The Duke Box 2 picks up the story of the great Duke Ellington band in the early 1950s and spans the next 20 years or so of his remarkable output. Spanning the years in which Ellington regularly toured Europe and Scandinavia, The Duke Box 2 offers a rich selection of performances illustrating a tirelessly inventive musical spirit on tour with changing personnel and occasional guest artists. CD3 features never before released live recordings from a 1963 concert in Gröna Lund, Stockholm—a veritable treasure for the committed Ellington fan. The box also includes the well-renowned Jaywalker (CD5) and Piano Player (CD4) albums whose music always deserve a re-visiting. Among other gems are late 1970s recordings from New York, some of the last music Ellington ever put out.

The bonus DVD combines a series of short films of the Ellington band in action and despite the sound being recorded first and the performances showing the band miming, this curiosum offers a fascinating glimpse of The Duke in action, and the audio is of course technically excellent.

REVIEW:

This box set of seven CDs, one DVD and an illustrated booklet celebrates the latter part of Duke Ellington's monumental career. It opens with the so-called "Silver Jubilee" 1952 coast-to-coast broadcasts from Birdland in New York City by NBC.

But the Birdland gig was no simple trip down memory lane. Ever anxious to be seen to be on the cutting edge, Ellington used it to demonstrate the ability of his orchestra to absorb the changes brought about by be-bop. The music suffers somewhat from NBC's desire to emphasize the cultural importance of the occasion, with celebrities in the audience called to the microphone by MC William B. Williams to attest. These include—most interestingly—British critic, pianist and composer Leonard Feather.

Things calm down on CD2 with a pretty typical 1958 concert in Munich featuring Ducal compositions new and old, plus the inevitable "greatest hits" medley.

On CD3 the band is caught on tape while playing a week-long booking at the Gröna Lund amusement park in Stockholm.

The remaining CDs are from the Ellington "stockpile," recordings of self-financed sessions from the Duke's own vaults. No.4 is of particular interest, concentrating as it does on Ellington's mostly unaccompanied piano playing.

CD5 was recorded—by the full orchestra—at the RCA studios in New York in 1966-67. It is memorable for two things: Cootie Williams' playing of "The Shepherd," a magnificent slow blues that Duke later incorporated into his Second Sacred Concert; and for Ellington's musical dialogue with conga drummer Emmanuel Abdul-Rahim.

CD6, from 1970—1972, reveals Ellington nearing the end of his life but still capable of springing surprises. He attempts to come to terms with the "New Thing" via such enigmatic compositions as "Rext" and "Flute" and new, spare arrangements of "Sophisticated Lady" and "I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good."

The video on the DVD was filmed at Pathé Studios in New York in 1962. It captures Paul Gonsalves in full flight on "Blow By Blow" and Sam Woodyard doing some astonishing things with his drum kit on "Kind Of Dukish."

It's a lot to digest but Duke Box 2 provides a highly entertaining and well-rounded portrait of one of the few jazzmen truly worthy of the title genius.

-- AllAboutJazz.com (Chris Mosey)

Storyville Records presents Volume 25 in the Duke Ellington Treasury Shows series, the final volume of this collectors’ special broadcast series. In April 1945 to promote the sale of war bonds, the US Treasury Department contacted Duke Ellington to do a series of 55 minute public broadcasts. These sessions would give Ellington a wide choice of material to perform including his older work, new instrumentals and pop tunes, and his extended works as well. And now it is 2018 and we have made the home run: This volume is the final one of this series of 25 albums altogether, with all the known Treasury shows from 1945 to 1953, and new, hitherto mostly unreleased bonus broadcast material from the 1940s. The release begins with the last known Treasury broadcast. It is from the Blue Note in Chicago, recorded in June 1953, and broadcast on August 1st 1953 as part of the series “All Star Parade of Bands,” launched by NBC to promote bond sales. The second half of the release contains broadcasts from April 22nd 1944 and from May 5th 1944 at the Hurricane Club in New York City.

This album contains a series of different radio broadcasts from The Million Dollar Theatre in Los Angeles, the El Patio Ballroom in Denver, the Orpheum Theatre in San Diego and the Trianon Ballroom in South Gate, California. The broadcasts are featured complete with radio speaks and encouragements to buy bonds read by The Duke himself + bonus material and extensive liner notes. The first disc contains a radio broadcast from The Million Dollar Theatre in Los Angeles, July 6m 1946 plus bonus tracks from a CBS Broadcast from Lakeside Park, the El Patio Ballroom in Denver, July 14, 1942. The second disc features a broadcast from the Orpheum Theatre in San Diedo, July 27, 1946, with the bonus tracks being from a radio broadcast in the Trianon Ballroom, South Gate, California dating back to May 2, 1942. As a teaser for the sound found on this volume, Duke Ellington connoisseur Brian Koller, author of the extensive liner notes, writes: “It is no wonder why the Cat Anderson composition Teardrops In The Rain was a band staple for two years. The band really swings, and when it’s time for Anderson’s solo, he shows off high note pyrotechnics that few if any other trumpeters could match. Al Sears unleashes a might tenor sax solo, then the band is briefly reduced to a rhythm trio featuring Pettiford’s bass and the Duke on piano. To close the number, the full orchestra reverses the introductory themes.” Energy like that is found all through the broadcasts!

What we have here is the welcome memento of the Duke Ellington’s 1959 European tour. Berlin’s Sportpalast is not a concert hall and during the cursed Nazi reign often was the site of speeches by Hitler and his fellow criminals, but the hall can perhaps be said to have been purified by sounds of jazz by the time of this concert. The music starts with the Ellington Medley, by then a standard concert opener in varied embodiments. Critics often chided Duke for (in their opinion) overdoing this staple, but in fact it was not only a clever way of dealing with what undoubtedly would have been audience requests for beloved Ducal standards, but also a way of celebrating the continued life of his musical heritage. The concert has been remastered to modern standards, and is a must own for any Ellington fan.

REVIEWS:

Storyville Records has released Duke Ellington & His Orchestra: Berlin 1959, a terrific live album with great sound and luxurious music. Partially released in past years on shabby bootlegs, this album gives us this concert with pristine sound. Don't cherry-pick songs when listening. The only way to enjoy this album is by listening from start to finish. Only then can you absorb the depth of the Ellington band's full spectrum of moods and the Duke's piano. Be aware that tracks 17 to 27 are part of an Ellington medley and aren't full songs. As a result, each song is short.

--AllAboutJazz.com (Marc Myers)

There can never be too many Duke Ellington albums. Heard here is Storyville’s recently released two-CD set titled Berlin 1959, a previously unreleased concert. The Duke Ellington Orchestra was well documented in the late 1950s following their major success at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, and the live concerts that have been released from this period can be a little predictable. Just as with the Louis Armstrong All-Stars, there are some routines that do not differ that much from month to month although they eventually evolved. But, as with Armstrong, there are occasional surprises that make each concert well worth hearing.

Overall, everything works well during this fine concert. There may not have been an excess of surprises, but the results are fun.

--The Syncopated Times (Scott Yanow)

Since its inception in 1964, the Berlin Jazz Fest had been thought of as a festival that, if not avant-garde, welcomed the most progressive and experimental forms of music of a period rich in all types of modernistic trends, from radical free jazz to a multitude of fusions of pop, rock, soul and jazz. But in 1969, as if swimming against the tide of the revolutions that swept the West, the organizers took an audacious stand: it was Duke Ellington’s 70th birthday and not only did they welcome him at the head of his big band for the first time, but part of the program focused on his heritage; as a bonus and birthday gift, Ellington was featured on the publicity poster of the festival’s sixth edition.

The Berlin concert of 8 November 1969 is magnificent testimony to the extraordinary freshness of tone that Ellington’s big band still displayed on stage, when the sheer pleasure of playing took over from the routine of performance. The concert of 2 November 1973, on the stage of the Philharmonie, turned out to be Ellington’s last concert at the Berlin Jazztage.