Duke Ellington at the Rainbow Grille, 1967

While Duke Ellington often led sessions with small groups, particularly in the early years of his career, unfortunately not too many of his recordings in an octet setting have survived. The Duke Ellington Octet at the Rainbow Grille, released by Gambit Records in 2006, presents one of them, a very interesting date at New York's Rainbow Grille from August 17, 1967, preserved for posterity due to the fact that it was broadcast by the CBS radio network, back in the days when the networks were still interested in offering high-quality live jazz to their listenership. The first five tunes on this album are apparently rehearsals that the sound engineer caught on tape while adjusting the balances in preparation for the broadcast. The first of these finds the Duke at the piano, wistfully playing a medley of two of his lesser-known compositions, "Heaven" and "Le Sucrier Velours," and in the background we can hear people chatting and glasses clinking, which suggests that nobody seems to be paying much attention to the performance. The whole octet begins to warm up next, using for that purpose classic Ellington numbers such as "In a Sentimental Mood" (which you can hear in the video at the end of this post), "Azure," and "I'm Beginning to See the Light," as well as a rocking tune called "Rock the Clock."

Then the broadcast proper begins, after an announcer urges the crowd to applaud as the band goes on the air, and the sound improves somewhat. The octet is made up of star soloists from within the Ellington orchestra, namely Cat Anderson on trumpet, Lawrence Brown on trombone, Johnny Hodges on alto, Paul Gonsalves on tenor, and Harry Carney on baritone, supported by a rhythm section that includes the Duke himself on piano, bassist John Lamb, and drummer Steve Little. This reduced lineup called for new arrangements, which in the hands of all these giants sound rich and full of excitement, giving all the horns plenty of chances to shine. The set list features many Ellington and Billy Strayhorn standards, such as "Take the 'A' Train," "Satin Doll," "Sophisticated Lady," "Passion Flower," "Solitude," and "Things Ain't What They Used to Be," as well as Juan Tizol's "Perdido," which is ably performed here by Cat Anderson. Ellington himself, of course, is heavily spotlighted on piano, and his playing, as usual, is never less than superb. This is definitely a very welcome release, with personnel information and well-written liner notes that could, however, be a little more detailed. It appears that several other performances from this Ellington octet engagement exist, and judging by the quality of the music we can hear on this CD, they all deserve to be issued commercially.

Earl Hines on Impulse, 1966

Earl "Fatha" Hines

One of the most important, innovative pianists in jazz history, Earl "Fatha" Hines influenced virtually every keyboard player who ever had a chance to listen to him, among them many greats such as Nat King Cole and Teddy Wilson. Born in Duquesne, near Pittsburgh, PA, in 1905, Hines was playing piano professionally by the 1920s, as a member of several different bands, and working off and on with the likes of Jimmie Noone and Louis Armstrong, with whom he participated in some of the groundbreaking Hot Five sessions of the late '20s. A few years later, when it came time for Hines to lead his own orchestras, he proved to have a good ear for recognizing talent, and his outfits were always full of excellent musicians such as Trummy Young, Budd Johnson, Ray Nance, and a vocalist who would soon turn into a jazz/pop idol—Billy Eckstine. Critics have often hailed Hines as one of the first modern pianists, He never failed to swing with ease, and his bluesy style was definitely swinging, forward-looking, and flamboyant, making him one of the direct links between the old school of stride piano and the more modern sounds of swing. Hines survived the 1950s by inflecting his swinging style with the strains of Dixieland jazz and spent several years catering to the followers of the decade's Dixieland revival. And that takes us to the album we're reviewing today, perhaps one of the lesser-known entries in his prolific and enormously rich discography.

Cut for Impulse on two different dates in January 1966, the record is called Once Upon a Time, yet it might very well have been titled something like "Earl Hines Meets the Ellingtonians," since on these seven tracks he's surrounded by a host of Duke Ellington sidemen, though the Duke himself is absent. The collective personnel features, among others, great musicians like trumpeters Cat Anderson, Ray Nance, and Clark Terry; trombonist Lawrence Brown; reedmen Russell Procope, Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton, and Pee Wee Russell; bassist Aaron Bell; and drummers Sonny Greer and Elvin Jones. As critic Stanley Dance tells us in the liner notes, the idea was "to bring together past and present members of the Duke Ellington orchestra" and have them play alongside Hines and other greats like Russell and Elvin Jones. And the concept works perfectly: the material includes Ellington standards such as "Black and Tan Fantasy" and an explosive reading of "Cottontail," and each solo that unfolds is pure bliss. Both Hodges (the title track and the closer, "Hash Brown") and Hines himself (the lovely "You Can Depend on Me") showcase their talents as composers, and selections like Lionel Hampton's "The Blues in My Flat" (with some inspired singing by Nance) place the accent on the blues. The beautiful ballad "Fantastic, That's You" receives a quartet treatment by Hines, Hamilton, Bell, and Jones, and the Fatha sounds extremely comfortable both in a small-group setting and within the larger band, leading everyone forward with energy and authority. When it comes to albums by Hines, there's evidently a wealth of material to choose from, but this mid-'60s meeting with the Ellingtonians should be high on the list of must-haves by the Fatha.

Duke Ellington and Rosemary Clooney, 1956

Although his records often feature worthy vocalists, Duke Ellington didn't collaborate with too many singers on full-length albums. An obvious example that comes readily to mind is his landmark meeting with Ella Fitzgerald in 1957, which yielded the excellent Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook for Verve. Yet one year before that, in 1956, the studios of Columbia Records witnessed another magnificent collaboration, this time with the always compelling Rosemary Clooney. The association produced the excellent album Blue Rose, and even though it all might have seemed rather unlikely at first sight, the results certainly proved otherwise, as Clooney showed that she was not only a fine pop singer, but also a jazz vocalist of the first order. This had already been evident on the recordings she'd previously made with Benny Goodman and with Harry James, and it would become particularly obvious in the outstanding series of songbook albums that she cut in the 1970s and '80s in a small-group jazz setting for Concord. And then there's her series of radio shows for CBS backed by Buddy Cole in the 1950s—and recently reissued on a Mosaic Records box set—which are also good proof of how much at ease she felt singing with a small jazz combo. But to my ears, her LP with Ellington by far represents her best work as a jazz singer.

The album is clearly intended to be a sort of Ellington songbook, since all the tunes are written by the maestro, and as always, Duke and Billy Strayhorn provide very appropriate musical settings for Clooney's voice. The arrangements are imaginative and sometimes intricate without ever getting in the way of her lightly swinging, highly attractive voice. Apparently, Clooney and Ellington were unable to work together in the studio, owing to the fact that the singer was undergoing a rather difficult pregnancy at the time the album was recorded. Therefore, the band was forced to lay down the instrumental tracks in New York and Clooney later overdubbed her vocals in Los Angeles. Listening to the finished product, though, there doesn't seem to be any aural evidence of this, as the interaction between vocalist and orchestra sounds perfectly natural and seamless. Rosie tackles Ellington classics such as "Sophisticated Lady," "I Let a Song Go out of My Heart," "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)," "Mood Indigo," and "I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)" with ease and gusto, and all tracks are embellished by first-rate solos from Ellington's sidemen, including legendary names such as trumpeters Ray Nance, Clark Terry, and Cat Anderson, and saxophonists Johnny Hodges, Russell Procope, Harry Carney, and Paul Gonsalves, among several others. The indispensable 1999 Columbia-Legacy reissue includes an illuminating essay by Will Friedwald, as well as two bonus tracks from the sessions ("If You Were in My Place" and "Just A-Sittin' and A-Rockin'") that were not included in the original album and is indispensable to understand Clooney's jazzier side. Any serious appreciation of Rosie from the perspective of jazz should start right here.