The radio series Date with the Duke, featuring Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, was broadcast during the mid-1940s. The program originally aired on the ABC Radio Network as Your Saturday Date with the Duke, a weekly one-hour show.
These broadcasts were recorded and later edited into 30-minute episodes by the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) for distribution to military personnel overseas. The AFRS version, entitled Date with the Duke, began airing on April 7, 1945.
AFRS seems to have produced and distributed 76 Date with the Duke programs as transcriptions on 16 inch vinyls. In the list in NDESOR Part 2 four are missing. They are programs 10, 21, 67 and 72.
However, they seems to be in the Benny Åslund’s collection, which since the fall is housed in an area of my house. I will go through the DWTD tapes before the summer and report back to the community on what I have found.
The 16” radio transcriptions of the Armed Forces Radio Service of Duke Ellington and His Orchestra from restaurants all over America are one of the real Ellington treasures.
In 1974, Fairmont Records issued 16 of the DWTD broadcasts at the initiative of Mel Tormé. He provided the recordings from his private collection of Ellington music and also wrote liner notes.
Unfortunately, I only have three of them, Vol. 1, 2 and 7.
According to the back cover, Vol. 1 has broadcasts from 400 Restaurants in N.Y.C. on May 5, 1945 and Paradise Theatre in Detroit on May 19, 1945. However, the first broadcast was from Adams Theatre in Newart,, NJ according to NDESOR.
Vol. 2 has a continuation of the broadcast from Paradise Theatre and the rest from Regal Theatre in Chicago on May 26, 1945.
Vol. 7 has radio broadcasts from Apollo Theatre in N.Y.C.on June 30, 1945 and Radio City also in N.Y.C.on July 7, 1945.
For the article, I asked NotebookLM turn the liner notes of Vol. 7 into a 13.18 minute podcast.It was a test but I don’t think I will repeat it.
Author: Ulf Lundin
They are artifcial. Best Ulf