Cashbox : 05/24/1958

Clark Terry dedicates the entire program to the songs of Duke Ellington. Terry spotlights the Ellington tunes, but not the Ellington arrangements. The tunes are arranged by Duke’s son, Mercer Ellington and Terry himself. With Terry’s virile trumpet, is a host of top names- Johnny Hodges and Paul Gonsalves are on alto and tenor respectively, while others include Billy Strayhorn (piano) and Tyree Glenn (vibes). On one set, In A Sentimental Mood the musicians are supplemented by the vocal effort of Marian Bruce. Important issue.

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Audio Magazine
Charles A. Robertson : June 1958

If there is anything an Ellington fan would rather hear than the band itself, it is one of the Duke’s men at the head of a unit drawn from its sidemen. As extensions of his sound and style, they form an important part of his discography. But of late, the practice has been to team one of his soloists with musicians not associated with the orchestra. In this renewal of some of his best compositions, it is heartening to know that all concerned served lengthy spells under his direction and have considered statements to give body to the arrangements of Mercer Ellington and Clark Terry. All give form to choruses they could not use in the regular format of the band.

Numbers like Mood Indigo, C-Jam Blues, and Take the A Train have become so familiar in the original versions that it is hard to imagine them with altered meter and fresh accents. In the jazz world they are treated with more respect than any standard, and it takes veteran altoist Johnny Hodges, Britt Woodman on trombone, and Terry on trumpet to fool around with them. Paul Gonsalves gives handclapping impact to his tenor-sax solos on Cottontail and In a Mellotone. Tyree Glenn returns to the fold for melodic fill-ins on the vibes. The setting of Marian Bruce’s vocal on In a Sentimental Mood is by Mercer Ellington, with Quentin Jackson taking the trombone chair on this and Come Sunday. Jimmy Woode plays bass and the bass drum pedal is still part of Sam Woodyard’s equipment.

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Boston Traveler (Boston, MA)
John McLellan : 07/24/1958

Clark Terry, the marvelous Ellington trumpet player, leads a session of his colleagues called Duke with a Difference (Riverside RLP 246).

Here, in addition to the underrated Terry, one of the outstanding original trumpet soloists of our time, are Britt Woodman, Quentin Jackson, Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsalves, Tyree Glenn, Jimmy Woode, Sam Woodyard and Ellington’s alter ego, Billy Strayhorn.

This is Duke with a difference. Although the songs are all classics in Ellingtonia, this is a blowing session with the arrangements kept to a simple minimum. For instance, I found Mood Indigo one of the most refreshing interpretations of that ballad I’ve ever heard. And Tyree’s vibes lend an added different touch that fits in perfectly.

I’m sure Duke would be proud of his men. When I asked Duke once how he felt about the brilliant soloists he’d brought to maturity, he modestly replied: “Well, sometimes I look in the mirror and say, ‘Man, you have pretty good taste.'”

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HiFi / Stereo Review
Nat Hentoff : August 1958

Despite the title, Duke with a Difference, and the notes, which indicate little understanding of the relationship between Duke Ellington and his sidemen, this album is not especially different from most other sets made by Ellington musicians. Tyree Glenn is the only non-Ellington sideman on the date, and he’s an alumnus of the band. The album, very Duke-influenced in the performances of the men, is generally entertaining with particularly impressive solo work by Johnny Hodges. The leader is a trumpeter of considerable swing and a personal conception that occasionally becomes fragmentized and even coy as he indulges in facility for its own sake and questionable witticisms. The inclusion of one tremulous vocal by Marian Bruce was a mistake. Nonetheless, the album is recommended.

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High Fidelity
John S. Wilson : July 1958

Terry, a trumpeter who plays like a less tentative, stronger-voiced Miles Davis, leads a group of Ellingtonians (Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsalves, Tyree Glenn, Quentin Jackson, Britt Woodman, others) through some decidedly different versions of familiar Ellington tunes. They produce a sort of horn chamber jazz that completely revamps a piece like Cottontail, allowing Gonsalves to take his normally frantic solo in a very relaxed manner. In this atmosphere, Gonsalves is far better than he usually is with Ellington, Terry is perkily whimsical, and Hodges, though mushily recorded, manages occasionally to move away from his long ingrained style. There are shallow moments when the pianoless rhythm section limps leadenly but over-all an interesting variant on a familiar theme.

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Metronome
Jack Maher : September 1958

The basic difference that takes place on this album is that the maestro is nowhere to be seen. Billy Strayhorn plays piano on tracks two and eight, but Tyree Glenn sketches the chords on the rest of the tunes. Reports to the contrary, there’s a distinct Dukishness to these sides; mostly because all of the men are, or have been members of Duke’s band. There’s no getting away from your heritage, it becomes much too ingrained. True, there are liberties taken with that style, that would never be taken on an Ellington bandstand, but the way the men play in and out of unison is markedly Ellington.

Most of the liberties are taken by Johnny Hodges who adds a certain wryness to his playing of ballads that you seldom hear when he plays with Duke. Every one acquits themselves well, in his established grooves.

CODA: Small group Duke-dom sticks pretty close to the prescribed path being eminently precise and on-occasion, warm and swinging.

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Oakland Tribune (Oakland, CA)
Russ Wilson : 04/27/1958

Clark Terry’s idea of combining Ellington tunes and band associates with independently creative, non-Ellington jazz treatment of the music results in a superb album. The fluctuating personnel includes Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsalves, Britt Woodman, Quentin Jackson, Tyree Glenn, Jimmy Woode, Sam Woodyard, and Billy Strayhorn. Their treatment of such as Cottontail, Just Squeeze Me, Mood Indigo, and Come Sunday, is a gas. Terry has never sounded better on records and there are delightful interludes by most of the others.

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO)
Charles Menees : 07/20/1958

St. Louisan Clark Terry, a trumpet mainstay of the Duke Ellington band since 1951, draws from the Ellington personnel and repertory for Duke With a Difference (Riverside, 12-inch LP). Eight Ellington standards — C Jam Blues, Cottontail, A Train and the rest — have been arranged by Terry (and Mercer Ellington on two of them) for various combinations of trumpet, trombone, tenor and alto saxes, vibes, piano, drums and bass. Emphasis in these charts is on solo virtuosity, with Terry’s tasty and wry horn leading the way. Johnny Hodges is his impeccable self on Come Sunday and Mood Indigo and Paul Gonsalves’s tenor boots out on In a Mellotone. There’s one vocal-Marian Bruce sings In a Sentimental Mood, with Luther Henderson sitting in on celeste.

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Toronto Star (Toronto, ON)
Roger Feather : 04/12/1958
Four stars

Terry, a very underrated musician, makes his best recorded showing to date on this LP. He plays a fast-tonguing, expressive trumpet with much wit and a strong feel for dramatic construction. The idea of the set is similar to the many records made by small groups from Ellington bands in the ’30’s and ’40’s but the difference in the subtitle (Duke With A Difference) is the tight, beautifully voiced charts by Terry which do not copy the Ellington sound.

Many of the tunes, particularly C-Jam Blues have surprising intros. Terry is excellent throughout and particularly brilliant on Just Squeeze Me and In A Mellotone. Gonsalves has a driving solo on Cottontail in front of some ferocious backbeat drumming. Hodges is wonderful on Mood Indigo and In A Sentimental Mood has a very pretty vocal by Marion Brace.

The writing has a refreshing sound and the musicianship and planning are excellent. This is an exciting album.

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Down Beat : 06/26/1958
Dom Cerulli : 4 stars

The difference here is on the solo possibilities in Duke’s tunes rather than the wide, often dazzling, array of colors with which the band paints them.

The versions manage to retain much of Duke’s flavor, while allowing the soloists enough room to spread out.

Terry’s silky, humorous horn is the solo standout. Hodges, particularly on his Come Sunday and Mood Indigo, is a wonder to hear. Gonsalves, subdued in keeping with his company, is a soloist of strength and taste.

Clark’s humor runs throughout the LP, even to slipping in a nod to Chattanooga Choo-Choo while riding the A Train. Glenn’s vibes are mostly background, although he gets off on Mellotone. He solos on trombone on Cottontail. Woodyard, on the peppier tracks, brings in the sock on two and four which he has brought into the band. It is a propulsive device for soloists, and certainly gives Gonsalves a lift on his solo in Mellotone.

Woodman adds a quietly punching chorus to Mellotone. Miss Bruce sings Sentimental Mood in a Dukish vein.

Hodges is beautiful on Sunday, although I found the ensemble following his solo somewhat unsteady.

On the whole, this is Terry’s most satisfying LP to date.

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Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

This is an album that quite obviously, on the face of it, is very considerably concerned with paying homage to Duke Ellington. But recorded tributes to Duke have long been pretty easy to come by; ever since it was first realized, many years ago, that “Ellington” was a selling word. Even making use of strongly Ellington-linked musicians is hardly unique. But this LP, as put together and led by Clark Terry, very definitely does have something unusual to offer, something rather more subtle and a great deal more musically rewarding than any mere routinely affectionate run-through of Duke’s compositions. Precisely as the album title puts it, this is Duke with a Difference.

For the intent here and it’s a concept that indicates an unusually deep and perceptive respect for Ellington and his work—is to demonstrate that Duke’s is a universal music, not a special music. That it has the kind of strength and structure that can enable it to stand up wonderfully well when arranged-and improvised on—in a ‘normal’ jazz context. That, in short, it is jazz and not just some sort of exotic hot-house flower.

Ellingtonia is, and has been for some thirty years, pretty much of a complete-unto-itself unit (made up of Duke’s writing; his own arrangements and those of Billy Strayhorn and just a few others; the sound of certain star soloists). For this reason, it has never been easy to dissociate Duke’s compositions from that readily-identifiable Ellington sound and style. Other jazzmen playing his tunes so often seem inhibited by the remembrance of how Duke treated them. And even the famed “Ellington unit” recordings of the 1930s were primarily smaller reflections of the big band, pointing up the fact that even when Duke’s sidemen play and record away from the framework of his orchestra, they very often carry with them the stamp of the Ellington sound. Very often- but not always. For this album is devoted to being a happy exception to the general rule. …

The basic idea here, then, is to combine Ellington tunes, and people associated with his band, with independently creative, non-Ellington jazz treatment of the music. The treatment consists of two outstandingly rich and haunting scorings by the Duke’s highly talented son, Mercer Ellington, and a half-dozen Terry charts designed to feature free and different blowing by Clark, tenorman Paul Gonsalves, and one of the all-time jazz greats, altoist Johnny Hodges.

Duke’s music responds remarkably and excitingly to this sort of approach, as Clark and the others were sure it would. Particularly in view of the fact that Terry has been an important member of the Ellington band since ’51, Gonsalves since ’50, and Hodges for all except a few years of the time ever since 1928 (!), it was a highly stimulating kind of holiday for them to be able to take off in this way on numbers they had previously dealt with only within the framework of the celebrated Ellington tight-knit musical discipline. Listen, for example, to the impeccable-toned Hodges making a deliberately “dirty” entry into his solo on Mood Indigo. That’s a good clue to the overall feeling, with Johnny demonstrating just how timeless and unrestricted his jazz greatness actually is, with Gonsalves coming through as a driving, swinging-modern soloist, and with Terry proving once again that he is (as critics like Nat Hentoff and Leonard Feather have been insisting) one of the very best and most unfairly under-rated of today’s trumpets.

A note on the personnel: All five of the horns, plus bassist Woode and drummer Woodyard, are members of the current Ellington orchestra. Billy Strayhorn has been associated with the Duke, as his chief arranger, since 1939, and his sensitive piano style has been heard on occasions with the band and frequently in small-unit recordings. (Take the A Train, the Ellington band’s long time theme and the only tune on the LP not written by the Duke, is a Strayhorn composition.)

Marian Bruce, who has sung with the band and has appeared in many clubs from New York to Paris, will shortly have a Riverside album of her own. Luther Henderson has written arrangements for Ellington at various times since 1944, was Lena Horne’s accompanist, and in 1957 became musical director of Polly Bergen’s network TV show.

A note on line-up variations: Terry, Woode and Woodyard appear on all selections. Gonsalves, Woodman and Glenn are on all except In a Sentimental Mood and Come Sunday, which were made at the July 29 session; Strayhorn and Jackson appear only on those two selections. Hodges is on all numbers except Cottontail, A Train and Mellotone. Glenn also plays the first trombone solo on Cottontail.