One of the toughest jobs in assembling the Jazz artist compilations must have been picking the 21 tracks featured on the Duke Ellington disc. Ellington composed thousands of songs and had a career that spanned six decades. More than a jazz great, Ellington is simply one of the most important musical figures in the 20th century. Surprisingly, all the material here was recorded on or before 1960, which eliminates great later works like the Far East Suite and the sacred concerts. Also missing is the legendary 1956 Newport Jazz Festival performance of "Diminuendo in Blue and Crescendo in Blue," which was the flashpoint that revitalized a career that had fallen on commercial hard times with the emergence of bebop. Not surprisingly, there are four tracks from the so-called Blanton-Webster era, which was a happy convergence of personnel and Ellington's own muse that led the Ellington band to unsurpassed heights. A bit flawed, this is the briefest of glimpses at a musical galaxy that goes on forever. --Tad Hendrickson
