Army Times
Tom Scanlan : 10/19/1957

Speaking of The Duke, his newest major composition is now available on record. It’s called Such Sweet Thunder, and titles of the 13 compositions deal with Shakespearean characters.

This is infinitely better than Ellington’s recent A Drum is a Woman, a hokey, arty mistake.

The sketches in Such Sweet Thunder are designed, as is The Duke’s wise habit, for the Ellington band alone. The compositions, which vary in mood and length, were plainly written with the group sounds and solo talents of the band primarily in mind. No other band could play Such Sweet Thunder if it wanted to.

There is originality and wit and charm in this work, and for something different, it is highly recommended. But I wouldn’t take the Shakespearean angle too seriously.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : December, 1957

That Shakespeare should serve as the basis of a jazz suite by Duke Ellington is appropriate as both possess the same ageless quality and a parallel might be drawn between their respective positions in jazz and literature. A prelude by the band on the title theme introduces eleven vignettes to features its soloists on some of the best writing the composter has done in years. When conveyed by his strongest instrumentalists such as Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges, Quentin Jackson, and Clark Terry, they are most successful. Most weak are a violin-clarinet duet and a bass interlude, though Cat Anderson, cast as a distraught Hamlet, plays surprisingly tasteful trumpet. Ellington has scope, wit and logic, regardless of any new insight into Shakespeare, and can turn to Proust for inspiration, where I’m concerned, if similar results are assured.

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Billboard : 09/30/1957
Spotlight on… selection

The suite was written for the Shakespearean Festival, Stratford, Ontario, and contains 12 sketches, inspired by Shakespearean characters or scenes in the bard’s plays. Ellington and co-composer Billy Strayhorn display imagination, humor, wit and charm not only in their orchestrations, but in the titles. Set could have wide appeal. The suite should rank as one of the composer’s best works. Some of the titles are Madness in Great Ones, Lady Mac and The Star-Crossed Lovers. Good cover shot of Ellington.

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Boston Herald
George Wein : 10/27/1957

Duke Ellington destroyed a myth this past month. I found him at 4 o’clock one Monday morning very busy composing a composition Teddy Wilson would use on a current concert tour. It seems that Billy Strayhorn does not really write all of Duke’s music. The master is still capable of exploiting his own genius.

A new Columbia LP entitled Such Sweet Thunder composed and orchestrated by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn is the latest example of this genius. Such Sweet Thunder is a suite based upon the works of Shakespeare. Ellington is to jazz as Shakespeare is to literature. It is only fitting that there should be an artistic meeting of these two great creative men.

To me this is the most important of Ellington’s more ambitious works to be released in the past few years. I like it much better than A Drum is a Woman, but I will reserve judgement in comparing it with Black, Brown, Beige or the Liberian Suite.

Such Sweet Thunder is a series of musical sonnets inspired by characters from Shakespeare’s plays. There is a sonnet for Caesar, for Henry V (Sonnet for Hank Cinq), Lady Mac, Sister Kate and several others. The Ellingtonian parallel to Hamlet’s character entitled Madness in Great Ones is one of the most exciting excerpts.

Duke Ellington is a man in his late 50s. However, unlike Louis Armstrong, Duke has no desire to look to the past to reaffirm his greatness. Ellington of other eras is not the impetus, it is the competition, to the Ellington of today. It is not that Duke wants to forget the past. It is just that his experience has been that every time he has taken a step in a forward direction he has met with only reluctant acceptance, even by his most ardent fans.

The followers of his earliest bands felt that when Ben Webster and Lawrence Brown were added, his music would never be the same. When Duke started writing extended form compositions, the cries of anguish of devoted Ellingtonites were many, and loud. It’s a credit to Ellington’s stature that each musical addition and experiment in Duke’s lifetime has fallen very neatly into place in the fantastic career of a true nobleman of jazz.

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Cashbox : 10/05/1957

The disk is a performance of a suite penned by Ellington (dedicated to the Shakespearean Festival in Stratford, Ontario) and which sets in jazz ork terms descriptions of various Shakespearean characters and moods. As the Bard offers a multitude of character moods, so Ellington has imaginatively written a varied series of twelve colorful sketches, both carefree and compelling. The Ellington crew reads the opus beautifully. Great jazz issue.

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Chicago Tribune
William Leonard : 12/15/1957

Ellington isn’t really the Duke, he’s the king!

It was just 30 years ago this month that he made jazz history when he brought his orchestra into the famed old Cotton Club in New York City. Next Thursday he will bring it into Chicago’s storied Blue Note for the 16th time (far more often than any other band has played there), and when he arrives it will be as the biggest office attraction the Loop jazz hall ever knew.

What kind of man can survive a span of 30 years in jazz? Well, there’s no “kind” of man. There’s only one man, and that’s Duke Ellington. No other band leader has had a career anywhere near as long, in a field where trends are temporary, competition is tough, and the mortality is high.

Edward Kennedy Ellington stands alone on the American musical scene.

The jazz fans never have lost their respect or their enthusiasm for his music – a repertory which he and his own arrangers have written and which practically never is played by anyone else.

The jazz critics vote him automatically into their various “halls of fame” and pour awards and citations over him each year.

But – and note this, for it applies to few of his contemporaries, even among the jazz men who thrill themselves by playing occasional concert dates in symphonic halls – the long haired musical reviewers dig him, too.

“No one seriously challenges the Duke,” Claudia Cassidy was writing in The Tribune’s classical music corner a decade ago. “When the Duke comes to town, I like to be there listening.”

Frank Holzfeind, who has been delighted to hire the Duke those 16 times at the Blue Note, puts it a little differently: “There’s a distinctive kind of inward dignity about his music, just as there is about the man himself. Most men need a necktie and jacket to give this impression; Duke would have it if he were wearing only his shorts.”

The biggest names in jazz, if they’re on the bandstand when Duke walks into the saloon, suddenly start playing better. Not even a Louie Armstrong, for all his world fame as one of the greatest instrumentalists of them all, commands such respect.

The Duke is a pianist of parts, he is known not for playing one instrument but for playing an entire orchestra. His music is in a class all its own. The hot jazz of the late ’20s came and went. Swing came and went. Bop came and went. The cool “progressive” stuff has come and is real gone. But Ellington’s music goes on in a realm by itself, unruffled by the passing fancies of Tin Pan Alley, the “hit parade” boys, or the musicians forever seeking “a new sound.”

Duke’s music is the sound of people, of life, of love, of hopes and disappointments as they succeed one another thru a person’s days. That never changes, so the attitude of his music never changes, even while it is groping for greater depths of expression.

Mood Indigo, Sophisticated Lady, Harlem Speaks, Take the A Train, and the other short numbers put together by the Duke and Billy Strayhorn and his other arrangers seem destined to outlast the lengthier, more seriously intended works like Black, Brown, and Beige, Liberian Suite, and Deep South Suite.

This year the Duke introduced a new suite, Such Sweet Thunder, its title inspired by the line in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, a musical commentary on Shakespeare in which the Duke’s tongue is thrust well into the Ellington cheek. The title tune, inspired by the lines “I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder,” purports to portray the dialog Othello used on Desdemona when he wooed and won her.

Harry Carney has been playing in the Ellington band uninterruptedly since the night the Duke opened at the old Cotton Club on Harlem’s Lenox Avenue, and gave the nation a new approach to popular music.

Thirty years ago this month! It’s a record no other musician ever is likely to equal in jazz, for there’s only one Ellington.

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Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Jack Butler : 10/13/1957

In his introduction to Leonard Feather’s Jazz Encyclopedia, Duke Ellington warned modern jazzmen they are in danger of refining jazz right out of the popular taste and into the position occupied by long-hair music – to wit, being on such an intellectual non-swinging level it scares off the casual layman.

Judging from his newest production, the Duke maybe should go back and read that introduction again.

His latest is Such Sweet Thunder, a suite based upon Shakespeare and dedicated to the Shakespearean Festival at Stratford, Ontario.

To me, most of the suite is not jazz although he does use many of the devices of jazz, and there are several solos that are first-rate. Of course, so far as I know, the suite isn’t jazz to Ellington, either, and this could be criticizing an orchid because it isn’t a rose.

It’s just that Ellington has been on the first team of jazz so long that you automatically think his work is jazz – or at least, if it isn’t it ought to be.

This isn’t to say that the work is not another display of Ellington’s wonderful musicianship. It is freshly, even exuberantly, written, and interestingly arranged by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Of course, Ellington’s musicians do a tremendous performance, most notably Britt Woodman on trombone, Jimmy Woode on bass, Johnny Hodges on alto, John Sanders on valve trombone, Quentin Jackson on trombone and Cat Anderson on trumpet.

The title comes from a Shakespearean quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, entitled Up and Down, Up and Down (I Will Lead Them Up and Down).

There is a theory among moderns that jazz can be written as well as performed. That may be doubtful. But this much you can say: being Ellington, this album is interesting music, and maybe nobody cares whether it is jazz or not.

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Indianapolis News
Bill Roberts : 10/17/1957

No one – not by the furthest stretch of the imagination – would ever picture William Shakespeare and Duke Ellington as working partners.

But here they are in a Columbia album entitled, Such Sweet Thunder.

It is an attempt by Ellington and his splendid band to parallel with music sketches some of the famous Shakespearean characters.

The title is derived from Act IV, Scene I, of the Bard of Avon’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which is said: “I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder.”

One of the best selections, Lady Mac, is a jazz waltz in honor of Lady Macbeth, who, as the Duke puts it, “had a little ragtime in her soul.”

Included in this suite also are four sonnets which contain some excellent solo work by the Duke at the piano. They are Sonnet to Hank Cinq, Sonnet to Caesar, Sonnet for Sister Kate, and Sonnet in Search of a Moor.

The Star Crossed Lovers features Johnny Hodges on trombone as Romeo and Paul Gonsalves on tenor as Juliet. Duke says, “it’s the sad story of two beautiful people.”

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Los Angeles Mirror
Dick Williams : 02/10/1958

It had been one of that kind of day that people are always imagining entertainment editors lead. I had lunched with buxom Marisa Allasio, Lanza’s new Italian leading lady in “Seven Hills of Rome,” in her Beverly Hilton suite. Then I had moved on to 20th Century-Fox studio to pore over hundreds of photos of the upcoming “The Young Lions.” From there I had retraced my steps across town to Paramount to meet Danny Kaye in his studio dressing room.

Then to the opening of Cohen’s spectacular new delicatessen and restaurant on Fairfax and from there on to a preview of Glenn Ford’s fine new picture “Cowboy” in a Columbia studio projection room.

And now here at midnight, 12 hours later, I sat in an upholstered wall booth in Peacock Lane, a small Hollywood Blvd. jazz bistro, catching up with a long-time favorite – Duke Ellington. The audience was silent, intent on the music which spilled out in crescendos and floating indigo notes from the bandstand like a flow of lava.

Duke, in maroon jacket and looking drastically thinner after losing 20 pounds (“It made my doctor happy; it didn’t make me especially happy”), chatted and reminisced with ringsiders, mulling over old favorites written in the ’30s and ’40s. Occasionally he touched a brisk chord at the piano or led the band. But more often he sat to one side of the stand listening with slightly cocked head and bright, questioning or approving eyes to his “instrument.”

Hearing the band in person was the clincher. It’s on the beam again after some bad years. Ellington’s greatest band flourished during the early ’40s and with its breakup later in the decade the group deteriorated almost steadily for 10 years. Only when Ellington set resolutely to work to replace his former fine soloists, Johnny Hodges, Juan Tizol, Barney Bigard, Cootie Williams and numerous others, was major progress made.

I first noticed the change in the LPs recorded at Newport two years ago. Such Sweet Thunder confirmed it. The current local appearance is the clincher. The Duke has molded another masterful “instrument” for his complex harmonies. Buttressed by a handful of old-timers still with him paced by saxophonist Harry Carney (30 years with him), Ray Nance and Cat Anderson, the band has again rounded into superlative shape.

The trumpets have that old-time incisive bite, the trombones float on those long, lazy solos and the battery of saxes achieve the unique split harmonies. The rhythm, paced by new, lithe young drummer Sam Woodyard, is right, not too loud and insistent, but in there.

This is the oldest and greatest jazz band in America today – now in its 33rd straight year – the band that had 7,000 jazz buffs cheering at the Newport Festival in Rhode Island last summer.

Last year his audiences included everyone from President Eisenhower to the rock ‘n’ roll kids, from 50 college proms to the Canadian Shakespearean Festival in Stratford, Ontario.

At 59, Ellington remains a giant in his field and, most importantly, he is still writing jazz, some of it good, some of it mediocre.

His A Drum Is a Woman last year was disappointing. But his Such Sweet Thunder, a witty, clever series of musical sketches based on Shakespeare’s characters, is brilliant. It is up to the best that he has done in the past.

Now in an impressive four-LP-record set in twin albums, he has collaborated on a comprehensive and fascinating major piece of work, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book.

They’re all here from Mood Indigo, first of the great Ellington instrumentals to become popular hits and enduring “standards,” to Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald, written especially for this album. In four movements, Royal Ancestry, All Heart, Beyond Category and Total Jazz, Ellington has uniquely translated something of Ella’s personality into music.

Ella and Duke recorded 80 tunes and the best 40 were retained for the albums. “She’s the first I’ve ever heard go through the entire list without missing on one,” says Duke.

Personally, I find Ella best on his slower, sensitive numbers such as the wailing I Ain’t Got Nothin’ but the Blues and the tender I Didn’t Know About You.

When one hears this spectacular array – Don’t Get Around Much Any More, Caravan, Solitude, Lush Life, Chelsea Bridge, I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good, Perdido, Sophisticated Lady, Just Squeeze Me, but Don’t Tease Me, Take the ‘A’ Train, Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me, and so many more, one is convinced that no other figure in the music world can match him as composer, arranger and band leader.

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New York Daily News
Douglas Watt : 10/13/1957

The composing-arranging team of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn (it’s hard to tell who’s responsible for what in their works) improves over its recent effort, A Drum Is a Woman, with Such Sweet Thunder, just released on a Columbia LP. Completely unlike the non-descript ballet-song-narrative that Drum was, Thunder is simply a suite of a dozen quick, tongue-in-cheek musical impressions of Shakespearean characters and characteristics (the Bard’s penchant for historical subjects is the basis of one piece.)

What it all adds up to is an agreeable 40 minutes or so with the slick Ellington band as the ensemble and various soloists show their stuff in a variety of moods. Lady Mac, for example, is a jazz waltz. The suite is, by the way, dedicated to the American Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, CT, where the Duke and his men did a gig earlier this year and had a very pleasant time.

By any other name, Such Sweet Thunder would sound as suite.

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Portland Oregonian
John A. Armstrong : 01/19/1958

I would rather imagine that if Will Shakespeare were alive today, he would be a jazz fan. For he was a men who appreciated, and wrote of, earthy things, always with an eye to the humor and tastes of the crowd of commoners who bought the cheap tickets and watched his plays from the theater pit.

Such a man would feel a fraternity with the composer and performer of jazz, for he would recognize jazz as an entertainment medium as appealing to the masses as he wanted his plays to be. And I think he would appreciate this latest Duke Ellington composition for just what it is – a tribute to his writing.

I’m not sure whether Ellington is a student of Shakespeare, but I do know that he has done an outstanding job here of portraying in the jazz idiom his reactions to some of the Bard’s immortal plays and characters.

Such Sweet Thunder is not just a tribute to the immortality of a tribute to the immortality of Shakespeare’s writings. More than that is striking evidence of the immense possibilities of jazz, of its flexibility and depth in the hands of a sensitive and serious composer.

I doubt that any man living today has demonstrated so graphically that jazz can be much more than a more basic jungle beat, or a wailing blues or bouncing dance tune. The Duke uses it as a serious art medium. Jazz is his constant means of expression, and when he responds to the world about him, reacts to it and interprets it, he does so with jazz.

What is more natural than this composition, his reactions to Shakespeare?

It took many years for this to come about. Ellington visited Hathaway cottage in England on his first European tour in 1933. Coincidentally, one of the orchestra on that tour was alto sax man, Johnny Hodges, who also stars in this most recent Ellington album.

There were several other Ellington tours of Europe and England since that time, but it took a successful appearance at the Shakespearean Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, to spark the Duke to the writing of Such Sweet Thunder.

The Duke describes this album as an attempt to “parallel the vignettes of some of Shakespeare’s characters in miniature – sometimes to the point of caricature.”

Side one opens with the title number Such Sweet Thunder, which many of you heard on the Time TV Jazz Show on December 30 (and may we have more of these shows!). It’s inspired by Othello, says the Duke, and features some fine reeds midway, followed by Ray Nance‘s talking trumpet carrying along Othello’s convincing, swinging story as told to Desdemona.

Sonnet for Caesar has a melancholy sound, with subtle, slow-tempo hand drumming on the snare creating a funereal effect.

Sonnet to Hank Cinq, short but effective, stars Britt Woodman‘s raucous, shattering trombone.

Ellington introduces Lady Mac with a ragtime-flavored piano solo. Russell Procope‘s alto is worth special mention. Note the last three homicidal chords, which indicate Lady Macbeth had more than ragtime on her mind.

The two outstanding sections of this 12-section composition, I feel, are Up and Down, which recounts Puck’s various adventures in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Star-Crossed Lovers, Romeo and Juliet, of course.

In the first, Clark Terry‘s trumpet takes the part of Puck, chattering and laughing away int eh background and ending with the classic phrase, “Lord, What Fools these mortals be!” If any trumpet can talk, this one does.

Johnny Hodges alto soloing in The Star-Crossed Lovers is some of the best adaptation of a jazz instrument to serious music that I’ve heard.

In Madness in Great Ones Cat Anderson‘s upper register trumpet playing is used effectively to create the mood of Hamlet’s feigned madness.

If you had a cursory high school acquaintance with Shakespeare’s plays, even though you might not have liked them at the time, I’m sure this album will appeal to you and may help you develop an appreciation for something against which you rebelled in a required literature course. Certainly if you have seen any of the plays at Ashland’s outstanding August Shakespeare Festival, you’ll want to hear this album.

In fact, it should have a brisk sale in the Ashland-Medford area.

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Providence Journal
Philip C. Gunion : 10/13/1957

The great Duke Ellington has joined forces with that English writer, William Shakespeare, and turned out a charming musical suite based on characters from that gentleman’s plays.

It has been handsomely recorded by Columbia and its title is Such Sweet Thunder. It is performed happily by the Ellington orchestra.

Lest anyone think that the Duke has become too arty, let us hasten to establish our belief that Great Birnam Wood has not come to high Dunsinane Hill but rather to Harlem.

The excitement of recent Ellington recordings, such as that made of the appearance of the orchestra at the Newport Jazz Festival, is present in this suite which the Duke composed after getting an eyeful of the Shakespearean Festival at Stratford, Ontario, last year. It was first performed at Town Hall in New York City last April.

Outstanding are Johnny Hodges, Pawtucket’s Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Hamilton and Quentin Jackson.

Duke has whipped up some elegant titles for the various parts of the suite, such as Sonnet to Hank Cinq, Lady Mac, and Sonnet for Sister Kate.

Of Lady Macbeth, Duke says, “Though she was a lady of noble birth, we suspect there was a little ragtime in her soul.” Recommended.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 10/27/1957

The degree in which Duke Ellington manages to keep ahead of the musical field continues to amaze his admirers – even after some 30 years. Always strongly attracted to classical forms, he was writing jazz suites as early as 1943 (Black, Brown and Beige) and, a few years later, scored what was probably his greatest success with Liberian Suite.

It is interesting to observe that, for a few years thereafter Ellington’s creativity seemed to flag as he attempted to orient himself with the new musical possibilities revealed by the bop movement – responsibilities with which he was not at home but which he realized had “dated” everything that came before.

Not until last year with the presentation of Newport Jazz Festive Suite did he regain his place in the forefront of the procession (though, jazz fans being what they are, the Festival Suite gained less attention at the time than did Paul Gonsalves‘ performance of some of some 70 consecutive choruses of another number on the same program.)

Comes now Columbia’s presentation of his latest jazz suite Such Sweet Thunder, Ellington’s tribute to Shakespeare, as a demonstration of how completely he can mold jazz material into a classical mold without losing any of the qualities which make it jazz.

The suite consists of sixteen vignettes suggested by Shakespearean scenes of characters. The title is suggested by the lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “I never heard so musical a discord, so sweet a thunder.” but the title track concerns “the sweet and swinging, very convincing story Othello told Desdemona.”

There is also Sonnet for Caesar and Sonnet to Hank Cinq, both memorable, The Telecasters where Ellington succeeds in transferring notably into music characters from two diverse scenes: the Macbeth witches and Iago, all of whom “have something to say,” quite yak-yakingly.

Perhaps in Madness in Great Ones does Ellington’s satirical humor appear at its best, as he interjects subtly the melody of Stumbling All Around.

But, for the most part, this is Ellington without bitterness – the most relaxed Ellington I have heard: perhaps the first Ellington in which the composer ever understood how thoroughly he was making it. As such, it is a delight.

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Saturday Review
Nat Hentoff : 10/26/1957

Duke Ellington‘s Such Sweet Thunder is, according to the feverish label copy, a “major work.” It is, to be sure, a considerable return to form after the largely embarrassing gallimaufry, A Drum Is a Woman (or “Vaudeville Paradise Lost Again”) and in several of its parts, it is wittily and even tenderly beguiling. But although this disconnected “suite” is intended to “attempt to parallel the vignettes of the Shakespearean characters in miniature – sometimes to the point of caricature,” whatever that means, the music might just as convincingly claimed to have been based on the works of Jack Kerouac. Literary props aside, the album does contain disarmingly expert monologues by such strolling players as Clark Terry, Johnny Hodges and Harry Carney; Ellington’s voicings (with some credit to assistant Billy Strayhorn) are, as usual, intriguingly, often mockingly persona; and there are occasional evidences of his continuing charm as a melodist. Such Sweet Thunder, however, is not equal to Black, Brown and Beige; and Ellington should have been self-advised in approaching the extraordinary music already in Shakespeare to have put more time into this project, and I don’t mean swinging time alone, which he and his band certainly possess.

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Down Beat : 10/17/1957
Leonard Feather : 5 stars

Listening to Such Sweet Thunder, you are ashamed to think of all the relatively trivial releases on which five-star ratings have been squandered. For in the dozen vignettes, dedicated to the Stratford, Ontario, Shakespearean festival and suggested by characters and situations in various plays (the title is a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Ellington and Billy Strayhorn found a challenge, one that stimulated them to the creation of a group of works all within the normal Ellington compass, all corresponding with the classic conception of the band’s sound, yet achieving in this unpretentious framework exactly what the suite set out to do.

For those seeking evidence of typical ageless Ellington there is an abundance of such timbers. The saxes’ 12 measures of blues and the wa-wa brass effects in the title number; the inimitable trombone section and Carney‘s gentle coaxing of the melody in The Telecasters; Jackson, plunger and all, in the shrew bit; the soft, caressing melody that presents Gonsalves‘ Romeo to Hodges‘ Juliet – all these are fresh uses of sounds that have become to jazz what Shakespeare was and is to literature.

There are experiments, too; ideas and effects seldom heard in Ellingtonia, notably the clarinet-violin blend in Up and Down. (Duke has rarely voiced Nance‘s fiddle with other instruments) and the delightfully swinging waltz named for Lady Macbeth, his first 3/4 work, to our knowledge, since a brief passage in Black, Brown, and Beige 15 years ago.

Terry, who has wasted the last six years playing Perdido night after night, finally gets a couple of perfect frameworks for his witty sound and style; he is particularly effective as Puck, even to the talking-horn effect for the closing line (What fools these mortals be!). And even Anderson, who has bothered us often with his tasteless stratospheric excursions, is both logical and accurate as Hamlet blowing his top.

It doesn’t matter in the least whether or not the relationship between the titles and the music is always clear, or whether the explanations offered by Duke seem more than a little tenuous; in programmatic works, the end always justifies the means. If the means was a hurried search through Shakespeare by Duke and Billy, and the end a superlative array of jazz miniatures, nothing else matters. (I’ve been searching in vain for 14-bar themes of 14-note phrases in the sonnets, all of which allegedly are scored to coincide with regular sonnet form; but who cares?)

The only unsuccessful track is the Othello opus featuring Woode, whom we have always admired but who here, alas, does not play in tune. And Gonsalves’ Circle of Fourths, though adequate, was not the perfect wind-up item for the suite.

Triple congratulations are due to Ellington, for his best extended work since the Harlem suite seven years ago; to Strayhorn, who had a hand in most of the themes and is credited as sole writer on the exquisite Rome and Juliet number, and the Irving Townsend, who helped nurse this idea along, supervised the recording, and wrote the affectionate and informative liner notes.

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An excellent essay on the recording and legacy of the album by Jazz History Online’s Thomas Cunniffe

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Liner Notes by Irving Townsend

One of the many surprising things about a suite by Duke Ellington based upon Shakespeare is that the news of this ambitious undertaking has not really surprised anybody. So seasoned are Ellington admirers to his talents, so prepared are they for the unexpected, that the announcements of this suite were greeted with enthusiasm, curiosity, and impatience, but seldom with surprise. It is, of course, idle to speculate upon what might have happened if Ellington and Shakespeare had been contemporaries, but there is no doubt that Duke, who calls himself an “amateur playwright,” is a very professional showman. And there is also no doubt that the Bard had rhythm in his soul. The artistic meeting of two great creative men has achieved the results we all hoped for: a new major work by Duke Ellington.

While it is true that Duke visited the Hathaway cottage during his first tour of England in 1933, the spark that ignited Ellington’s desire to create a work based on Shakespeare’s characters was his successful appearance at the Shakespearean Festival in Stratford, Ontario. Thrilled not only by the performances he witnessed there but by the warm welcome extended to him and his band by visitors to the Festival, Duke began to think, then threaten to write a suite. Another major work, his A Drum Is a Woman, was then being completed and took precedence over other composition. But once started, the new suite survived one-nighters and was rushed to completion in time for the Music for Moderns concert at Town Hall in April 1957. Those who heard Such Sweet Thunder introduced will remember its unanimous public and critical acceptance that April Sunday. They will also remember that Duke had not had time to compose the final number in the suite. That number was recorded four days later and is the final selection of this recording.

In Act IV, Scene I, of A Midsummer Night’s Dream appear the lines: “I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder.” Be it Ellington or Shakespeare who leads you to listen to what Duke describes as his “attempt to parallel the vignettes of some of the Shakespearean characters in miniature – sometimes to the point of caricature,” such sweet thunder it most certainly is.

Such Sweet Thunder
The title selection which opens the suite was inspired by Othello and is, to quote Duke again, “the sweet and swinging, very convincing story Othello told Desdemona. It must have been the most, because when her father complained and tried to have the marriage annulled, the Duke of Venice said that if Othello had said this to his daughter, she would have gone for it too.” The piece itself features brass in plungers and the sweet-talking trumpet of Ray Nance.

Sonnet For Caesar
This is the first of four sonnets Duke has included in the suite, scored to coincide with the fourteen line sonnet form. In this one, Jimmy Hamilton is featured in a slow, imperial piece notable also for Sam Woodyard‘s hand drumming. The final measures foretell of tragedy.

Sonnet To Hank Cinq
Ellington uses a second sonnet to pay tribute to Shakespeare’s preoccupation with history. In it Britt Woodman is featured in a lip-shattering trombone solo. Duke notes that “the changes of tempo have to do with the changes of pace and the map as a result of wars.”

Lady Mac
This is the first of a number of selections dedicated to single characters, in this case, of course, Lady Macbeth. “Though she was a lady of noble birth,” Ellington says, “we suspect there was a little ragtime in her soul.” And so, a jazz waltz that begins with an Ellington piano solo, continues with a sax ensemble and a pretty interlude by Russell Procope on alto, and then features Clark Terry in three-quarter time. The ominous last chords hint at what else Lady Mac had in her soul.

Sonnet In Search Of A Moor
This sonnet features Jimmy Woode on bass and opens with what Duke calls a “Hi-Fi” introduction on piano. Clarinets accompany the bass throughout the delicate, rhythmic glimpse of the Moor.

The Telecasters
Side 1 closes with typical Ellington musical license. “We took the liberty,” he notes, “of combining characters from two plays. It seems that the three witches and Iago had something in common in that they all had something to say, so we call them the Telecasters.” The three girls are played here by the three trombones, and Iago is Harry Carney‘s baritone sax. And just to emphasize the loquacity, there are a few moments of very pregnant silence.

Up And Down, Up And Down (I Will Lead Them Up And Down)
Side 2 opens with a piece describing Puck’s movements in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Demetrius and Helena, Lysander and Hermia, and Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the fairies, were constantly being maneuvered into awkward positions by Puck, who just stood on the side and laughed and said, “Lord, what fools these mortals be.” The couples you hear are Jimmy Hamilton and Ray Nance, clarinet and violin, Russell Procope and Paul Gonsalves, alto and tenor saxophone, and Johnny Hodges and John Sanders, alto and valve trombone. Puck is Clark Terry, who plays the famous quotation.

Sonnet For Sister Kate
Another sonnet follows, this one dedicated to a lady who needs no introduction. It is played by Quentin Jackson, whose trombone-with-plunger reading is in perfect sonnet form.

The Star-Crossed Lovers
Romeo and Juliet, of course, and a most beautiful melody to describe their love. “This is the sad story of two beautiful people,” Duke says, and Hodges’ alto as Juliet and Gonsalves’ tenor as Romeo give fresh and very moving conviction to their story.

Madness In Great Ones
Here is an Ellingtonian parallel to Hamlet’s character during the time he was deceiving his stepfather. (“Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.”) Hamlet was trying to make him believe he was crazy, and as Duke notes, “in those days crazy didn’t mean the same thing it means now.” At any rate, crazy this is with the Ellington orchestra playing a scene that does justice to Shakespeare. “Cat” Anderson is the featured, stratospheric trumpeter who all but disappears into outer space at the end.

Half The Fun
Duke’s one-line introduction to the number is: “The generally accepted theory is that the mood was specific.” And the music matches it as the Ellington flair for an exotic setting and a sensuous musical feeling provide the Nile, the barge, and ostrich fan and Johnny Hodges.

Circle Of Fourths
The final part of the suite is inspired by Shakespeare himself and the four major parts of his artistic contribution: tragedy, comedy, history, and the sonnets. Paul Gonsalves is featured throughout a piece that exemplifies musically the scope of the Bard, progressing by the musical interval of a fourth through every musical key. It is a wild and ingenious conclusion to the Shakespearean Suite.

Such Sweet Thunder, recorded at Columbia’s 30th Street Studios in New York, is dedicated to the Shakespearean Festival in Stratford, Ontario, and to Duke’s many Canadian friends. Its first complete performance took place at the Music for Moderns concert at Town Hall, Sunday evening, April 28, 1957.