1956 · Album
Memories of Ellington
Recorded 1959 · Norgran · Produced by Norman Granz
Hodges Alone With Duke's Ghost
Alto saxophone in a room that feels smaller and more intimate than any big band ever could.
The first thing you hear is Hodges' alto saxophone, unrushed and warm, moving through these Ellington compositions like he's remembering them rather than playing them. There's no aggressive swinging here — the tempo settles into something reflective, almost conversational. A small group, strings, that particular quality of a studio where the microphone catches every breath and hesitation. This is Hodges stripped of the section work that defined his reputation, the lead alto chair put aside for something closer to confession.
By this point in his career, Hodges had spent decades as the backbone of Ellington's saxophone section, the player who anchored the sound while soloists orbited around him. Johnny Hodges Memories of Ellington gives you his version of that partnership — not a horn player surrounded by arrangers trying to prove something, but a musician alone with material he knew inside out. The album doesn't reinvent these compositions. Instead, it sits with them, lets the alto speak first and the ensemble follow. This is a player's record, not a bandleader's statement.
The real weight here is in what Hodges chose to do with these pieces — which details to linger on, where to breathe, how slowly he could make time feel. For listeners already familiar with the Ellington orchestra recordings, this offers something different: the chance to hear what these songs meant to one man who played them more times than he probably counted.
