The Sunday supplement: #34

A round-up of artist workplaces, one of the more remarkable things I’ve seen on the web, and double ecstasy in Newport

“Fruit Bowl, Book and Newspaper” (1916), Juan Gris

Ecstasy and ecstasy at the Newport Jazz Festival

A pivotal artistic experience in my childhood, when I was eleven or twelve, was listening (over and over) to Ellington at Newport, a live album of Duke Ellington and his band playing the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956.

If you’ve never heard it, it’s wild. Specifically “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” when saxophonist Paul Gonsalves starts improvising a 27-chorus solo, Ellington yelling at him to keep going, and you begin to hear people freaking out.

From Wikipedia:

The normally sedate crowd was on their feet dancing in the aisles, reputedly provoked by a striking platinum blonde woman in a black evening dress, Elaine Anderson, getting up and dancing enthusiastically

Gonsalves eventually collapses, embouchure totally blown out, and Ellington solos, but then the band comes back in (I get chills) and the whole thing goes full Ferrari-locomotive – people shouting and whistling – into a high-note finale by Cat Anderson.

It still makes me jump out of my chair, like it did when I was a kid.

After that performance, pandemonium took over. Duke calmed the crowd by announcing: "If you've heard of the saxophone, then you've heard of Johnny Hodges." Duke's best known alto saxophonist then played two of his most famous numbers in "I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)" followed by "Jeep's Blues". Still the crowd refused to disperse so Duke called for Ray Nance to sing "Tulip or Turnip". The festival's organizers tried to cut off the show at this point but once again were met with angry refusals to end the evening.