Ellington at Newport

So I was going to post this in the comments section of Seger's post on Mingus but as I started to write it became a blog post of it's on...

My first jazz record, Ellington at Newport. A fantastic record on it's own right, but the majority of the magic rests in the final song, "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue". The version Duke and his band did of "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" that night literally damn near set the crowd into a riot. Ellington told Paul Gonsalves (tenor sax) to blow as long as he wanted during the interlude, which Ellington later called "The Wailing Interval" or "Blow By Blow." In what has since become jazz folklore, Gonsalves almost created a riot as he played a tenor sax solo for 27 choruses that stirred up the normally staid crowd into a frenzy. Legend has it that the solo made a striking platinum blonde woman in a black evening dress jump from her box seat and start dancing. This helped serve as a catalyst for the crowd frenzy that grew as Gonsalves continued his solo. The crowd was racially segregated and as the black half started going wild so did the white half. The cops on guard yelled at Duke to stop fearing a riot but he yelled back basically saying that it was too late to stop now.

Unfortunately there's no video of the performance, but here's a video clip I found of Duke and his band (Gonsalves included) performing "Crescendo in Blue" just a few short weeks after the Newport performance. Before this record came out Ellington's career was on the downturn, but after this his music was suddenly reintroduced to a new generation of fans