Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band

It took until the mid-twenties, with the advent of electrical recording, to accurately get the measure of a full band, low end included. But few bassists (or tuba players) had led or jumped a band’s rhythm with the alertness of Jimmy Blanton, who played with Ellington between 1939 and 1941 (he left due to terminal illness and died in July 1942, only twenty-three). The pre-War edition of the Ellington Orchestra featured Blanton and tenor saxophone star Ben Webster, whose 1940–43 tenure with Ellington overlaps the 1940–42 span of this set. The material was first anthologized in 1986, on the 66-song, three-disc Blanton-Webster Band box; this 2003 update, containing nine more songs, features a remastering job that, even through a stream, is startlingly bright and clear. So much to bask in here: Webster going ham on “Cotton Tail” and sighing over “Across the Track Blues”; Blanton asserting himself on “Jack the Bear”; the whole of “Take the ‘A’ Train,” maybe the greatest recording of the Twentieth Century’s first half. Decades on from my first encounter, new favorites keep emerging.