| I'm a big Don Ellis fan and have never seen any of his recordings on
CD. I'll put a marker to this note in my notebook, and if I ever see
anything I'll post it here. If we're lucky Columbia or Atlantic may
some day get around to reissuing the albums from those labels, or
perhaps an enterprising company like Ryko will pick those up, along
with some of his small label records.
His Columbia recordings include:
Electric Bath
Shock Treatment
Autumn
The New Don Ellis Band Goes Underground
At Fillmore (2-LP)
Tears of Joy (2-LP)
Connection
His BASF recordings are:
Haiku
Soaring
And on Atlantic:
"Star Wars" (Music from Other Galaxies and Planets?)
Live at Montreux
There are also some small group and live big-band albums that came out
before Electric Bath, but I don't remember the details about album
names and labels.
These are innovative big-band recordings in a variety of styles, all of
which include heavy use of non-standard time signatures. "At Fillmore"
marked the climax of a heavy rock phase, and includes a unique version
of Hey Jude. With "Tears of Joy" he added an amplified string quartet
to the band. My favorite albums include Montreux, Fillmore, Tears of
Joy, Soaring, and Autumn. Connection and Star Wars are much more
commercial albums than the others and less successful to my ears.
All of these albums are out of print, and fairly hard to find at
used record stores (though I found Haiku within the past year at Cheapo
records in Central Square, Cambridge).
Don Ellis died when he was about 40 years old, shortly after the
Montreux album came out in 1978. It was a great loss. I do hope his
music gets reissued on CD eventually, so it doesn't get "lost."
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| Well, we have some progress here! We have Don Ellis, though not his
orchestra, available on CD. The album is "... How Time Passes ... ",
one of his small-group albums. This one dates from 1960 and is on the
Candid label. It's the one small-group album that I have in LP format.
I didn't pick up the CD since it wasn't on sale, but it was available
at Tower Records in Boston. I haven't listened to this in a while, but
I remember it having some good music on it.
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