On Duke Ellington’s birthday

Duke Ellington was born 121 years ago today.

Here’s an unembeddable performance, piano alone, a recital for television broadcast, taped in Paris, July 2, 1970. The program, with all compositions by Ellington except as noted:

Fleurette Africaine : Carolina Shout (James P. Johnson) : Take The “A” Train (Billy Strayhorn) : Black Beauty : Warm Valley : Things Ain’t What They Used to Be (Mercer Ellington) : Paris Blues : New World A-Comin’ : Paris Blues : Come Sunday : Lotus Blossom (Strayhorn)

Ellington is in rare form here. I’d point in particular to “Fleurette Africaine,” “Black Beauty” (first recorded in 1928), and “Come Sunday.” And there’s “Carolina Shout.” When in later life Ellington revisited the stride-piano style of his early years, it was typically in the form of brief novelty performances of his “Soda Fountain Rag.” (For instance.) “Carolina Shout,” too, wraps up pretty quickly, but Ellington seems to be playing to give Johnson his due. “There never was another,” Ellington wrote of him in Music Is My Mistress.

A bonus Ellington-related detail: if you watch the broadcast with “Soda Fountain Rag,” you’ll see the pianist Aaron Bridgers. He and Billy Strayhorn had a nine-year relationship, 1939–1948.

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)

[Ken Vail’s Duke’s Diary, Part Two (2002) omits “Carolina Shout” and adds “Dancers in Love,” “In the Beginning God,” and “Satin Doll.”]