Search - Duke Ellington :: Private Collection

Bogus

bukhtan | Chicago, Illinois, USA | 06/27/2002

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Great music, but indeed available elsewhere in a legitimate package with good liner notes: the Chicago Concerts (1946); thanks to the previous reviewer. I checked track by track and found that every last one of the pieces was in fact taken from the the first CD of the Chicago Concerts. "Golden Feather" and "Blue Skys" are rightly labelled (although J-Bird can't spell); all the rest are scrambled. This disc contains part, not all, of the mislabelled Deep South Suite. It contains, mislabelled "Hiawatha", "Things ain't what they used to be". There is no Ellington composition to my knowledge titled "Things ain't what they seem to be". Certainly this disc ain't what it seems to be. I'll be cautious about anything J-Bird sells in the future."

Buyer beware!

William R. Hintze | San Antonio, TX | 11/17/2001

(1 out of 5 stars)

"The performances on this album are outstanding - it's the shoddy and misleading packaging that brings the rating down.This album contains virtually no liner notes - nothing about recording dates, locations, or names of the musicians in the band (the same holds true for its companion disc, Volume I Live 1953-1954). That's a lousy way to present music that is supposed to be of great historical significance: previously-unreleased tapes from the Duke's own collection, discovered in the family vaults by his own grandson. Why would J-Bird Records present an album this way? Even the budget-price Laserlight label, which released several albums of previously unreleased Ellington material in the early 90's, managed to identify the musicians and include short essays by Stanley Dance on the music itself - nothing fancy, but enough to be satisfying. Why would no information be included here? Maybe so no one will notice that this music - or at least some of it - has been released before.At least the last three tracks on this disc all appear on disc 1 of "The Great Chicago Concerts" which was released by Musicmasters in 1994 and is still available at Amazon. (The other named tracks also correspond to the names of tracks on the same disc of the Musicmasters release, but I have not done a side-by-side comparison to confirm that the recordings are identical.) The last two tracks, each entitled "Unknown Recording With Blues Guitarist" are actually "Ride Red Ride" and "Honeysuckle Rose", and the "blues guitarist" is Django Reinhardt, who toured with Ellington in 1946 (and, uncharacteristically, played an electric guitar during that tour).I'd recommend that anyone who is interested in this music buy "The Great Chicago Concerts" instead - it's a great performance by the Ellington band, and contains a lot more material (including two more Reinhardt tracks). I'd suggest bypassing "Private Collection 1953-1954" - as far as this disc is concerned, the emperor (but not the Duke!) has no clothes (or perhaps I should say he's naked as a J-Bird)."