100 Meter Freestyle: Don Ellis 90

Don Ellis Orchestra - Let's Do It This Way for a While (aka Eros)

Sorry I've been away but I'm kind of a mess, with otitis externa messing with my ears and anxiety filling my being on multiple fronts. I got drops for the swimmer's ear but the anxiety and sleepless nights (I've only slept every other night for a while) are ravaging.

I guess that look on Don Ellis' face stems from the thought crossing his mind that this odd-time-signature shit -- and having to have to pay a 600 gazillion-piece band to play it -- isn't exactly gonna provide much sense of financial security or a long, conventionally prosperous life.

What's funny is, the next picture, he's actually ten years younger than the previous one! What's not so funny is that he was dead soon after it was taken.

Music and art -- they're just about the only things humans do that makes us extraordinary and potentially transcendent of our darker, more primal impulses -- are some hard ass going, aren't they?

This world isn't exactly set up for much more than exploitation and needless, monetized suffering, so when it encounters real beauty or is asked to find the worth in something not named Godpaper, it tends to react with exponential hostility and destructive capacity, often at the expense of the creative people moving the mountains.

It's kind of sad that the experimental types and the fringe figures are often so little remembered, and I struggle on this page to not just make it about whatever cokebloated, Anglo-Saxon heterosexual Rock Star got spangled enough by the machine to be put on the King Biscuit Flower Hour.

Don Ellis -- born this day in 1934 -- is one of those cats.

Someone who strived so much to get beyond stagnant, rote forms, and who gave work to many struggling musicians when they'd nowhere else to pay the bills... it's not that it killed him, but his damaged heart was not helped by it all, I'm sure.

He passed at just 44 of cardiac arrhythmia, but the Real Ones can never die and as long as I'm here and not completely deaf, I don't think they should be forgotten and I'm gonna do what I do.

One of the things I seem to be in a phase of doing is going through these concerts on the Site That Had To Be Legally Stopped From Selling Them, and determining which ones can conscionably circulate.

Remember, these are technically lossy-sourced, although they often go lossless way higher in the spectral analysis than some Art Pepper show from 1981 that France Musique rebroadcasts, and then immediately hits the trading trackers.

Speaking of Art Pepper, he's in this band! In this wild two hours of metrical mayhem I snozzed off you-know-where that went lossless to 20 kHZ, even though the music only went to 18.

Don Ellis Orchestra

Great American Music Hall

San Francisco, California USA

4.23+24.1976

01 "French Connection" Suite

02 Slow Head

03 Palomar

04 Final Analysis

05 Do It Easy

06 Let's Do It This Way for a While (aka Eros)

07 Pussy Wiggle Stomp

Total time: 1:59:15

disc break goes after Track 03

Don Ellis - trumpet 

Jack Coan - trumpet

John Gross - reeds and woodwinds

Alan Kaplan - trombone

Ernie Carlson - bass trombone 

Sam Falzone - woodwinds

Ann Patterson - woodwinds

Art Pepper - alto saxophone & clarinet

Charles Black - baritone saxophone

Milcho Leviev - piano

Paul Keane - tuba 

Sidney Muldrow - French horn 

Darrell Clayborn - bass 

Dave Crigger - drums 

Chino Valdes - congas & percussion

Don Palmer - violin 

Pam Tompkins - violin 

Jimbo Ross - viola 

Karen Henderson - cello

plus intermittent vocals by the band

Tracks 01 & 07 are from 6.24.1976

Tracks 02-06 are from 6.23.1976

320/48k webstream from Wolfgang's Vault 

spectral was lossless to 20 kHz but only has music to about 18 kHz, so this is equivalent to somewhere between an FM and a preFM source

converted to 16/44 CD audio, edited, repaired, tracked and slightly remastered by EN, July 2024
645 MB FLAC/direct link

If you're totally unfamiliar with Don Ellis and what he was doing, this show would be a real good place to start, featuring all the broad dynamics and counting -- for a drummer such as I,  he can be like going on a game show called Time Signature Jeopardy and being afraid to get the buzzer for saying 21/4 when it was 14/8 -- for which this Maestro of Meter was legendary.

That will likely do it from me for July; I apologize for the short month but I'm not feeling all that awesome and I think I need to chill. I will try to return on August 10th and resume things. But don't worry about me, just enjoy this blast of a performance of a cracking 20-piece orchestra under the direction of today's 90th birthday guy!--J.

7.25.1934 - 12.17.1978