Duke Ellington & John Coltrane, first released in 1962, brings together the rising jazz saxophone innovator John Coltrane and the long-established piano institution Duke Ellington. What could have been a clash of generations instead unfolds as a casual, respectful and deeply generous meeting between two like-minded players.
Rather than using Ellington's regular sidemen, producer Bob Thiele, who also produced similar Ellington pairings with Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins, brought in Coltrane's own group for the session. That means the duo is backed at various points by bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones, alongside alternate bassist Aaron Bell and drummer Sam Woodyard.
One of the real pleasures of this record is hearing how naturally Coltrane and his band move through what is largely Ellington's own material. Even though Coltrane was entering the early stages of his more avant-garde period in 1962, he had a deep grounding in traditional jazz language, having played in a swing band in the Navy in the 1940s and studied the styles of artists like Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster while coming up in Philadelphia.
By the same token, while Ellington was already an icon of the big-band era, he was in the middle of a real late-career resurgence following his electrifying 1958 Newport Jazz Festival performance, later issued as Ellington at Newport. His session with Coltrane is a perfect example of that renewed creativity, and one of several later-life recordings he made with unexpected collaborators, including his other 1962 date, Money Jungle, with bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach.
Across the album, Ellington and Coltrane dig into a handful of well-known Ellington compositions, including a supremely lyrical take on In a Sentimental Mood and a soulful, half-lidded reading of Billy Strayhorn's My Little Brown Book. Ellington also contributes the brisk original Take the Coltrane, giving the group plenty of room to stretch out.
180g heavyweight gatefold.
UPC: 8436542012461
Import
