Playlist of the Week: Tony Sings Duke Ellington

The Playlist of the Week starting on April 28, 2019, is Tony Sings Duke Ellington.

Edward Kennedy Ellington was born on April 29, 1899, in Washington D.C. In 2013, I celebrated Duke’s birthday in high style with this series of posts.

Duke Ellington Week
Duke Ellington: His Early Years
Duke Ellington and the Harlem Renaissance
Duke Ellington: 1930s and 1940s
Duke Ellington in the 1950s
Duke Ellington Post-Newport
Duke Ellington Will Always Be With Us

And now to the playlist. This week, I’m including not only Tony’s recordings of my selection of Ellington songs but also recordings by Duke Ellington as well. Plus the legendary recording that nearly caused a riot at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956. I quote from my post Duke Ellington in the 1950s:

Duke Ellington announced that their next number would be an old number from 1937: Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, with an “interval” by tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves.

What followed was, to many (including this author), the greatest live jazz performance ever recorded. The Gonsalves interval ran for 27 choruses of virtuoso playing: 14 minutes of incredible, perfect jazz. George Avakian wrote these liner notes for the record of this performance:

Throughout the performance there were frequent bursts of wild dancing and literally, acres of people stood on their chairs, cheering and clapping. There were 7,000 people there and by halfway through his solo it had become an enormous single living organism, reacting in waves like huge ripples to the music played before it.

Tony Sings Duke Ellington

The playlist of the week at the Year of Tony Bennett, for the week starting April 28, 2019. We're celebrating Duke Ellington, who was born on April 29, 1899.