2. Duke EllingtonEllington At Newport
From 1956, this. The great thing about that is the Paul Gonzales tenor solo on ‘Crescendo In Blue’. The band were just rocking. Fantastic recording. The performance that reignited Ellington’s career? I don’t know anything about the background to it – I don’t study history. There was a very amusing incident some time after that – Gonzales got up to take a solo and the crowd, who loved him at that point, burst into applause. He thought that meant he’d finished, so he sat straight back down again.
