Record Making With Duke Ellington (1937)

Wow Yes love it !!

man they could play and sing back then

I'm trying to find out what tune was on the B side of the Ellington Orchestra record 'Take the A train', 78 rpm single, the first record I ever bought as a kid from a dusty record exchange in Edinburgh. It wasn't 'The sidewalks of New York', and must have been a different issue 78. Anyone know? BOPPPPER

If you sold enough copies, you'd need to make additional master copies, duplicated using gold from the original "silver" master. There are metallugical reasons for gold. This is the origin of the industry phrase "gold record" or "going 'gold'" because of sales.

They later "retired" the master as a plaque. If you didn't make the hurdle for gold on the production run but completed the production run on the silver master, you had a "Silver Record". Otherwise you'd have the "Gold Record" master.

cool! those are some old 78s

Amazing that they actually had people manually press the records one by one!

Those were the times when one didn't need half a year for getting one song produced. Thanks for posting this insightful film.

Brew Lite

Very true. So many modern records get the life squeezed out of them with endless takes, comping, looping, copying, pasting, auto-tuning, beat-detecting and so on, so forth. There's so much to be said for just getting the vibe right and then just capturing that vibe. There's something really magical about that. By the way, thanks for a fantastic post WhenSwingWasKing.

Great. And a nice piece, when considered in context. But not an accurate depiction of the way Duke Ellington, or any other band leader of the day would rehearse or record a band. The "suits" produced and directed this. Always beware of the commercial element before you buy hook-line and sinker. Clearly very much in control here....

duke ellington - in the words of johnny hodges a suave motherfucker.