Ellington at Newport

I'm not big on jazz but this is the best one I've come across on this list.

There's great playing on this album, it sounds like an incredible show! The sound quality lets it down a bit though. Still a pretty great introduction to Duke Ellington for me though. I'll definitely be checking out more of his recordings.

Technically extremely impressive, but overall this style of jazz doesn't really do it for me.

Spotify had the remastered album, running at about 2 hours. Far too long! I opted to pick out the 5 tracks from the original 1956 LP (accordingly to Wikipedia). Much better.

2.7 per track. Ignored the talking tracks. This is fine, perfect for background music but I don’t think I’d be listening with intent.

Another great jazz record. The extended version on spotify is way too long with too much talking. Listening to just the tracks on the original release was just right.

Making a mental note to relisten and compare this to the Count Basie album when it comes up so I can get a good sense of big band music. I thought I would have liked this style more but it was quite tedious (and felt a little disingenuous to know that so much of it had been “faked”). Definitely disappointed (by jazz standards) but not counting it out yet

Another day, another live jazz album, Ellington at Newport is my first album from the 50s in a while, but unlike that last album where it is difficult to tell that it is live sometimes, with this album, you can easily tell that it's a live recording mostly due to the rough camera sound. I don't think that is a bad thing though, the album was still pretty good and had it's moments. This album is worth a listen.
Best Song: Festival Junction
Worst Song: Blues To Be There

If you had asked me a couple of days ago to sit through over two hours of jazz, I would have replied, "What did I ever do to you?" But in the spirit of this project I did. And I enjoyed it. I'll likely not be listening to jazz 24/7 now, but I'll refrain from turning the volume down if it comes ont he radio, which is what I'd have done before.

The chatty segments of this album could have been removed, but at the time it was probaly important to the (likely all dead now) musicians.

Fantastic. Ellington is an all-time great.

amazing jazz. and to think this was LIVE wtf man

Just listen to the original 1956 LP if you're on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0FTvPX7D3ogej9MVJQqqdv?si=aamNrTJaR2muafMlxGG4sA

The end of "Festival Junction" is so over the top, it made me laugh in disbelief. Definitely preferred the more down tempo numbers like "Blues To Be There."

I can appreciate the talent involved and the place in music history, but I just have a really hard time enjoying '50s music because it sounds so dated at this point. There's some really great musicianship here though and the story of the '99 reissue is quite interesting.

Buff. Dos horas de un directo que empieza con el himno americano no es lo que me esperaba. No está mal, suena bastante bien y es entretenido pero no creo que sea algo imprescindible.

Today is the perfect day for a jazz album. It's a cold and rainy Sunday, perfect for popping this live album on and giving it a listen!

Apparently, the original recording of this live performance had an issue where one of the horn players was playing into the wrong mic so none of his stuff got recorded. Duke was told this, and they headed into the studio the Monday after the show, and re-recorded the messed up tracks, and added canned applause in to seamlessly blend the live, and studio parts together on the album. They did a great job of this, because I couldn't tell where it switched from live to studio recording.

The song Diminuendo in Blue is 14 minutes of pure gold. The songs leading up to it were kind of slow, and this song just turned everything up to 11, and they proceeded to blow the roof off of the festival grounds! Duke told the sax player to solo for as long as he wanted, so the dude played 27 choruses, then collapsed because he had soloed for so long. That's bad ass!

I can't hear the name Duke Ellington now without thinking of the ghost who lives in the attic of Nick Birch's house in the show Big Mouth. This music reminds me a lot of the jazz featured in the game Mafia.

Overall, a phenomenal epic of jazz! It is one of the longer records, at just over 2 hrs of runtime, but it is absolutely worth the listen. There were so many talented musicians in one spot. The live recording captured lightning in a bottle with this performance. Glad I took the time to sit down and absorb this one. Absolutely something I would listen to again. Maybe not cover to cover, but in the background during a dinner party or while cooking for sure!

Favourite songs: Diminuendo in Blue, Tulip or Turnip, Jeep's Blues, Part 3 - Newport Up, "Day In, Day Out", Black and Tan Fantasy, Tea for Two

Least favourite songs: I Got it Bad (And That Ain't Good)

4/5

JAZZZ

Very old, a genre I still don't quite understand, a slightly messy live recording, much too long (at least the linked Spotify version), but still pretty magical at points.