New Orleans Suite

I love the music on this - then again, I love all the "suite" recordings. This later album on Atlantic doesn't sound nearly as good as his Columbia and RCA and even Reprise recordings - those are some of the best-sounding mono and stereo albums ever made. This one's okay, sound-wise, but the music is much more than okay and for Ellington fans a must-have.

This is not your usual Ellington LP. It is more like a concerto with 9 movements, from 3 to near 8 minutes each. Ellington attempts to give a musical potrait of New Orleans , the atmosphere, the traditons, and the music.... especially the music. Starting with "Blues for New Orleans"he goes to "Bourbon Street" and from there to "Portrait of Louis Armstrong", and then on to "Thanks for the Beautiful Land on the Delta"gives a "Tribute to the Second Line", "Portrait of Sidney Bechet"and others for a total of nine.It is very listenable music, but is diffent from what people expect from Ellington, and so has never been given the popularity it deserves. Music like this is not going to be played on disk jockey radio shows with their three minute tunes between commercials.If you like Jazz in general and have a reverence for the history of Jazz you will likely enjoy this LP.

It was a good price and it was in good shape. Almost everything Duke did was good, most were great.!

I listened to this CD years ago when I was still in high school and remembered it years later. This was Johnny Hodges last recording. You can hear the impact of the loss of such a valued member of the band as well as Ellington's friend in the recording. Ellington at his best.

It the Duke how can you go wrong. the music is magic, the playing is sublime and it takes you to Naw Olins' so enjoy.

Excellent service and quality

The music is 5 stars. The record, unfortunately, is scratched all the way through the first side. Very disappointing.

It was there from the very beginning--the Cotton Club orchestra with Miley and Nanton through the 40's orchestra with Blanton and Webster through the 50's aggregation with Hodges and Gonsalves to the final days with Carney and Procope still with him. Many younger musicians (and some educators) who "got" Basie, Maynard, Rich, Kenton and Woody during the "school days" revival of the big bands in the '70s dismissed Duke's band as being insufficiently disciplined and tight. But those who mattered--Mingus and Coltrane, for example--understood that Ellington's bands had a direct connection to the source, to Congo Square and the spirit of collective creativity celebrating the birth of a glorious new thing at the turn of the century.After hearing the music of New Orleans, especially before the noise generated by the dispiriting monster, the Super Dome, muted much of it, I understood the significance of Duke Ellington. The pulse of the music was human and shared, not a well-oiled mechanism; the spirit was celebratory, speaking to the strengths of a democratic community but also of each individual's contributions to its life; the personality of the band emanated equally from the leader, each soloist, each section, and of course the band as a whole. The band was at once a human organism and a flowing stream--you could drink from its mouth if you chose or follow it all the way back to the vital source.The music of New Orleans and the music of Duke Ellington. Less a complementary pairing than synonymous, interchangeable parts. At least before the Super Dome.