Ian Bradley

Thanks, Swinging Swede - and it's Flagler Drive incidentally on the Tommy Dorsey centennary box set, not Peace Pipe. Oh, well. I had no idea there was more material recorded at these sessions - that's one more LP to comb Ebay for! I love this band. I got an awesome set of LPs from there issued on the Top Rank label, live recordings from the Cafe Rouge, titled Last Moments of Greatness - and then there's that great double CD from the Holiday Ballroom. Any other recommendations of particularly good stuff to look out for?

This is absolutely my favourite big band collection of all time. Putting aside the supremacy and beyond category-ness of Duke Ellington (a given), Basie's various bands, Woody Herman's first and thundering herds - and purely in terms of nostalgia, I discovered these recordings myself when I was sixteen years old - so I suppose nostalgia has a great deal to do with them being my absolute favourites - and the very essence of all a dance band should be. But don't you think Jimmy Dorsey is an under-rated player? His lacy, obliggato solos on the ballads here especially - hard edged but with such a melancholy undertow, make these recordings for me. I, too, would love to have a discographical run down of the band. I do have recording details for Peace Pipe I think it is from the sentimental gentleman of swing box set - which I am happy to post unless someone - maybe with access to Lord? - can post all the session details. I would love to have these details, too.

Would that be Midnight in Paris? Not a particularly well regarded album but fine music, I think. The Columbia period is my absolute favourite. I like the earlier Masterpieces and Ellington Uptown, too. And not forgetting from the 1956-62 period my absolute favourite A Drum is a Woman. Columbia apparently had the tapes all ready to go to a double CD for the centennary in 99 and then the project was pulled for some reason. Will the CD ever see the light of day? I wish Sony BMG would do a proper re-issue of this material - the whole period - indeed all their Ellington holdings. In the digital download era has the possibility of this gone forever?