Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. (help, get involved!) This article has been tagged since July 2006.

"Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" is a Big Band Jazz composition written by Duke Ellington. In its early form the two individual pieces, Diminuendo in Blue and Crescendo in Blue, were played back to back with Crescendo being played before Diminuendo. Legend has it that Duke called the two numbers out to the band one night in Birdland in the early 1950s. During the piano break after Diminuendo, Paul Gonsalves leant over to Duke and asked if he could get a piece of the action. What followed was a driving, barnstorming solo that whipped the audience in to a frenzy, with people crying out and jumping on their chairs.

[edit] 1956 Newport Jazz Festival

Duke Ellington may well have been thinking back to that day when, at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, he told Gonsalves to blow as long as he wanted during the Diminuendo interlude. In what has since become jazz folklore, Gonsalves almost created a riot as he played a tenor sax solo for 27 choruses that stirred up the normally staid crowd into a frenzy. Primarily, the legend has it that the solo made a striking platinum blonde woman in a black evening dress jump from her box seat and start dancing. This helped serve as a catalyst for the crowd frenzy that grew as Gonsalves continued his forceful, energetic solo. This song along with the other performances at the festival by Ellington's band were released as a live recording which helped revive Ellington's flagging career, though it has recently been revealed by Columbia Records that, due to a poor recording, parts of the gig were retaped in the studio on the following day.