This album is made up of selected live and radio broadcasts with the Danish Radio Big Band and Swedish, British and Danish/American small groups during 1964-71. As the title indicates only ballads are included on the album, and, for the first time on a Ben Webster ballad album, there is no string-section accompaniment. Three of the ten numbers were previously unreleased before the original issue of this album. The art of ballad-playing was all-important to Ben Webster. He once said "Remember, there are only three tempi in jazz - slow, medium and slow!" While all the tunes are ballads, the wide variety and constellations give a wonderful, multi-faceted sound-picture of Ben Webster.

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.

The year was 1961, the venue the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. After a memorable performance in Berlin a year earlier, Fitzgerald was once again singing to a packed concert hall. This release has captured that performance, and has been remastered for crystal-clear sound quality. It’s the closest thing to being right there in the audience those five decades ago. (Fondamenta)

A singer with an exciting presence and a voice to immerse yourself in. A band that lit up with high wattage a repertoire including both standards and popular songs. A band leader who had his ensemble under control through proven discipline and could, when needed, take the lead as a soloist, but tended to hold back amidst his all-stars. The result a mixture that whisked the concert hall in Freiburg (Germany) for one evening in October 1959 into a wonderful world of successful jazz entertainment and sent the audience out into the night with an earworm.

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)

In Duke Ellington’s tape collection (”The Stockpile”) were several tapes with concert recordings of the band’s performances on tour. One can only guess whether these tapes were required by Duke for some purpose, or were given to him (or his son Mercer) on the initiative of the concert arrangers. At any rate it was a great delight to find a tape box marked ”Ellington – Uppsala 9-11-71” in the collection, containing a tape with a concert at the university town of Uppsala, Sweden on Nov. 9th 1971, the second of two concerts in this very old and very beautiful town founded in the 13th century.

The concert in Uppsala, the second on this Tuesday evening, started with the C-Jam Blues as was usual at that time. The tune had sort of replaced Take The A Train as the band’s signature. Norris Turney is heard on the clarinet over the band at the beginning, and Cootie Williams, Paul Gonsalves, Booty Wood, and Russell Procope follow. The centerpiece of the concert was the band’s performance of A Tone Parallel to Harlem or HARLEM as it was also called.

To end the evening properly and bring the audience in a more relaxed mood before leaving the concert hall, Ellington chose to finish the concert alone at the piano, just accompanied by Joe Benjamin on the bass, playing his own arrangement of Billy Strayhorn’s lovely tune Lotus Blossom. As evident from the performance at the Uppsala concert, the band could live up to the challenges, and it was received everywhere with enthusiasm and – love.

REVIEW:

This album, recorded at a concert in the great hall of Uppsala University on November 9, 1971, was found in what Ellington called "The Stockpile," his private tape collection. 

It starts with "C-Jam Blues" which at the time had largely replaced "Take the A-Train" as the band's opening number. One of the more interesting numbers is the little known "Fife," written as a vehicle for Norris Turney on flute and there is also a version "A Tone Parallel to Harlem," the title of which Ellington simply abbreviated to "Harlem." 

"Chinoiserie" is another rarity, the title referring to an artistic passion for things Oriental, which in his erudite introduction Duke links to a statement by the Canadian philosopher, Marshall McLuhan. 

At the other end of the scale, trumpeter Money Johnson comes on like Louis Armstrong for "Hello Dolly." Nell Brookshire lends a hand on vocals, and Ellington shows his age somewhat by referring to her as a "torch singer." 

Those "good old good ones" are there aplenty, with longer versions of "It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" and "Satin Doll." Nell Brookshire vies with Money Johnson for slapstick vocal honors on "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good." 

Of course Billy Strayhorn's "Take the A-train" couldn't be omitted altogether. It comes in fourth in this particular race for royalties, before "Fife." And the same composer's "Lotus Blossom" is treated to a fine reflective arrangement by Ellington, accompanied only by bassist Joe Benjamin. Ellington said this was the tune Strayhorn most liked to hear him to play.

-- AllAboutJazz.com (Chris Mosey)

A trombone solo album is not exactly an everyday commodity, because the instrument is considered somewhat bulky, unwieldy and grumpy. In the hand of a master like Ray Anderson, however, one wonders how these prejudices could have come about, because he simply makes music with the trombone. "I've had this idea in my head since I started playing solo concerts in 1982," Ray Anderson recalled. "Anthony Braxton recorded the solo record ‘For Alto’ in 1969, where the challenge of playing an instrument alone without accompaniment is particularly interesting. So why not on the trombone too? Albert Mangelsdorff has recorded beautiful solo albums, and that by George Lewis is also very inspiring.”

CONTENTS:

• Roswell Rudd: Keep Your Heart Right
• Ray Anderson: Marching on, Blues for John Lewis
• Ellington: Just Squeeze Me
• Ray Anderson: Early Morning in the Andersonorious Jungle
• Coltrane: Equinox
• Irving Kahal, Sammy Fain, Pierre Norman: You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me
• Ray Anderson: Choppers
• Ray Anderson: The Sisyphus Effect
• Mancini, H: Moon River

REVIEW:

Trombonist Ray Anderson draws on New Orleans parade traditions, Chicago street smarts, New York assertiveness and a lifetime of often challenging experiences to provide this enriching album.

-- Downbeat

Storyville Records presents the legendary American saxophonist Buddy Tate in a meeting with the Danish quintet White Label on the new album Tate’s Delight – Groovin’ at the JASS Festival. The meeting took place at the Holstebro JASS Festival in September 1982. JASS stands for Jutland’s Active Musicians’ Society. For almost 20 years since the foundation in 1975, the society presented an annual jazz festival during the last week of September. The concerts took place at the Holstebro Hall and the nearby Restaurant Laksen. Tate’s Delight was recorded at Restaurant Laksen with no rehearsals. Some tunes, but not all, were agreed upon, when White Label took the stage. It became one of those spontaneous events, where the music is created on the spot, but one for which the musician has been preparing throughout his career as an improvising jazz musician. In this context, Buddy Tate was a fine acquaintanceship. He was in good form, friendly, easy to play with, and super cool in his elegant brown-and-yellow stage outfit with matching two-tone shoes. The album is separated into two parts. First, Tate is heard with the rhythm section, showcasing his beautiful, but rarely heard clarinet on magnificent renditions of the Duke Ellington tunes In A Mellow Tone and Mood Indigo. On the second part of the album, Jens Søndergaard and Poul Valdemar Pedersen join in on the last three songs, recreating the intense jam session spirit of the golden age of swing. This session is an excellent example of the musical encounters that have taken place in Denmark over the years. Buddy Tate was among the many legendary international stars, who came and played with Danish musicians, thus contributing to the special bond between Danish and American jazz.

Clark Terry is one of the greatest and most important trumpeters in jazz history. Now, Storyville Records presents a live recording with his fantastic orchestra, Clark Terry’s Big Bad Band – Live in Holland 1979. The whole band is in great form, and besides Clark Terry himself, this recording showcases many of the very best musicians from the heyday of big bands. The band is SWINGING, that also goes for CT’s introductions of the music and the band. The live setting of this performance, containing 13 tracks, clearly inspires both CT and his 16-piece orchestra to even greater heights than in the studio. The performance culminates with the hit “Mumbles”, a track made famous during the many years CT was one of the leading members of “The Tonight Show Band”. The repertoire presented here makes way for the entire band with arrangements by Phil Woods, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington among others. CT is not just a brilliant soloist, but also a charming entertainer, engaging in friendly banter with both the musicians and the audience.

CT’s original style and technique has had a major influence on many great jazz musicians, including Wynton Marsalis, Art Farmer, Miles Davis and not least Quincy Jones, who has written a very personal piece for the liner notes, praising the lifelong mentorship of CT for many of the greatest American jazz musicians. CT has played with both Count Basie’s and Duke Ellington’s orchestras. He made his mark on both orchestras with his great swing and as a soloist, both on the trumpet and the flugelhorn. CT continued from his stints with the forementioned big bands to become one of the most beloved and sought-after soloists in the history of jazz. Both with his own orchestras and as a soloist with big bands globally.