This two-LP set lives up to its title. First Duke Ellington and his orchestra are heard in 1952 during a period when they were being overlooked by the jazz media but still producing a great deal of worthy music. The second half of this release is taken from a European tour in 1965 and features some prime late-period playing from trumpeter Cootie Williams.

Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn combined old and new compositions to create the album Afro-Bossa, a suite consisting of a dozen pieces that was never performed in its entirety in concert, though several of the works remained in the band's repertoire. The title cut is a new work, though the "Bossa" does not refer to Brazilian music; instead, it is a mix of African and Latin influences that slowly builds with insistent percussion to a blazing finale of brass and reeds. "Purple Gazelle" (which was also recorded as "Angelica" in Ellington's small group session with John Coltrane, was described by the pianist as a "ragtime cha-cha." Cootie Williams (on muted trumpet), Ray Nance, Paul Gonsalves, and the composer are all featured soloists…

One of the great entries in Duke Ellington's "exotic" albums of the 60s - records that aren't exactly exotica by any stretch of the imagination, but which have musical themes that were inspired by the international travels of the Ellington band at the time! In this case, the locale is the Virgin Islands - where Ellington performed in 1965, and returned home to record this set as a memory of tunes played by the band in St Croix and St Thomas. The core of the set is the initial Virgin Islands suite - made up of four new tunes that include "Island Virgin", "Virgin Jungle", "Fiddler On The Diddle", and "Jungle Kitty" - all nicely rhythmic numbers that explore some fresh themes with especially nice horn solos from the members of the group. Other tracks are older numbers performed on the tour, given a bit of a new twist here.

Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were (and are) two of the main stems of jazz. Any way you look at it, just about everything that's ever happened in this music leads directly – or indirectly – back to them. Both men were born on the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries, and each became established as a leader during the middle '20s. Although their paths had crossed from time to time over the years, nobody in the entertainment industry had ever managed to get Armstrong and Ellington into a recording studio to make an album together. On April 3, 1961, producer Bob Thiele achieved what should be regarded as one of his greatest accomplishments; he organized and supervised a seven-and-a-half-hour session at RCA Victor's Studio One on East 24th Street in Manhattan, using a sextet combining Duke Ellington with Louis Armstrong & His All-Stars. This group included ex-Ellington clarinetist Barney Bigard, ex-Jimmie Lunceford swing-to-bop trombonist Trummy Young, bassist Mort Herbert, and drummer Danny Barcelona. A second session took place during the afternoon of the following day.

A piece of music history comes alive on Friday, May 10, as Storyville Records releases a new recording capturing the legendary Duke Ellingon, live in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1958.

We hear juicy, fine and atmospheric jazz from two such unusual imitators, musicians and wonderful instrumentalists. Familiar themes take on completely new colors in their interpretation, especially since the closeness and intimacy of this musical encounter can be heard in their duo.

For the second installment of an ambitious five-CD project, undertaken to observe his fiftieth birthday, master bassist Rodney Whitaker convenes a world-class sextet to pay homage to the oeuvre of Duke Ellington. It's a subject that Whitaker came to know intimately during his 9-year tenure with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, regarding it as his Ph.D in Ellingtonia through performance, deep study, and spirited conversation with Wynton Marsalis and bandmates through those years. With a front line of modern jazz masters - Brian Lynch, Michael Dease and Diego Rivera, the fiery, modern aesthetic of drummer Karriem Riggins, along with pianist Richard Roe and vocals by Rockelle Fortin, Whitaker celebrates the timelessness of Ellington's works by allowing them to live and breathe through the freewheeling, "cutting session" atmosphere he created for the session.