Duke Ellington – Ellington at Newport (July 7, 1956 – Newport 60th Anniversary Edition) (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Duke Ellington – Ellington at Newport (July 7, 1956 – Newport 60th Anniversary Edition) (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:05 minutes | 711 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

Ellington at Newport is a 1956 live jazz album by Duke Ellington and his band of their 1956 concert at the Newport Jazz Festival, a concert which revitalized Ellington’s flagging career. Jazz promoter George Wein describes the 1956 concert as “the greatest performance of [Ellington’s] career… It stood for everything that jazz had been and could be.” It is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, which ranks it “one of the most famous… in jazz history”. The original release was partly recreated in the studio after the Ellington Orchestra’s festival appearance.

Ellington released a follow-up album also recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival, Newport 1958, two years later.

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Duke Ellington – Ellington ’65 (1964/2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Duke Ellington – Ellington ’65 (1964/2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 32:49 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino – Warner Records

Ellington ‘65 is an illuminating eleven-track album of standards from the legendary Duke Ellington. The album is among the very best in his career and highlights some of the most exceptional performances from veteran players like Johnny Hodges, Russell Procope and Lawrence Brown. With blistering horn arrangements, the ensemble delivers passionate and virtuosic performances on songs like “Hello, Dolly!,” “Never on Sunday,” “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” A must have for any music library.

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Duke Ellington – Duke Ellington Presents… (1956/2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Duke Ellington – Duke Ellington Presents… (1956/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:59 minutes | 615 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Bethlehem Records

Duke Ellington And His Orchestra recorded this album in Chicago, IL on 7 & 8 February 1956 for the Bethlehem label. Ray Nance has vocals on I Can’t Get Started, Jimmy Grissom sings on Everything But You. The Polydor reissues have slightly more adventurous titles, as well as the track listing changed. At the same session, the orchestra recorded another 12 tracks, released as “Historically Speaking – The Duke.”

This unusual set only has four Duke Ellington compositions among the 11 songs. He features a different soloist on most of the songs (which include seven standards not associated with Ellington’s music). There are showcases for trumpeter Cat Anderson, Ray Nance (who sings and plays violin on “I Can’t Get Started”), singer Jimmy Grissom, baritonist Harry Carney, and the altos of Johnny Hodges and Russell Procope, as well as two apiece for clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton and tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves. The closing “Blues” gives many of the players an additional opportunity to be heard. Although this set is not essential, the music is quite enjoyable and it is interesting to hear Duke Ellington playing such tunes as “Laura,” “My Funny Valentine,” and “Indian Summer.” –AllMusic Review by Scott Yanow

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Duke Ellington – Berlin 1959 (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Duke Ellington – Berlin 1959 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:27:11 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Storyville Records

What we have here is the welcome memento of Duke Ellington and his band’s 1959 European tour. Berlin’s Sportpalast is not a concert hall and during the cursed Nazi reign often was the site of speeches by Hitler and his fellow criminals, but the hall can be said to have been thoroughly purified by sounds of jazz by the time of this concert.

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Duke Ellington – Anatomy Of A Murder (From the Soundtrack of the Motion Picture) (1959/2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Duke Ellington – Anatomy Of A Murder (From the Soundtrack of the Motion Picture) (1959/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 34:56 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

The 1959 courtroom crime drama “Anatomy of a Murder” was directed by Otto Preminger and adapted by Wendell Mayes from the best-selling homonymous novel written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pen name Robert Traver.

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Duke Ellington – Anatomy Of A Murder (From the Soundtrack of the Motion Picture) (1959/2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Duke Ellington – Anatomy Of A Murder (From the Soundtrack of the Motion Picture) (1959/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 34:56 minutes | 692 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

The 1959 courtroom crime drama “Anatomy of a Murder” was directed by Otto Preminger and adapted by Wendell Mayes from the best-selling homonymous novel written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pen name Robert Traver.

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Duke Ellington And His Orchestra – Afro Bossa (1963/2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

Duke Ellington And His Orchestra – Afro Bossa (1963/2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 36:33 minutes | 1,34 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino – Warner Records

The experimental Afro Bossa features Duke Ellington pushing his talented group to their limits. The jazz master tosses around the forms he knows so well. Other players include Cat Anderson, Paul Gonsalves, Harry Carney, and Cootie Williams. There is plenty of cornet, violin and plunger-muted trumpets.

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Duke Ellington – …And His Mother Called Him Bill (1968/2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Duke Ellington – …And His Mother Called Him Bill (1968/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 44:28 minutes | 1001 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Okeh

When Billy Strayhorn died of cancer in 1967, Duke Ellington was devastated. His closest friend and arranger had left his life full of music and memories. As a tribute, Ellington and his orchestra almost immediately began recording a tribute to Strayhorn, using the late arranger’s own compositions.

The album features well-known and previously unrecorded Strayhorn tunes that showcase his range, versatility, and, above all, the quality that Ellington admired him most for: his sensitivity to all of the timbral, tonal, and color possibilities an orchestra could bring to a piece of music.

Full of informality and soulful verve, these recordings feel like they are an afterthought, an unwillingness to completely let go, a eulogy whose final words are questions, elegantly stated and met with only the echo of their last vibrations ringing in an empty room, full of wondering, longing, and helplessness, but above all the point of the questions themselves: “Is this enough?” or “Can there ever be enough to pay an adequate tribute to this man?”

They are interesting questions, because only five years later we would all be saying the same thing about Ellington. For a man who issued well over 300 albums, this set is among his most profoundly felt and very finest recorded moments.

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Duke Ellington – Take the A Train (2017) DSF DSD128 + Hi-Res FLAC

Duke Ellington – Take the A Train (2017)
DSD128 (.dsf) 1 bit/5,6 MHz | Time – 29:05 minutes | 3,11 GB
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 29:05 minutes | 555 MB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | Genre: Jazz | © 2xHD

Take the “A” Train is the vibrant signature composition of Duke Ellington, the most important composer in the history of jazz, also a rare bandleader who held his large group together for almost 50 years. It is quite impossible for one album to capture the full flavour and rich diversity of Duke Ellington’s music and orchestra. The eight tracks here offer a remarkably well-balanced sample of the prolific repertoire – the immortal compositions, the arresting arrangements, the outstanding soloists and, not least, the distinctive solo work of the piano player, Edward Kennedy Ellington, the Duke who became King of Orchestral Jazz.

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Duke Ellington – Piano In The Foreground (1961/2016) DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Duke Ellington – Piano In The Foreground (1961/2016)
DSD128 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,82 MHz MHz | Time – 36:27 minutes | 1,62 GB
or FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 36:27 minutes | 801 MB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: AcousticSounds | Front Cover | © Columbia/Legacy

“Piano in the Foreground” is an album by American pianist, composer and bandleader Duke Ellington recorded and released on the Columbia label in 1961. It features Ellington in a piano trio setting, emphasising his own keyboard prowess rather than the big band arrangements more typical of his recordings.

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Duke Ellington – Blues In Orbit (1960/2016) DSF DSD64

Duke Ellington – Blues In Orbit (1960/2016)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 36:27 minutes | 1,44 GB | Genre: Jazz
Official Digital Download – Source: AcousticSounds | © Columbia Records

Blues In Orbit captures the essence of a late-night recording date that was as much a loose jam as a formal studio date, balancing the spontaneity of the former and the technical polish of the latter.
Ellington and company were just back from a European tour when the bulk of this album was recorded. All of the takes were recorded during after midnight sessions recorded over two nights starting on December 2, 1959 in New York at Columbia Record’s studio on East 30th Street. Each night Duke’s late dinner arrived at 2 a.m. – a sizzling steak, a pot of coffee with lemons in it, portions of American cheese, and grapefruits. After dinner, and a breather for the band, the sessions finished around dawn in a swinging fashion.

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Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges – Side By Side (1959/2012) DSF DSD64

Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges – Side By Side (1959/2012)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz  | Time – 00:46:14 minutes | 1,82 GB | Genre: Jazz
Source: ISO SACD | © Verve Records

When Norman Granz signed Johnny Hodges to a recording contract in 1951, it was a prelude to Hodges’ leaving the Duke Ellington orchestra to lead his own small band. Four years later Hodges was back in the Ellington fold, but he continued to record for Granz under his own name. Side By Side, recorded in 1958 and 1959, is a throwback to the small-group sessions Ellington recorded with Hodges and other members of his orchestra in the Thirties, but with a couple of important differences: the absence of Ellington himself on several cuts (with Billy Strayhorn taking over on piano), and the presence of such notable non-Ellingtonians as drummer Jo Jones and trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Harry “Sweets” Edison.

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Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges Play the Blues – Back To Back (1959/2012) DSF DSD64

Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges Play the Blues – Back To Back (1959/2012)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz  | Time – 00:47:15 minutes | 1.86 GB | Genre: Jazz
Source: ISO SACD | © Verve Records

Back to back, or side by side, Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges form a duo which, in terms of sustained jazz artistry, has never been rivaled. The Ellington fanciers will be well rewarded, for there are many passages of Duke’s unusual and charming solo improvisations. “Johnny Hodges,” Duke said, “has complete independence of expression. He says what he wants to say on the horn, and that is it. He says it in his language, from his perspective, which is specific, and you could say that his is pure artistry.” Hodges carries most of the melodic statements of well-known blues standards, but gets in his share of ad lib choruses along with the swinging trumpet of Harry “Sweets” Edison. This is one of the most thoroughly relaxed, conversational jazz sessions ever recorded.

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Duke Ellington – The Nutcracker Suite (1960/2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Duke Ellington - The Nutcracker Suite (1960/2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download

Duke Ellington – The Nutcracker Suite (1960/2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 30:53 minutes | 387 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla

The Nutcracker Suite is an album by American pianist, composer and bandleader Duke Ellington recorded for the Columbia label in 1960 featuring jazz interpretations of the 1892 ballet “The Nutcracker” by Tchaikovsky, arranged by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
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Duke Ellington – Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Artie Shaw and Their Orchestras (1965/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Duke Ellington - Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Artie Shaw and Their Orchestras (1965/2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Duke Ellington – Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Artie Shaw and Their Orchestras (1965/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 29:33 minutes | 454 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Society Records

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life.

Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra’s appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. In the 1930s, his orchestra toured Europe several times.
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