Hello all.I’ve just read Maurice Peress’ “Dvorak to Duke Ellington” in which he describes how he got to know Ellington and how he went about developing a reconstruction of the 1943 Carnegie Hall concert where “Black, Brown and Beige” was introduced.I have several questions I’d like to bounce off the collective wisdom here.
First, I’d like to learn more about the “recording studio” which was used in Carnegie Hall for the 1-23-1943 concert.Apparently from the surface noise it’s a 78rpm setup; would they have used some kind of instant recording discs?Peress (and Timner’s discography) indicates that some tracks were actually recorded a few days later on 1-28-1943 in Symphony Hall, Boston.What equipment would have been used for the Boston recordings?I’ve seen BSO historic recording notes that indicate recording engineer H. Vose Greenough was active there about this time; is there any chance he might have been involved in this recording?Are there photos in a book or online somewhere?Why is the sound quality so rough, and were all Carnegie or Boston recordings from this era this bad, or were the masters damaged by excessive playback or something?Where would those masters be today and who owns them – the Ellington estate?A record label?
Second, I’m curious about the actual program played in the concert, and why the CD jumbles the tunes as it does.Peress mentions that the concert didn’t follow the program exactly as printed.Some of Duke’s introductory remarks make more sense when looking at the tune order as printed in Peress.Timner’s “Ellingtonia” discography shows another variation, perhaps explaining why some of the tracks on the CD weren’t listed in the program.Has this been hashed out somewhere already, perhaps in a book or article?I looked through a few articles cited in Black Music Research Journal, but that didn’t resolve anything for me.What exactly WAS played on 1-23-1943 in Carnegie Hall?
Thanks and best wishes,
Rob DeLand
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