After transforming the sound palette of a jazz orchestra for more than two decades, Duke Ellington came close to being sidelined in the early 1950s, with the big bands in economic and artistic retreat and rock’n’roll imminent. But his comeback was spectacular, and this Storyville collection of music from the US and Europe from the 50s to the 70s begins with a disorderly but sparky 1952 broadcast from New York’s Birdland, including classics such as Take the A Train and The Mooche, and winds up with some 1971 takes on the intriguing African/Latin proto-world-music Ellington was investigating in his last years. Legendary Ellington saxophonists Johnny Hodges and Harry Carney shine on an exhilarating blend of early and later material caught in Munich in 1958; a previously unreleased 1963 Stockholm gig features Ellington’s “gut-bucket bolero” Afro-Bossa, and the 1967 lineup – one of the best of the later Ellington outfits – is well represented on the thematically diverse studio set The Jaywalker. It’s no substitute for milestone postwar albums such as Ellington at Newport 1956 or the 1970 New Orleans Suite, but a boxful of fascinating Ellingtonia nonetheless, with a DVD of the 1962 band in action, and an authoritative booklet.
