Ellington Uptown

Independent shop in BallardDirections

Available from Light in the Attic Records when we last checked, in the last two days. Sold from the shop’s own store; the price there is the one that counts.

Even back in the early ’50s, Columbia Records took Duke Ellington seriously enough to place this album on its prestigious Masterworks label, heretofore reserved mostly for highbrow classical music and Broadway shows. Also, this LP explodes the critical line that the early ’50s was a relatively fallow period for the Duke; any of these smoking, concert-length tracks will torpedo that notion. The young Louis Bellson was powering the Ellington band at that time, and his revolutionary double-bass dru