Then, in 1892, Tchaikovsky's famous ballet, The Nutcracker, debuted. Because the ballet is set on Christmas Eve and the hero is a nutcracker come to life, the products quickly became associated with holiday decor.
The story of The Nutcracker is loosely based on the Ernest Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann fantasy story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King", about a girl who befriends a nutcracker that comes to life on Christmas Eve and wages a battle against the evil Mouse King.
The San Francisco ballet performed "The Nutcracker" on Christmas Eve of 1944. But it wasn't until the 1960s that performances of the complete "Nutcracker" ballet really took off as an annual Christmas tradition around the world.
Allow me to respect the tradition accompanied by the quintessential jazz orchestra.
May this entry also serve to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
Duke Ellington And His Orchestra
The Nutcracker Suite
By the time Duke Ellington recorded his holiday LP The Nutcracker Suite for the Columbia label in the summer of 1960, he had already led a four-decade career as a peerless innovator and leader of an orchestra of legendary virtuosity.
Though his fame had somewhat waned by the bebop era of the early 1950s, Ellington enjoyed a well-deserved career resurgence with the overwhelming reaction to his 1956 live date Ellington at Newport, and this renewed vitality seemed to expand his horizons still further to encompass ever more ambitious large-scale works, his concerts of sacred music, soundtrack composing, collaboration with John Coltrane and Charles Mingus, etc.
>The Nutcracker Suite< was Ellington’s first album-length project devoted to the work of another composer, but it’s not the only thing that makes this recording a standout in his discography. A cursory glance at the album cover immediately draws attention for its central image that features both Ellington and his longtime musical partner, composer, and arranger Billy Strayhorn — the first time Strayhorn’s image graced an Ellington cover — and for the listing of three surnames as the creators of the work: Ellington, Strayhorn, and Tchaikovsky. This equality of billing makes complete sense in retrospect — Strayhorn had the idea for the project in the first place and reimagined the suite to best suit the Ellington Orchestra — but to openly suggest that Duke Ellington was not the singular architect of his own work was an unprecedented (and overdue) acknowledgment of Strayhorn’s talent and his importance as a major figure in jazz in his own right.
Producer Irving Townsend contributed the liner notes to the original release, and in his opening relates a jaw-dropping, but completely apocryphal, anecdote about Tchaikovsky and Ellington meeting in Las Vegas — the Russian died six years before Duke was born and only traveled to the U.S. once in 1891 to conduct concerts on the East Coast — but Townsend most likely meant that it was during Duke’s Riviera Hotel residency that he made the decision to adapt Tchaikovsky’s work. Since Strayhorn masterminded the project, this is also not strictly accurate, but effectively gets us into the background of the album. *Rusty Aceves (sfjazz.org)*
Duke Ellington and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky met in Las Vegas while Duke's band was setting attendance records at the Riviera Hotel. For the first time in Ellington history, Duke had decided to devote an entire album to arrangements of another composer's works instead of his own, and Tchaikovsky was the natural choice.
Because the suite is a favorite form for Ellington composition, the Nutcracker was the obvious Tchaikovsky work to choose.
Duke and Billy Strayhorn needed some reassurance that nobody, including the famous Russian composer, would mind if the Suite was translated into the Ellington style, but once these fears were banished, they attacked the “Sugar-Plum Fairy” and the “Waltz of the Flowers” as if they were no more sacred than “Perdido.”
Duke's band had undergone some changes during his Las Vegas stand, and as he arrived in Los Angeles to begin the recording, the trombone section included two Ellington alumni, Lawrence Brown and Juan Tizol, back for postgraduate courses.
The rhythm section also included Sam Woodyard, back with the band after a year's absence, and Aaron Bell, one of the fine bass players in jazz. Eddie Mullins was new in the trumpet section, as was Meringuito, and Willie Cook had returned to the band. The sax section and, of course, the piano player, were unchanged.
Duke Ellington's first brush with the classics is successfully completed. It is a tribute, I think, to Duke and Billy and to Tchaikovsky. The Ellington forces have proved once again that in any setting, this great band and its strong personality pervade all the music it plays. But that Tchaikovsky has also triumphed is an indication of the perennial strength of his music. As Duke commented, "That cat was it". *Irving Townsend (liner notes)*
1- Overture
2 - Toot Toot Tootie Toot (Dance Of The Reed-Pipes)
3 - Peanut Brittle Brigade (March)
4 - Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance Of The Sugar-Plum Fairy)
5 - Entr'acte
6 - The Volga Vouty (Russian Dance)
7 - Chinoiserie (Chinese Dance)
8 - Dance Of The Floreadores (Waltz Of The Flowers)
9 - Arabesque Cookie (Arabian Dance)
(All compositins by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and adaptaed by Duke Ellington)
Willie Cook, Fats Ford, Ray Nance, Clark Terry (trumpets),
Lawrence Brown, Booty Wood, Britt Woodman (trombones),
Juan Tizol (valve trombone), Jimmy Hamilton (clarinet, tenor sax),
Johnny Hodges (alto sax), Russell Procope (alto sax, clarinet),
Paul Gonsalves (tenor sax), Harry Carney (baritone sax, clarinet, bass clarinet),
Duke Ellington (piano), Aaron Bell (bass), Sam Woodyard (drums):
Recorded at Radio Recorders, Los Angeles, California,
May 26 (#1, #5), May 31 (#2), June 3 (#4, #8), June 21 (#3, #7) and June 22 (#6, #9), 1960.
✤
And now, time for holidays.
To all blog readers, my best wishes for a great 2025.
Out Let will be back next year... exactly on January 20th.
