What if the first music you heard was Duke Ellington?

[Chuck Nessa]

I said it was very near that for me.

I now have hundreds of cds, lps and tapes.

Around the same time I connected (in that way) to Elvis and Little Richard. I have collected all, but the Ellington connection sent me on my life path.

My ipod only has Ellington, for my trips from home.

Any other recollections/connections?

[paul secor]

I thought that Ellington was just another big band leader when I was in my mid teen age years. Then, in 1964, iirc, I bought the first volume of The Ellington Era on Columbia and learned that I was wrong. A life changing discovery.

[Larry Kart]

Something like that happened to me and the friend who introduced me to jazz toward the tail end of seventh grade. We glommed onto a few random things that were around at the time (1955) -- Columbia's "I Like Jazz," a similar but more off-the-wall EmArcy sampler, a Jazztone sampler that had some great Pee Wee Russell and Bird-Dizzy-Red Norvo in "Congo Blues," a Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band EP (I liked it mostly because the liner notes said something like "This is the only real jazz band in America," so I thought I had that covered), a Benny Goodman fundraiser concert for Fletcher Henderson, under the aegis of DJ Martin Block, one or two of Norman Granz's Jam Session dates, a Capitol Woody Herman album, some contemporary Basie band 45s, and then one of us picked up the recent 10-inch reissue of Ellington'40-'42 band material: "Concerto for Cootie," "Ko-Ko," "Jack the Bear," etc. Probably credit should go almost entirely to the music, which in effect taught us how to listen, but right away it was obvious to both of us that this was the most thrilling, absorbing music we'd heard. Never changed my mind about that.

[JSngry]

What if the first music you heard was Duke Ellington?

What if it wasn't?

I really don't understand the question.

[Guest Bill Barton]

The Duke Ellington Orchestra was the first "major" concert I attended, circa 1971 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. I'd heard other live music before that by local artists - mostly bluegrass - but this was a life-changing experience for me. I'd started listening to jazz on recordings but was definitely a neophyte. I knew enough about Ellington and his band to request a front-row seat directly in front of Harry Carney when I purchased my ticket. Oh, my...

[thedwork]

What if the first music you heard was Duke Ellington?

What if it wasn't?

I really don't understand the question.

it's simple really - if the 1st music you heard had been ellington, then the 1st music you'd have heard would've been ellington. and clearly everything proceeding from that moment would've been very different. or pretty similar. or about half similar but half different. or maybe 65% different. but whatever the case may be, ellington would've been the 1st thing that you'd heard. so there's that. simple really.

let us now devolve into an inane pseudo-psychological wankfest about the mind and how early exposure to blah blah blah effects the cognitive blah blah of the true artist's/music appreciator's perception of the blah blah blah....

what i really mean is ellington is 2nd to none in pretty much every single way and everyone knows it.

[Larry Kart]

What if the first music you heard was Duke Ellington?

What if it wasn't?

I really don't understand the question.

Because, in my experience at least (and I would guess in Chuck's as well), music as rich as Ellington's can teach you something right quick about the richnesses of music in general. For instance, thinking of those '40-'42 Ellington pieces I heard early on, the possible unity of fascinating "music" music detail and sweeping drama, as in the plunging, wailing dissonances of "Ko-Ko" or the "overheard" muted trumpet figures and the rest of the dancing panorama of "Harlem Airshaft."

Of course, there are countless other routes, but Duke's way, if that's the way you happened to travel early on, was quite something.

[Teasing the Korean]

I grew up with my Dad's record collection.

Duke was near the top.

Because, in my experience at least (and I would guess in Chuck's as well), music as rich as Ellington's can teach you something right quick about the richnesses of music in general.

Agree 100%, and I my early experience with Ellington opened doors to lots of music on the cusp of jazz.

[papsrus]

I think, actually, Ellington was the first jazz I listened to with any attention. I was about 18 or 19. A friend of mine was getting pretty heavily into jazz and he had "The Greatest Jazz Concert in the World" LP set. This was probably around 1977 - 78. We'd sit up late at night in his dingy little downtown apartment listening to that and some Basie, Tom Waits, that kind of stuff.

That set's not great Ellington by any means, but we (or, I) didn't know any better. It was a treasure at the time, and I ended up getting the LP set myself (sold it years later, but I have the CD set today).

I hadn't really realized that until now. Ellington was the first jazz I really "listened to."

How 'bout that?

Edited August 16, 2010 by papsrus

[Christiern]

Being a European, I was not at all impressed by titles....but then I heard his music!

[ghost of miles]

He was one of the first jazz artists I heard--a fellow indie-rock fan and good friend of mine mentioned that he'd been listening to some Ellington, and about a week later I picked up a DKE cassette on a whim at a local bookstore. Not long after that I went out to D.C. to visit an ex-girlfriend, and the whole week I was there we listened to the cassette quite a lot in the car (along with Nirvana's NEVERMIND, which had just come out...quite an audio pairing!). I figured out later on that the music was drawn from Ellington's 1946-47 transcriptions, and ended up asking for (and receiving) the whole box-set as a birthday present:

The music on the cassette is replicated on this single CD:

Something in the music that hit me hard as profound and beautiful--19 years later I've got a lot more of it, and a strong sentimental attachment to the 1946-47 transcriptions, since that's where I first encountered him.

[JSngry]

What if the first music you heard was Duke Ellington?

What if it wasn't?

I really don't understand the question.

Because, in my experience at least (and I would guess in Chuck's as well), music as rich as Ellington's can teach you something right quick about the richnesses of music in general. For instance, thinking of those '40-'42 Ellington pieces I heard early on, the possible unity of fascinating "music" music detail and sweeping drama, as in the plunging, wailing dissonances of "Ko-Ko" or the "overheard" muted trumpet figures and the rest of the dancing panorama of "Harlem Airshaft."

Of course, there are countless other routes, but Duke's way, if that's the way you happened to travel early on, was quite something.

Well sure, but it wasn't the first music you ever herd, nor was it for Chuck.

So just what is the question really asking? Is it taking a poll or is it asking us all to speculate?

Franky, I don't think that the question - as -asked - knows what it means anymore than I do.

[RDK]

I'm not sure I really understand the question either, but otherwise I'm with Paul in that, when I first began listening to jazz (and even before), Duke was just another big band leader of the sort that my grandparents might have listened to. I quickly learned that wasn't the case, of course, and from that point on Ellington's music had a profound affect on me. My Holy Jazz Triumvirate is Duke, Monk, and Mingus, but more to the point is that once I discovered Ellington's music - even of the big band variety - it always struck me in ways that most big band music doesn't. Basie, Goodman, even Woody Herman (whom I've since grown to love) can barely touch Duke imo. Discovering Duke was almost like discovering jazz itself; it opened not just one but a whole series of musical doors.

[Alexander Hawkins]

I was born in 1981...I can be very specific with my first musical memory - again, from my dad's record collection: hearing Duke's 'Saturday Night Function'. It's still a totem for me!

I don't know what has been as a result, or what would have been otherwise...but I'm hugely grateful, just in case it was that which sent me down my path.

Edited August 16, 2010 by Alexander Hawkins

[Larry Kart]

What if the first music you heard was Duke Ellington?

What if it wasn't?

I really don't understand the question.

Because, in my experience at least (and I would guess in Chuck's as well), music as rich as Ellington's can teach you something right quick about the richnesses of music in general. For instance, thinking of those '40-'42 Ellington pieces I heard early on, the possible unity of fascinating "music" music detail and sweeping drama, as in the plunging, wailing dissonances of "Ko-Ko" or the "overheard" muted trumpet figures and the rest of the dancing panorama of "Harlem Airshaft."

Of course, there are countless other routes, but Duke's way, if that's the way you happened to travel early on, was quite something.

Well sure, but it wasn't the first music you ever herd, nor was it for Chuck.

So just what is the question really asking? Is it taking a poll or is it asking us all to speculate?

Franky, I don't think that the question - as -asked - knows what it means anymore than I do.

I wasn't taking it absolutely literally -- heck, the first music I remember hearing was "Funiculi, Funicula" (the nagging theme song of the radio soap opera "Lorenzo Jones") and "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Sante Fe" back in 1945 or '46. But I did hear a swatch of great Ellington very early on in my jazz experience (within a month or two) and it had the effect on me that I said it did -- not only thrilled and moved me but also taught me a whole lot of things (I mentioned a few) that I might not have learned so swiftly.

Again, I think it was the unity of "music" music power and dramatic depth/breadth in Ellington that did that. I had at least two previous encounters with jazz greatness -- Bird and Diz on "Congo Blues" and a superb Pee Wee Russell slow-blues solo, but IIRC they struck me (perhaps because I as yet had so little context for any of this) as lightning bolts from who knows where. Ellington seemed to give me an entire living-teeming world -- Shakespearean that way, if you will.

[AllenLowe]

I was VERY slow to get to Duke - I started listening to jazz in 1968 at age 14, but did not become a Duke fanatic until about 1973 - at first I was all Bird and Sonny Rollins, Ornette and Dolphy - pre bop just did not get to me. Didn't like swing saxophone, etc. Too languid and vibrato-y for me.

And THEN - and then I saw Lester Young play his solo on The Sound of Jazz and I got it, the most beautiful solo I ever heard, which opened up that whole era of music for me.

One listen to Koko (Duke's) and Blue Serge and I was hooked.

Edited August 16, 2010 by AllenLowe

[Don Brown]

The first Ellington I heard was in 1948 (I was 16). It was the 1940 recording of Cotton Tail which Dick MacDougall used as his theme on the CBC's Jazz Unlimited program. Shortly after I bought my first 78 by Duke. It was a British pressing on the His Master's Voice label and had Harlem Airshaft on Side 1 and Sepia Panorama on Side 2. I was hooked for life.

[kh1958]

The first Ellingtons that I really got (around 1978 or 1979) were The Afro Eurasian Eclipse, especially La Chinoiserie, and the 1943 Carnegie Hall Concert, both purchased at around the same time. The series of Portraits and the Strayhorn sequence are what really captured my attention, and of course Ko Ko.

[John Tapscott]

Well, Ellington wasn't the first jazz I heard, but I do remember the first Ellington I heard. It was on the late Phil MacKellar's "All That Jazz" Toronto radio program which aired on Sunday nights (10 PM - 6AM). One night Phil played the opening track from the Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (Chinoiserie) and I thought it sounded great. This would have been around 1975. Shortly afterward I bought "The Great Paris Concert" 2 LP set on Atlantic. To this day, it remains my favorite Ellington record.

[Hot Ptah]

In my first collegiate burst of jazz exploration, I sold a lot of rock LPs at a used music store in Madison, Wisconsin and took the cash to Discount Records on State Street (which had been managed by Chuck Nessa a few years earlier). I asked the staff to take the money and pick out a jazz collection for me. One of the albums which a young man selected was a two LP set, "This Is Duke Ellington", which had some of Duke's biggest songs from the late 1920s through the mid 1940s. I remember that this Discount Records staffer said, "the best jazz is often the oldest jazz. Keep your mind open to listening to the older stuff."

I was immediately hooked by the Ellington set, just loved the music. With my apartment mates, who loved jazz too, we just about wore the grooves out on that 2 LPs set. I remember that we played "Concerto for Cootie" repeatedly, marvelling at Cootie Williams' effects in his solo.

I tried to buy more Duke and was surprised at how little had been reissued (this was in the mid-1970s). I read Stanley Dance's book, and started making lists of what I wanted to hear. I wrote a letter to a local public radio disc jockey who played swing era selections on his show, and he wrote back about two weeks later with a list of Ellington LPs which he thought were essential. (In those pre-internet days, a two week hiatus between mailing a letter and receiving a reply would have been not unusual).

By the end of the 1970s, I had more than 50 Duke albums, and I have bought many more since then. So Ellington was among the first jazz I heard. I had heard a lot of other music before then, to answer the question in the title of the thread.

[AllenLowe]

"The Great Paris Concert"

great record, great Ray Nance - and if you know anyone who (still) thinks that Duke doesn't swing, play him this concert version of Rockin in Rhythm/Kinda Dukish.

[Quincy]

I dunno, it's not like I sought out or play the lullabies my mom sang to me. Probably best I took the path I did, even if it meant doing without the Duke for a few decades.

[Head Man]

What if the first music you heard was Duke Ellington?

What if it wasn't?

I really don't understand the question.

it's simple really - if the 1st music you heard had been ellington, then the 1st music you'd have heard would've been ellington. and clearly everything proceeding from that moment would've been very different. or pretty similar. or about half similar but half different. or maybe 65% different. but whatever the case may be, ellington would've been the 1st thing that you'd heard. so there's that. simple really.

let us now devolve into an inane pseudo-psychological wankfest about the mind and how early exposure to blah blah blah effects the cognitive blah blah of the true artist's/music appreciator's perception of the blah blah blah....

what i really mean is ellington is 2nd to none in pretty much every single way and everyone knows it.

So there....everything explained

[medjuck]

I probably saw the Ellington band on tv in the '50s but my first real awareness was when the Columbia Record Club sent me The Nutcracker Suite. After that I bought Ellington Indigoes. Loved them both so I began collecting older releases. An RCA Lp called (IIRC) "In a Mellowtone" contained 12 cuts from the Blanton-Webster years and that blew me away. So I started collecting as much earlier material as I could. I love playing old broadcasts when I'm on long trips both in the car and on airplanes.

I actually got to see the band twice in 1964. A great experience.

[jazztrain]

One of my earliest jazz experiences involved seeing the film "On the Road with Duke Ellington" at a local library in the summer after finishing high school. Most of my prior musical experience had involved classical music and pop music of the day. That film and discovering WRVR-FM in New York (with Ed Beach and others) around the same time were two early factors that started me down a slippery slope of ongoing jazz discovery and acquisition.

I saw Ellington once in New Haven in the early fall of 1972. The concert was filmed at least in part (I remember, much to my dismay, a TV camera being set up almost directly in front of my seat), and I often had wished that I could go back and recapture that experience. Earlier this year I received the audio portion of an Ellington concert in New York City from within a few months of the New Haven concert. The sense of deja vu was striking. It's funny how music can stick in ones head. A somewhat similar experience involved a concert in New Haven involving Willie Ruff and Dizzy Gillespie. Years later I remember hearing a record of a live performance and thinking not just that I had heard it before but that I had been at the performance. Sure enough, I had been.

I said it was very near that for me.

I now have hundreds of cds, lps and tapes.

Around the same time I connected (in that way) to Elvis and Little Richard. I have collected all, but the Ellington connection sent me on my life path.

My ipod only has Ellington, for my trips from home.

Any other recollections/connections?