Jerry Valburn talks about rare recording at Ellington ’87

Jerry Valburn was part of the Ellington Study Group conferences from the very beginning and talked often about rare recordings with Ellington music and he did so at Ellington ’87  as well.

Jerry was alloted only 35 minutes for his presentation but he used it very well.

The first recording Jerry plays is a acetate recording from the Jerry Ray collection. It was apprently in bad shap before Jack Towers got down to work on it and the sound it quite awful. It is a rehearsal recording in the Brunswick studios of Echoes of Harlem from 1936 or 1938. Only Ellington, Sonny Greer and Cootie Williams are heard.

Then Jerry plays a Billy Strayhorn arrangment of a Fats Waller composition called A Girl In My Life. It was recorded from a radio broadcast by a young student with a fairly simple recording machine.

The next record played by Jerry is a stock arrangment of As Time Goes By with Ellington and Lawrence Brown as soloists

After this Valburn plays a broadcast recording from Hurrican in which Jimmy Britton, who was with Ellington a very short time,  sings something called Ogeechee River Lullaby in a broadcast from Hurricane April 24,1943.

He ends his presentation with Around My Heart and a long version of Perdido in which Ben Webster is also featured. Both of them are from the same broadcast as Ogeechee River Lullaby.