Most of the vast literature on Ellington invites us to see him as having been virtually introduced to jazz by his early sidemen, notably Bubber Miley and Joe Nanton. His first records, which he started to make in about 1924 and none of which is included here, suggest that initially he had little idea of what he wanted to do. Yet to compare those stumbling beginnings with what he was recording only three years later is to understand that his receptivity and powers of assimilation were major factors in his early career. The earliest recordings here, from 1927, show that Ellington demonstrably got many ideas from Miley and Nanton especially. In fact, with East St Louis Toodle-Oo, Black And Tan Fantasy and Creole Love Call, there is more of them than of him. Certainly one way of hearing most of the sequence of recordings presented here is as a study in Ellington’s gradually taking his band’s music over. Yet the atmosphere of the early pieces included is already most unusual for jazz in the late 1920s, and while they owe much to the various soloists, we also receive a first intimation of a remarkable mind in the background. Miley’s inspiration in his solos in the three pieces already named is indeed remarkable, especially in Creole Love Call, yet whereas many jazz bands, particularly during those years, more or less confined themselves to music that was either fast and happy or slow and sad, the group of players around Ellington became involved, by the time they were recording regularly, in more unusual climates of feeling. This is even clear in The Mooche, which is an uncommon variant of the pseudo-oriental vein that recurred in the jazz of that time and later. A title such as Echoes Of The Jungle may reflect the burlesque hocus-pocus of the Cotton Club revues’ no doubt wholly implausible portrayals of primitive life, yet by this stage, the powerfully haunted atmosphere projected by this piece was far beyond the reach of any other jazz musician and would remain so. Equally there would be no chance of duplicating elsewhere the elusive mood of The Mystery Song. Ellington’s series of miniature concertos for some of his most prominent sidemen might have seemed a more predictable development, but in Clarinet Lament there is a reconciliation between southern languor, symbolised by the piece’s reference to Basin Street Blues, and the alacrity of Barney Bigard’s playing that one could not find echoed anywhere else. In contrast with the absolute sureness of effect in Clarinet Lament, it may at first seem that The New East St Louis Toodle-Oo is needlessly complicated. Yet continued listening shows that the ultimate result is not a redecoration of the ten-year-old piece but a unification of it, weak themes and passages being replaced, the orchestration now being more inventive and the whole more positively shaped by the composer instead of being dominated, as in the beginning, by the sidemen. By the time of this renewal of East St Louis Toodle-Oo, despite brilliant playing from Cootie Williams and Barney Bigard, the impact is far more orchestral than soloistic, and this was also the case in pieces such as Battle Of Swing and Old King Dooji. Both of these latter works make particularly original use of the resources of the large jazz band and the former is an intelligent miniaturisation of the concerto grosso concept, with a concertino of Rex Stewart, Juan Tizol, Barney Bigard and Otto Hardwicke playing in harmony against the resonant octave unison of the rest of the ensemble’s ripieno. Old King Dooji is an unrecognised masterpiece with the continuous variation of the initial theme by the band having implications that were only taken up in later jazz. Yet although much is justifiably made of Ellington’s individuality, he dwelt in no ivory tower and was affected by swing, not least in the higher proportion of up-tempo items he recorded in the late 1930s. Given the slightly ambiguous grace of Portrait Of ‘The Lion’ and the dark power of Ko-Ko, it could be argued that he could improve on anything the swing bands might do. Portrait, with its elegant, buoyant ensembles and keyboard passages, tells us something about the New York ‘stride’ tradition that was the source of Ellington’s own pianistic inspiration, and by now it was clear that this organisation was building up to some sort of climax. It came when Ellington changed record companies in 1940, which was by no means the only thing that happened. Ben Webster was added on tenor saxophone, making the band strong in the one instrumental department where it had hitherto been weak, and Jimmy Blanton took over on the double bass. This latter, especially, changed the whole rhythmic disposition of the music, as is immediately apparent from Jack The Bear, the first piece from the band’s initial session for RCA Victor, which would be inconceivable without Blanton’s part in it. From this point on, the band’s output became, for a time, of extraordinarily high quality and one piece of indelible character after another was produced. Some of them, like Dusk or Blue Serge, are in effect tone poems for the band, while a piece such as Across The Track Blues sounds like the last word on the blues. The richness of some of this music almost defies description, and one can only point out that in, say, Harlem Airshaft, there are always two things happening at once. And sometimes the invention is prodigal, as in Sepia Panorama, which has no less than three excellent themes but leaves them undeveloped, offering only a duet between Ellington and Blanton and a solo by Webster, and then recapitulating the themes in reverse order. Chelsea Bridge is from Billy Strayhorn, who had joined the organisation in 1939 and soon became Ellington’s right-hand man. Perhaps Hiawatha and Minnehaha, The Beautiful Indians, are by him, too. One is a vehicle, more subtle in organisation than is at first apparent, for Al Sears’s tenor, and the other is for Kay Davis’s lovely, wordless soprano voice.