How would one – me, specifically – go about investigating Duke Ellington? Although he’s constantly cited as one of the greats, I don’t know that I can identify a single recording by the man by tune alone. I have heard of certain tunes, his arranger, and a trusted musician or two – not to mention actually hearing some of his tunes (without really knowing who it was), but I have no clue what it is I’d be looking to check out. I ask because I’m watching my “making of” The Band doc (for the 100th time), and engineer John Simon compared The Band to Ellington and how he used the personalities of the musicians in his band as guides for his compositions. Assuming that it would be worth my effort, is there a collection that might be a best starting place?
I’m kind of in the same boat with Ellington, but at the library I found an Ellington collection called The Blanton-Webster Band. It covers 1939-42, and it’s awesome. This is not the long-form stuff, no suites, all tracks about 3 minutes long, so maybe it’s not representative of his career as a whole. I haven’t had the inclination to explore his oeuvre more widely, but I thought these tracks were pretty hard to argue with.
I started with Braggin’ In The Brass: The Immortal 1938 Years. (How one year can constitute plural years, I dunno.) I still love it, and listen to it several times a year. It is especially good in this case because it has lots of guest musicians and you can hear how Duke let them have their space.
You’d probably be surprised by how many tunes you know.
Big Steve is correct that the 3-CD Blanton Webster is the place to start. The high point of his early short form studio material. Sammy is also correct that there are many Ellington songs that you must know–you just may not know that they’re Ellington songs.