Duke Ellington in 1964
If there is an abundance of surviving recordings from Duke Ellington’s tours in Sweden 1963, the resulting recordings from the 1964 tour is rather meagre with only three cities visited: Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö with two concerts each. We have at hand a copy of parts of the first concert in Stockholm, and the complete program from 2nd concert from Gothenburg (from various sources). No copies have survived from the Malmö visit.
Paul Gonsalves plays Happy Reunion
The circumstances surrounding these concerts were for a long time unclear, where parts of the Gothenburg concert were thought to be from the 2nd concert in Stockholm. DESS was able to support the late Sjef Hoefsmit to sort this problem out. We can therefor present parts of the first concert in Stockholm on March 9, 1964 to our members. You’ll find it in the Goodies Room.It is not the complete concert, but it is all that has survived so far. The sound quality is not the best, but still bearable. Since we last encountered the band in these pages (Malmö June 19, 1963) there had been some changes in the band’s personnel: Herbie Jones replaced Eddie Preston on trumpet, Ray Nance omitted, Cat Anderson added and Jimmy Woode on bass replaced Eddie Shepard, who had tragically died of a heart decease.
In the previous fall Ellington and the band had made its Middle East Tour and this heavily impacted the program on the 1964 European tour and four compositions that were to become part of the Far East Suite, were part of most of the concerts: Amad, Agra, Blue Bird Of Delhi and Depk. The complete program runs as follows:
*Take The A Train & intro*Creole Love Call & The Mooche*Perdido*Amad*Agra*Blue Bird Of Delhi*Depk*The Opener and *Happy Reunion*
Rolf Ericson is of course heard soloing in Perdido and Paul Gonsalves in Happy Reunion.
Lawrence Brown is the main soloist on Amad, Harry Carney on Agra, Jimmy Hamilton on Blue Bird Of Delhi, wheras Depk is largely instrumental.