Search - Duke Ellington & John Coltrane :: Duke Ellington & John Coltrane + 4 Bonus Tracks

By the time this album was recorded, Duke Ellington had already become a major jazz star with nearly a four-decade musical career under his belt. He had played regularly on some of the most renowned stages in the world. Coltrane, who had been a member of the Miles Davis group and the Thelonious Monk quartet (with whom he recorded a number of albums), formed his own band in 1960 and recorded a plethora of classic LPs for Atlantic. While Duke was a consecrated figure, Trane was one of the promising new voices of modern jazz. Even though the saxophonist would delve further into free jazz a few years later, he still enjoyed playing ballads and blues in 1962. The swing idiom, of course, wasn't new to him, nor was the Ellington sound. One of Coltrane's earliest professional jobs as a musician had been as a member of alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges' band (during one of the short periods in which Hodges left the Ellington orchestra). Nor was Ellington new to ''modern jazz'', as he was a perennially ''modern'' composer, who frequently expressed his admiration for Thelonious Monk (with whom he played at Newport), Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie (with whom he shared an album), and Charles Mingus (a private recording of the Ellington band playing Mingus' ''The Clown'' still exists), among others.