Here’s a show from Montreal in 1964. One of the YouTube comments say that it is “a Radio-Canada video of the first night of Ellington’s appearance in the Le Hot Jazz room in Montreal’s Casa Loma, taped Apr. 20 1964.”
So this is what people were doing a few months before I was born.
Duke Ellington, a DC legend, is one of my favorite big band leaders. He took the idea of a big swing band to places few others ventured, and laid the groundwork for future groups like Sun Ra.
Sometime take a listen to his incredible version of the Nutcracker Suite, for example. The big band arrangement gives it an entirely different feel from a typical orchestra.
This show has older hits (A Train) thrown in, but the focus seems to be more on the present. Ellington was in a bit of a comeback phase in the 60’s after a stint at the Newport Jazz Fest in the 1950’s.
http://youtu.be/RTFK1M5hY0A
Groovy Show
In case you missed it, this is still a great show for jazz and bebop lovers. I just discovered that the outro for Steven Twiss’ Recycled Radio Show on WVEW is Things Ain’t What They Used To Be by Ellington which I never knew. Lots of Ellington classics done in new and different ways, by 1964 standards.