By Marilyn Lester***While the jazz world at large is celebrating the centenaries of titans, trumpeter Miles Davis and tenor saxophonist, John Coltrane, plus the 100th anniversary of the equally legendary Savoy Ballroom (where Ella Fitzgerald got her start), in a quiet corner of the jazzosphere, many are marking the 7oth anniversary of Duke Ellington’s legendary appearance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival—a concert about which an Ellingtonian can talk your face off.
So, cheers to twin reedmaster brothers Peter and Will Anderson for their Birdland concert, Anderson Brothers Play Duke at Newport, with a 15-piece big band. Opener, though, was a hat tip to the venue, with a cheerful version of George Shearing’s “Lullaby of Birdland,” before launching into Ellington at Newport and the 1927 Cotton Club favorite, “Black and Tan Fantasy.” It’s a mood-setter, a haunting, atmospheric piece based on the blues, which switches from minor to major and ends by quoting the funeral march from Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2. By contrast, but not played at Newport, 1940’s “Harlem Airshaft” showcased Ellington’s compositional excellence in complex chordal structures, capturing the chaotic sounds of daily life in a Harlem apartment building.
Returning to the blues (Ellington’s secret compositional ingredient), the band offered “Jeep’s Blues.” a nickname of alto sax player Johnny Hodges. At Newport, Duke exclaimed, “”If you’ve heard of the saxophone, ladies and 
gentlemen, then you’ve heard of Johnny Hodges.” The Andersons and their big band also ably delivered “Sophisticated Lady,” “I’ve Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)” and, of course, Billy Strayhorn’s 1939 composition, “Take the ‘A’ Train,” which became the Duke Ellington Orchestra’s them song.
Will Anderson, spokesperson for the brothers, delivered narrative about the concert and its significance at a couple of points in the set—and why we gather to celebrate the anniversary. In short, by the early 195os, big bands and swing had faded. Bebop was king via Davis, Trane, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others. Newport put Ellington’s band back on the map with a huge splash, and it’s become the stuff of legend: tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves played a marathon solo of 27-choruses during “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” lasting six and a half minutes. The crowd went absolutely wild, dancing in the aisles. The reaction was so intense that Ellington had to repeatedly calm the crowd. The Anderson’s re-created that epic rendition in a wildly 
swinging closer, but wisely divvying up the Gonsalves marathon between themselves and the other sax players in the band.
Duke Ellington’s appearance at Newport has gone down in music history. The Duke Ellington Orchestra was permanently resurrected from the abyss. Newport producer, impresario George Wein described the concert as “the greatest performance of [Ellington’s] career… It stood for everything that jazz had been and could be.” Ellington appeared on the cover of the August 20 issue of Time magazine—an honor he’d previously lost to Dave Brubeck in 1954 when both were being considered. The subsequent album, Ellington at Newport is still a best-seller. In 2022, the Library of Congress recognized the significance of the event by selecting the album for preservation in the National Recording Registry. For this special concert and for what the Andersons do for jazz education and advocacy, we say, to paraphrase Duke, love you madly.
