Search - Duke Ellington :: Complete Standard Transcriptions

More from the Blanton-Webster band

Don Cox | 06/02/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A valuable supplement to the well known RCA/BMG sets of Ellington's recordings from the early 40s. Of the 29 tracks, the first 19 have Blanton on bass, and there is plenty of Ben Webster. All the tracks were recorded in 1941, which many regard as Ellington's best year. Only 4 tracks are actual Ellington songs. The rest are tunes by Strayhorn, Mercer Ellington, and miscellaneous composers. For this reason, the set from RCA should be bought before this one. Among the tracks are the first recordings of A Train and Perdido. The sound quality is mostly good for the period. The source material is disks intended for use by radio stations."

Glorious-sounding classic Ellington from his best band

Mark Conlan | San Diego, California | 04/13/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Amazingly, the folks at Soundies who put out this collection of Ellington's Standard transcriptions put in a note to apologize for the sound quality ("From time to time surface noise and other defects in the original recordings may be detected"). They needn't have bothered. Transcriptions were special records, usually on 16" 33 1/3 rpm discs (four inches wider than ordinary LP's), made to be sold to and played by radio stations. As a result, since radio stations had better playback equipment than home listeners, they were actually recorded better than commercial records. So not only do we have here an hour and a half of music by the greatest band Duke Ellington ever led, we have it in far better sound than on the RCA Victor recordings and can hear details in the arrangements that were smudged in the commercial discs. The short-lived Jimmy Blanton's bass playing in particular can finally be heard, for the first time since his death in 1942, well enough to do him justice. I wish Standard had recorded more songs featuring Ellington's great female singer, Ivie Anderson -- had her career not been cut short by chronic asthma she'd have been a star at the level of Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald -- but everything else about this record is wonderful."

More blanton-webster!

P. Eubanks | 07/07/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"excellent collection of a unit we can never hear enough of. great supplement to the rca collection"