Trip Tease

This CD was the first of the "Trip Tease" collections, of which there are three volumes. This is not to be confused with the "Blue Note Trip" series which does include remixes of songs. So, these are the originals, not remixes. The earliest track on here is "I'll Remember April," a 1953 piece by Lee Konitz & Gerry Mulligan. There are a handful of other tracks from the mid to late 1950s, including Kenny Dorham's fabulous "Afrodesia" from 1955 or Chet Baker's & Bud Shank's "Jimmy's Theme" from 1956, but most of the material on these discs comes from the fertile 1960s and 1970s era, when many Blue Note artists fused elements of soul and funk along with traditional jazz.

Ella Fitzgerald & Duke Ellington - Ella & Duke at The Cote D'Azur (1966) {2CD Set Verve 314-539-030-2 rel 1997}
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© 1966, 1997 Verve / PolyGram | 314-539-030-2
Jazz / Classical Jazz / Vocal Jazz / Standards / Swing / Big Band

Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington did not team up in concert until relatively late in their careers (although she did record her Ellington Songbook with him in the '50s). This live double-LP actually finds Fitzgerald singing six numbers with the Jimmy Jones Trio and only "Mack the Knife" and a scat-filled "It Don't Mean a Thing" with the orchestra. Ellington has eight numbers for his band, mostly remakes of older tunes (including a guest appearance by former associate Ben Webster on "All Too Soon," a remarkable Buster Cooper trombone feature, and a rowdy version of "The Old Circus Train Turn-Around Blues"). This is a spirited set of music that with better planning could have been great.

Heaven knows, the Scotsman born Donovan Leitch was ripe for ridicule, even when he was hitting the charts with regularity. He was the ultimate flower child, and his airier pronouncements made cynics want to tighten up those love beads around his neck. Listening to Troubadour, however, it's striking how versatile, melodic, and agreeable most of his material sounds decades after "Mellow Yellow" has faded into a jaundiced yellow. Clearly under the sway of Bob Dylan early on in his career, Donovan nevertheless was capable of directing his reverence into something as enchanting as "Catch the Wind." Amping up as the '60s progressed, he assembled a series of psychedelic-pop classics, including "Season of the Witch," the "Hey Jude"-like sing-along "Atlantis," and the uncharacteristically driving "Hurdy Gurdy Man" (the latter features three-quarters of what was to become Led Zeppelin providing stellar support). This two-disc anthology may be more Donovan than some desire, but the booklet, seven previously unreleased tracks, and expansive perspective it provides makes it a more-than-worthy overview for those who take their paisley folk-rock with a beatific smile.

This is an eight-CD set more for Duke Ellington fanatics than for general listeners. Originally, some of the music came out as a two-LP set (Ella and Duke at the Cote D'Azur) and a single album (Ellington's Soul Call), but the great majority of the material was previously unreleased when this box came out in 1998.