Baltimore AfroAmerican, September 20, 1947
Milwaukee Sentinel, October 10, 1952
Here's how Ellington's specialist Eddie Lambert describes this session in his wonderful book Duke Ellington: A Listener's Guide (Scarecrow Press, 1999): "This session was the first of two for the Gennett label, each of which produced two titles. With Miley absent again, the band was that of the preceeding session, augmented by trombonist Jimmy Harrison, and by Prince Robinson and George Thomas, both doubling clarinet and tenor sax. Thus say the discographers, but aurally the band sounds smaller, and it seems probable that Harrison and Thomas were used solely as vocalists. "'Wanna Go Back Again' Blues" (with a vocal by Thomas) includes the first instance on record of imaginative scoring by Ellington, albeit briefly and in a novelty mold. After the band introduction, Hardwick's playing of the theme on baritone is skillfuly offset by two clarinets and the trumpets. This is a considerable contrast to the conventional saxes-against-brass scoring in the eight-bar verse and in the bridge of Irvis's chorus. "If You Can't Hold The Man You Love" (vocal by Jimmy Harrison) has a passage for plunger-muted trumpets which is a distant precursor of what Ellington called his "pep section" in later years. The style, however, looks back to the King Oliver manner and is reminiscent of Oliver's two-cornet breaks with Louis Armstrong on the Creole Jazz Band recordings of three years earlier. Irvis has a terse eight bars but otherwise the performance is dull, despite an attempt to ginger up the last chorus by having Robinson play a piping clarinet improvisation against a written ensemble. This foreshadows a device used regularly and successfully in later years, but in this instance it fails to counteract the prevailing medriocrity".
It should be noted that Lasker's recent statement agrees with Luciano Massagli's and Giovanni M. Volonté's The New Desor (Milano, 1999) (thanks to David Palmquist and Ken Steiner for pointing this out to me) and with the current on-line edition of Tom Lord's discography.
This book has 120 pages and includes extensive photographs from the Frank Driggs and Duncan Schiedt collections, Chicago Defender advert art and several historic Noone documents. A long overdue tribute!
Washington Afro-American (June 17, 1939)
From ebay, this is a program signed by Duke Ellington from an engagement at the "400" Restaurant (5th Avenue at 43rd Street, N.Y.). The auction states that it is from June, 1949 but, according to the current version of the Duke Ellington Itinerary, that month the orchestra was coming from a Canadian tour (starting on May 23 in Belleville and ending on June 4 in Peterborough), playing in cities such as Detroit, Wilberforce, Indianapolis, Toledo, Windsor, South Bend, Peoria and Madison, and ending with an engagement at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee (June 23-29).
So, despite the handwritten note at the bottom left of the second photograh, you can infer that the auction text is wrong, which is confirmed by the fact that, by 1949, Joya Sherrill and Rex Stewart had long left the band (1946 and 1945, respectively). This program must be from 1945, as the Duke Ellington orchestra had an engagement at the "400" Club/Restaurant from April 4 to April 30 and then a few concerts on May).
