Friday, August 19, 2011

A Threesome Quartet of Stupidity


I'm sure you've heard about the so called jazz people asking questions like "how many musicians are in Dave Brubeck Quartet". But this latest entry in stupidity of the industry is a new peak in their effort to show how illiterate they are, and how history of jazz and aestethic of this music is not their concern at all.

A considerate friend gave me this DVD of Duke Ellington that as the cover of DVD suggests, is a quartet in concert. The very first moment I saw it, I knew we have no quartet in concert by Duke. I assumed that it couldn't be Big 4 sessions, produced by Norman Granz which reportedly been filmed by him. They are  courtesy of the late Norman's Pablo label, and so an obscure label can't release it. All these thoughts came and went, till I unpacked the stuff and put it on DVD player. Yes, it is simply Duke Ellington Trio at Danish TV. A great performance indeed, and beautifully photographed by cameramen of Copenhagen TV,  including magisterial Meditation, On the Fringe of the Jungle, Second Portrait of the Lion, and Take the A Train, BUT widely available on the internet, and NOT a quartet as the packaging says, or lies. No need to say, the front cover doesn't belong to the that gig - a totally different rhythm section, and oh my what a section: Jones and Lamb!

There is this Lauren Bacall line, in her interview with my friend Mark Cousins, when she says about the cinema: "The industry is shit. It's  the medium that's great." We can second that and expand it to the world of jazz, in which industry is shit and it's the music itself that is so great.

3 comments:

  1. Yeah, they sometimes seem to be blind too; deaf they are mostly, if you think of wrong pitches, wrong personnel on liner notes, or wrong titles of famous compositions.

    The only recorded "Duke Ellington Quartet" I know, is his encounter with John Coltrane, in September 1962, by the way the month I was born.

    Anyway, I will go for this DVD because I'm a big fan of Duke as a pianist. To hear him as purely as in such a setting is a rare occasion.

    This wonderful LP belongs (besides "Money Jungle") to my favorites among Ellington's recorded piano trios:

    http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Reflections-Duke-Ellington/dp/B000005HFA

    Some tracks from the DVD are on YouTube.

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  2. Brew, it is only available from UK Amazon
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Duke-Ellington-Quartet-Concert-DVD/dp/B000M7FS80/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314449355&sr=8-1

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  3. ...and for those who are interested to hear the actual "big four" in mention - their available on this wordpress bog:


    http://jazzismylife.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/duke-ellington-quartet-the-dukes-big-four-1973/

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