Backstory
in Blue
Price: $34.95
Subtitle:
Ellington at Newport
'56
Author:
John Fass Morton,
Foreword by Jonathan Yardley
Subject: Theater
and Performing Arts
Cloth ISBN 978-0-8135-4282-9
Pages:
336 pages, 107
illustrations
Publication Date: June 2008
Description:
It may be that
the song most baby boomers identify from July 1956 is a simple
twelve-bar blues, hyped on national television by a twenty-one-year-old
Elvis Presley and his handlers. But it is a very different song, with
its elongated fourteen-bar choruses of rhythm and dissonance, played on
the night of July 7, 1956, by a fifty-seven-year-old Duke Ellington and
his big band that got everybody on their feet and moving as one. More
than fifty years later, "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue," recorded at
the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, still makes a profound statement about
postwar America-how we got there and where it all went.
Backstory in Blue is a behind-the-scenes look at this epic moment
in American cultural history. It is the story of who and what made
Ellington's performance so compelling and how one piece of music
reflected the feelings and shaped the sensibilities of the postwar
generation. As John Fass Morton explains, it was music expressed as
much by those who performed offstage as by those who performed on.
Written from the
point of view of the audience, this unique account draws on interviews
with fans and music professionals of all kinds who were there and whose
lives were touched, and in some cases changed, by the experience.
Included are profiles of George Avakian, who recorded and produced
Ellington at Newport 1956; Paul Gonsalves, the tenor sax player
responsible for the legendary twenty-seven choruses that enabled the
rebirth of Ellington's career; and the "Bedford Blonde," Elaine
Anderson, whose dance ignited both the band and the crowd.
Duke Ellington once remarked, "I was born at Newport." Here we learn
that Newport was much more than the turning point for Ellington's
career. It was the tipping point for a generation and a musical genre.
About the Author:
John Fass Morton began a career in theater, film,
and writing in London in 1974 where much of his work involved music.
Following a starring role in a West End musical, he appeared in major
films, including The Empire Strikes Back.
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Price: $34.95
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