track I chose.
And boy that bubbling bass boomed at me good.
On a late-period Ellington recording that contrastingly looks back, right back, at the Old Jazz, the place it came from and some of the people who made it, who are commemorated in musical 'portraits', this piece is a tribute to one of Ellington's own; his bassist throughout the 1920s and 30s whose 'vigorous melodic bass playing, alternately plucking, slapping, and bowing, was an important feature of the early Ellington Orchestra sound'.
Braud died in 1966. Joe Benjamin, the bass player here, would himself be gone four years after this recording - and so would Duke.
Duke Ellington & His Orchestra - 'Portrait Of Wellman Braud' (1970)
I simply adore this album.
ReplyDeleteYeah baby.
ReplyDeleteyou know to my shame there's no dukie-pie (as i'm sure he was known)in the record pile. desperately shoddy. and the two bits off of this one are lovely as anything. it's on the lookout list.
ReplyDeletei still manage to miss so much which i guess is what keeps the fires burning
x
Ah, I've missed way more than you hun.
ReplyDeleteYou can't go wrong with any of the man's late, great 'suites' - he pips your Gershwins and your Bernsteins in your seriously important orchestral music of the 20th century stakes, and he's always swingier. I think you like Mingus? Duke was his hero x
I'm always up for a listen to the Duke. Thanks, Davy!
ReplyDelete