Ellington at Newport (1956)

Recorded on 7 July 1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, this performance revitalised Duke Ellington's career overnight. When tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves steps forward on Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, he unleashes twenty-seven blues choruses of mounting frenzy, turning an open-air lawn into an ecstatic, dancing riot.