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Seen as a face-off between the old and new guards in jazz, Duke Ellington’s ‘Money Jungle’ album proved they were on the same continuum.First released in 1962 via the United Artists label, Duke Ellington’s collaboration with bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach, Money Jungle, was a momentous jazz summit. Though often seen as the moment where the old guard (Ellington) squared up to jazz music’s young lions (Mingus and Roach), the generational differences between its three participants are often exaggerated. Certainly, Ellington was entering his twilight years – he had just turned 63 – but Mingus, then aged 40,...

On August 18, 1962, The Duke Ellington Octet featuring Coleman Hawkins were in a New York recording studio, busy making an album for the Impulse! label. Impulse! was still a relatively new imprint at the time, having issued its first four albums in early 1961. Joining Ellington and Hawk were Ray Nance (cornet, violin), Lawrence Brown (trombone), Johnny Hodges (alto sax), Harry Carney (baritone sax, bass clarinet), Aaron Bell (bass), and Sam Woodyard (drums). The result was Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins, an album the New York Times described as “one of the great Ellington albums, one of the great...

The series continues throughout 2022 with titles by Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, and many more. Published on May 5, 2022By Paul Sexton'Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins artwork - Courtesy: Verve/UMe'Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins' artwork - Courtesy: Verve/UMe Verve/UMe’s all-analog vinyl reissue series Acoustic Sounds has confirmed its next set of audiophile pressings of significant and beloved jazz recordings. On the back of nearly two dozen releases to date, each painstakingly remastered from the original tapes, the series continues with the May 13 appearance of the 1963 Impulse! release Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins. The storied Impulse! label was the...

Ken Nordine’s voice was tailor-made for late night radio. His unparalleled, smooth baritone guided WBEZ listeners through the show Word Jazz for more than 40 years. Nordine died Saturday at the age of 98, his son Ken Nordine, Jr. said. “He had a very special mind, an amazing way of looking at the world and making his own sense out of it," his son said. “I think it made sense to a lot of people because a lot of people really enjoyed listening to him.” Word Jazz is a mix of spoken word, poetry and sound design. In a 2000...

OverturePeanut Brittle Brigade (March)Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy)Entr'acte (Mini-overture)The Volga Vouty (Russian Dance)Arabesque Cookie (Arabian Dance)Chinoiserie (Chinese Dance)Toot, Toot, Tootie, Toot (Dance of the Reed Pipes)Dance of the Floreadores (Waltz of the Flowers)

Fifty years ago this week, Duke Ellington and his band played in a concert he later called one of the most memorable of his life. The performance was in Kabul, in Afghanistan, and even though Ellington was at the height of his fame, almost all traces of it have been lost. For the organiser, Faiz Khairzada, and hundreds of Afghans in the audience, the concert was a high point of the early 1960s. "It was very exciting for me to have him in Kabul," says Khairzada, then head of Afghanistan's cultural affairs organisation. It was he who met Ellington at...

In 1965, the Pulitzer Prize's three-member music jury voted unanimously to award Duke Ellington a special citation for his prodigious contributions to American music, an award unceremoniously rejected by the Pulitzer's 14-member advisory board. The 66-year-old Ellington handled the snub and resulting controversy with customary aplomb. "Fate is being kind to me," the Maestro said. "Fate doesn't want me to be famous too young." In truth, Ellington had his eye on loftier concerns. On Sept. 16 of that year, the Duke Ellington Orchestra premiered "A Concert of Sacred Music" at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, the first of three Sacred Music...