0764. Duke Ellington
Ellington At Newport

Playing the Newport Jazz Festival seems to have been the revitalizating moment for a lot of people. This is the second album on the list with a live uptake from that specific venue (the last one was Muddy Waters from a couple of years later).

For Duke Ellington it was perhaps the make or brake point as big band jazz was way out of style and he was actually financing his orchestra not out of payments for gigs, but out of his royalty money from earlier hits.

It's a pleasant show, with (as far as I can say) a talented bunch of musicians, and even though it's not really the actual show but a studio recording superimposed over the (flawed) live recording it still conveys a live feeling.
And stirring the fifties jazz crowd into actually standing up and dancing instead of digging it from their chairs with an extended solo by tenor sax-man Gonsalves is a feat indeed.