1976 · Album
The Ellington Suites
Recorded 1959, 1971, and 1972 · Pablo · Award: Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band (1976)
Three Decades, One Orchestra, Uneven Results
Even lesser Ellington holds interest, though few themes here linger the way they should.
The Ellington Suites arrived in 1976 as a collection of three separate recording sessions spread across seventeen years — 1959, 1971, and 1972 — packaged together on Pablo Records. This was not a unified project recorded in one room over consecutive days. Instead, it's a retrospective that lets you hear how Ellington's orchestra sounded across different eras of his career, which is interesting but also creates a fractured listening experience.
The album's real claim to attention is The Queen's Suite, composed by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn specifically for Queen Elizabeth II. The story alone sets it apart: the Queen received a single pressing of the recording during Ellington's lifetime, and it remained commercially unavailable until this album. That exclusivity, that gesture of a major composer creating something for royalty and keeping it close, gives the suite a weight the other material doesn't quite match. AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow singled out "The Single Petal of a Rose" from The Queen's Suite as one of the few genuinely memorable themes on the record, which tells you something about where the strongest writing landed.
Beyond that suite, though, Yanow's assessment is honest: the 1959 and early-'70s orchestral recordings contain good moments, but most of the themes don't stick with you. This is solid Ellington work from a bandleader still commanding his orchestra with authority, yet it reads as occasional rather than essential. It won the Grammy for Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band in 1976, which carried weight at the time, but that award reflected the dignity of the project more than the strength of the material overall. If you're already deep in Ellington's catalog, this is worth exploring. For someone starting out, you'd get more from earlier, more focused albums.
Who's playing
Jimmy Woodebass
Duke Ellingtonpiano
William “Cat” Andersontrumpet
Harold “Shorty” Bakertrumpet
Ray Nancetrumpet
Clark Terrytrumpet
Quentin Jacksontrombone
John Sanderstrombone
Britt Woodmantrombone
Jimmy Johnsondrums
Harry Carneyreeds
Paul Gonsalvesreeds
Jimmy Hamiltonreeds
Johnny Hodgesreeds
Russell Procopereeds
Where next?
More by Duke Ellington
All 22 albums →
The musicians on this record
Back to Back: Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges Play the Blues 1959
Johnny Hodges
plays reeds here
plays reeds here
Gettin' Together! 1961
Paul Gonsalves
plays reeds here
plays reeds here
