You ain't heard nothing yet. "Ellington at Newport 1956." My all-time favorite jazz number, "Crescendo+Diminuendo In Blue." Paul Gonsalves lets loose with a Sax solo at 2 minutes in, and goes for 7 minutes. Brought the house down and put Ellington back on tour. Stage version. It will dance you out of your seat. VIDEO
"Linking two of Ellington's late-1930s blues compositions ("Diminuendo in Blue," "Crescendo in Blue"), the Gonsalves performance had been seeded a few years earlier, after Ellington had shelved his first idea for conjoining the two songs, a wordless-vocal interlude called "Transblucency." The Gonsalves "Wailing Interval" seems to have been performed first at Birdland in New York City, on June 30, 1951. As with Newport 1956, there are 27 or 28 choruses of Gonsalves' solo. Furthermore it could be argued that the Birdland performance far surpasses that of Newport 1956 as an example of Gonsalves' power and inventiveness as a blues soloist. This is despite the fact that after 5 or 6 choruses Gonsalves became out of sync with the rhythm section by a whole bar during an attempt at an overly complicated rhythm pattern in his improvisation. It is clear from the recording that nobody noticed this until the last few choruses of this mammoth solo!
All that aside, it was the Newport 1956 performance that made the headlines. Staying tightly on the beat, repeating certain theme lines he improvised along the way without overdoing them, and accompanied only by Ellington at the piano, bassist Jimmy Woode, and drummer Sam Woodyard, Gonsalves had kicked the audience into a slowly swelling round of noisy applause and cheering by the seventh chorus that didn't let up for the remainder of the piece. Even more mayhem erupted when a platinum blonde jumped out of her seat and started dancing frantically to Paul's solo.
So loud and excited had the crowd become that Ellington -- against the wishes of festival organisers, but knowing that stopping then might have caused a genuine riot -- shifted to some less rhythmically vigorous material to bring them back down. The performance became the centerpiece of a live Ellington album from the festival, resurrecting Ellington as a major attraction, and gave him (and, for time enough, Columbia Records's jazz catalog) the best-selling recording (Ellington at Newport) of his long and distinguished career.
It also made certain Ellington's forthcoming Time magazine feature, spearheading a profile on the apparent resurrection of jazz, would get almost as much attention as the band's acclaimed performance at Newport did. It guaranteed Ellington's longevity as a working bandleader and composer. (Years later, whenever he was asked about his earlier career, Ellington puckishly liked to reply, "Why, that was before my time. You know I was born at Newport.")
And, finally, it guaranteed that Gonsalves would be a major Ellington attraction for as long as he remained with the band, which was for the rest of Ellington's life. Gonsalves was a featured soloist in numerous Ellingtonian settings, but the memory of "Diminuendo" usually helped assure he'd be handed the job for any piece calling for an extended tenor saxophone solo. Gonsalves was also much liked as a personality; his friendliness with audiences, including an occasional habit of stepping down from the stage to play his horn directly to fans (and especially to young children), earned him the nickname "The Strolling Violins" within the Ellington organization." |
