The fourth ”goodie” in September is program 26 in the Duke Ellington series broadcasted by the Danish Radio in the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. The broadcast is available in the “Goodies” section of the website.
This program was broadcasted on July 19, 1985 and the announcer is Bjarne Busk.
It combines a stockpile session from 1971 with excerpts from Ellington’s concert in the Coventry Cathedral February 21, 1966.
The February 1-3, 1971 stockpile session features the singer Bobby Gordon in three number – Rocks In My Bed, Love You Madly and Looking For My Man.
“Not a very subtle singer”, one commentator has said but she certainly rocks with a strong bluesy feeling. She toured with Ellington for 15 months in 1971-1973 under her artistic name Nell Brookshire.
The stockpile part of the broadcast ends with Peke – another groovy blues with Wild Bill Davis in a prominent role together with Ellington. Harold Ashby, Malcolm Taylor and Cootie Williams also solo. Peke was later issued by Storyville on the Togo Brava Suite CD.
Next comes four selections from Coventry Cathedral – Come Easter, Tell Me It’s The Truth, West Indian Pancake and La Plus Belles Africaine. For those, who have not yet bought Storyville’s complete version of the concert, have now the opportunity to hear half of it.
The broadcast ends with Ellington soloing on the piano in Japan in 1964. Bjarne Busk’s appeal to the listerners to help him to identify what Ellington is playing. It turned out to be an early version of something that later developed into Ad Lib on Nippon. In the Ellington discographies it is listed as Nagoya.