SwingDJs

Hey there, I'm quite the newbie here!

While I have a respectable enough swing collection to comfortably know well enough to DJ on the fly from, I can't pretend I have a really strong knowledge of swing as a whole. I'm certainly not done learning!

Anyhow, my father has bought me a huge 10-CD set of Duke Ellington music, of just under 20 tracks per CD, will no hint as to whether there's any chronology in the track listing, and no dates or band names on the tracks:

http://www.ginza.se/Product/Product.asp ... fier=21029

Apart from listening to it all from track 1, CD 1 to track 197, CD 10, I don't suppose anyone has any pointers on where on Earth to begin with this thing?!

Hi Sara, welcome to the board!

Oooh, that's a lovely Ellington set! No idea about the quality of the sound restoration and remastering, but the music is top notch. At a glimpse it looks to be a more or less complete, chronological collection of Ellington's 1938-1946 recordings, both big band and small group tracks. It includes the recordings of the famous "Blanton-Webster band" of 1940-1942, widely regarded as Ellington's best band. Not all of it will be suitable for swing DJ-ing, but it's some of the best jazz music ever, and the songs that do swing really swing!

Also, I suspect that that's a copy of the Chrono Classics CDs. (The Ella and Shaw boxes in that series were, if memory serves.) So you may be able to reconstruct some dates and personnel from that, if you so desire.

Enjoy!

Oh ace ace, so it's pretty much in order, then?

It's terrible packaging, no sleeve notes at all, and the pictures of the Duke on each mini CD-case is random in terms of his age, so doesn't hint at all to dates played.

Thank you so much, knew you lot would be able to clue me in!

Okay, so I checked, and it looks like tracks 1-124 are pretty much the complete big band recordings starting somewhat arbitrarily in April 1938 and going chronologically through 1942, with one small group session (as by "Johnny Hodges and his Orchestra", tracks 19-22) thrown in. After that it's a little bit more sketchy, but mostly it seems to be most of the 1944-1946 recordings. No recording was done between the summer of -42 and late -44, but there may be songs from the 1943 Carnegie Hall concerts (Boy Meets Horn? Rex was there).

FWIW, the tracklist doesn't seem to match the Chronogical Classics CDs.

J-h:n that's amazing thanks - hope you didn't waste too much time on that!

I had a look too and it seems that Chrono Classic Ellington 1938 Volumes 2 and 3 start to strongly resemble this box set's track list, albeit it a slightly meandering order (almost as if they've been shuffled just enough not to be caught out)! That's presuming I was looking at the right stuff.

Now I just need to get back home where I have a CD player I can stuff it all into!

Don't mention it, we geeks love this sort of thing!

You're looking at the right stuff - it could be from there, it could be from somewhere else; at that price it's certainly ripped off from somewhere, but I guess it's better than downloading. Don't expect too much of the sound quality, either - there's probably way too much noise reduction, making it all sound muffled and dull. But you never know.

For the same stuff in pristine sound, with extensive liner notes, check out this and this. (On the Mosaic website there's a complete discography that may come in handy.)

159.0 SEK = 23.1083155055 USD

Good deal.

http://www.amazon.com/Duke-Ellington/dp/B0009V2C7O/

$19 new at amazon here in the U.S., or $10 (new!) from a reseller. Go get it, John. :o)

lipi wrote:http://www.amazon.com/Duke-Ellington/dp/B0009V2C7O/

$19 new at amazon here in the U.S., or $10 (new!) from a reseller. Go get it, John. )

Thx! Soooooooooo tempting! I have a credit at CD Universe. I will look there though they tend to run too high on many CDs.

I'm not certain, but I've got a feeling that I've got this box set, and, while the music is great, the sound has been 'cleaned up' and 'processed' in a way which makes it sound like a cheap electronic copy. I'll try and find it at home to confirm this.

gots to have gooood sound.

ps - cant find it on CDU.

Haydn wrote:the sound has been 'cleaned up' and 'processed' in a way which makes it sound like a cheap electronic copy

I've had the same experience with other Membran box sets. The Artie Shaw set was not that bad, though.