Duke Ellington - At Newport 1956 Complete (1999 Columbia Jazz Reissue) 2-CD Set

  One of the greatest live jazz festival recordings ever — and the best-selling jazz record of all time —  has gotten better, and more interesting as well, with this SONY/Columbia Jazz 1999 reissue to celebrate Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington's 100th birthday. A result of the kind of effort that most record companies normally won't even discuss. Ellington's original 1956 Newport album was his best-selling long-player ever, and re-established him, after a two-year drought in the wake of his unsuccessful stay at Capitol, as a vitally popular jazz artist, perceived as worth courting by the major labels. But that record was, in keeping with Columbia's standard operating procedure of the day, a cut-and-paste job made up of studio re-recordings of the festival's repertory. The producers of the 1999 double-CD reissue, containing 20 tracks, have assembled the complete live performance in true, real stereo as well as the studio-produced tracks. The result is the first complete consideration