'Aesthetically They Are Still Delightful'

“Early Ellington records are like vintage cars. They are not as he or anyone else would make them nowadays, but historically they are still important and aesthetically they are still delightful.” 

Let's not confine Philip Larkin’s conclusion exclusively to Duke Ellington’s early recordings or even to jazz in general. Good work remains good even when long out of fashion, and mature taste is broad and elastic. Some of us still enjoy reading Walter Savage Landor and listening to Debussy. Imagine being able to appreciate only books composed in the last decade, a fate that skirts illiteracy. Now listen to Ellington’s 1928 recording of “The Blues With a Feeling,” featuring Johnny Hodges, and I challenge you not enjoy it or insist it’s merely a museum piece. Then try “Clarinet Lament” (1936), with what Larkin describes as “[Barney] Bigard’s perfect Basin Street chorus.” The poet writes:

 

“No one wants [Ellington] to repeat the past. No one, equally, would ever want to lose sight of such of it as this set represents.”  

 

Larkin’s review of The Ellington Era, 1927-1940, Vol. 1 was published in the Daily Telegraph on December 14, 1963. Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was born in Washington, D.C. on this date, April 29, in 1899, one week after Vladimir Nabokov in St. Petersburg, Russia. A memorable month for American culture.

 

[Larkin’s Daily Telegraph reviews are collected in All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961-1971 (1970; rev. 1985).]