Best Jazz artist from 1900 to 1949
<b>Duke Ellington & His Orchestra</b>

1

Duke Ellington & His Orchestra

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  • flagelloalieno
    flagelloalieno
    21 apr 10
    An interesting and rather unusual ranking for Debaser. It is difficult to compile a true ranking among such influential jazzmen without relying heavily on personal taste. I agree with all those included; perhaps I would place Charlie Christian instead of Django, but only because Django wasn't a "pure" jazz musician, not at all because he is any less important. Well done.
     
  • Metamatic
    Metamatic
    22 apr 10
    Thank you so much! Charlie Christian would definitely hold an important place in the ranking, like other significant jazz musicians I haven't included. I prefer not to rank those I don't know well yet or who elude me in comparison.
     
  • Metamatic
    Metamatic
    22 apr 10
    Then, being a saxophonist, I'm obviously a bit biased! :)
     
  • holdsworth
    holdsworth
    22 apr 10
    Great ranking, although I honestly consider Parker to be unattainable by any jazz musician. I also agree with my friend flagelloalieno.
     
  • Metamatic
    Metamatic
    22 apr 10
    Unreachable in what exactly? As a saxophonist (sound, rhythm, phrasing...) or as a musician (style, ideas, historical value...)?
     
  • Emerson
    Emerson
    22 apr 10
    Sure, just slap them in with someone like Gene Krupa, what does it cost you?
     
  • panNZZOone
    panNZZOone
    26 apr 10
    It’s as if we were asking Mozart in what aspects he was unreachable: in rhythm? harmonically? historical value? We could study Parker, his complete control of the instrument, his chromatic palette, his time shifts at supersonic speeds, his displacing and destabilizing accents that are yet so MIRACULOUSLY coherent, his sudden tonal changes so 'MIRACULOUSLY melodic, lyrical, surprising, his ideas always new, fresh, and never repetitive. Unreachable in what? In EMOTIONS.
     
  • Metamatic
    Metamatic
    26 apr 10
    I know Parker well, and I'm not saying he is inferior to Armstrong. But if I had to make a ranking, I think that without Armstrong's avant-garde, without his brilliant and innovative musical conception, jazz would not be what it is today, and Parker might not have even existed. Duke Ellington, on the other hand, is a world unto himself, transcending the boundaries of jazz standards. I consider him on par with the great composers of European classical music, and I am not alone in this viewpoint. Parker was one of the greatest virtuosos of his instrument, he gave identity to a genre, and he was a role model for generations of jazz musicians. However, what Armstrong and Ellington have left us, in different ways of course, is something even greater.
     
  • panNZZOone
    panNZZOone
    27 apr 10
    If we were to create a ranking based on who arrived first, like a relay race, we would say that without Whiteman there would have been no Ellington. Without Parker there would have been no Coltrane, and without Oliver there would have been no Armstrong, not to mention the Dixieland of the brilliant Beiderbecke, Frankie Trumbauer, and Jimmy Dorsey. Frankly, this seems like a bit of an Encyclopedic consideration of Jazz. Parker revolutionized the language with his own way of speaking, in short, you pay for one and get three, although, in the end, it interests me little.
     
  • Metamatic
    Metamatic
    27 apr 10
    But do you know what you're talking about? Your comparisons are completely nonsensical (Whiteman/Ellington?). This relativism of yours seems a bit too much like DIY cultism. You simply haven't understood that without Armstrong, the conception of the soloist and pure improvisation (not as an extemporization of a piece) wouldn't have been born, and we would still be playing as if we were in New Orleans, meaning: sheet music in hand, no improvisation (at most some extemporization), and all the members always on the same level.
     
  • panNZZOone
    panNZZOone
    27 apr 10
    ahhaahahh ahahahh King Oliver sheet music in hand bix sheet music in hand aahahahahah. after this I won't continue.
     
  • Metamatic
    Metamatic
    27 apr 10
    Even someone like you knows that Bix couldn't read and played by ear, too bad you don't know the difference between improvisation and extemporization.. on one thing I agree with you, better to leave it at that.
     
  • panNZZOone
    panNZZOone
    27 apr 10
    The problem is that you didn't know; otherwise, you wouldn't have said such a nonsense about one of the greatest improvisers in the history of Jazz. The transition from the figure of New Orleans to the emergence of the solo musician was marked by Oliver; moreover, Armstrong played with him too, but that's a topic I'll leave to you and the extemporizations you've come up with.
     
  • Felo
    Felo
    27 oct 10
    Great ranking, we need you, Christian!
     
  • il Commodoro
    il Commodoro
    7 apr 11
    We'll buy you the records of Charlie Christian!
     
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