Duke Ellington: Money Jungle (Tone Poet Series) [BLUE NOTE]

Why you'll love it

This Tone Poet reissue was supervised by Joe Harley, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog tapes and pressed at RTI on 180g vinyl. It puts three giants of three generations in one room, and hundreds of musicians have since named it an influence.

This edition

• Blue Note Tone Poet Series
• 180g vinyl
• Mastered by Kevin Gray from the original analog tapes
• Tip-on gatefold jacket
• Pressed at Record Technology Inc.
• Stereo mix

About the album

Duke Ellington was known for leading a big band, so when he turned up at producer Alan Douglas's office suggesting a piano trio album, Douglas jumped at it. He proposed Charles Mingus on bass, and Mingus insisted on Max Roach. Ellington was 63, Mingus 40 and Roach 38, and both younger men had grown up with Ellington as a guiding light.

They met the day before and declined to rehearse, so what you hear at Sound Makers Studios on September 17, 1962, is the three of them playing together for the first time. Ellington brought every tune, handing out simple lead sheets and vivid images to play from. The title track is a fierce blues with Mingus bending his strings until the bass sounds half berimbau, half Delta guitar; "African Flower" is a hushed, floating ballad; "Caravan" rumbles in low octaves; and "Solitude" begins as solo piano before the others slip in. Ellington later called it one of those mystic moments when their three muses were one and the same.

Ellington told the other two to think of him as the poor man's Bud Powell, which is roughly like Shakespeare introducing himself as a promising letter writer.

Also at Kops: more Duke Ellington on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Blue Note / United Artists Jazz (cat# B0031461-01), a reissue of the 1963 album.