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Long Form Works Of Duke Ellington

Jazz Unlimited for April 7, 2019 will be “Long Form Duke Ellington Compositions.”   Duke Ellington was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, but he was best known for his popular songs because the critics, as their wont, put him in that box.  As a result, most of his long form compositions are not well known.  We will play “Black, Brown & Beige,” “The Liberian Suite,” “The Degas Suite,” “The Queen’s Suite,” and “Night Creature” with the Louie Bellson Orchestra and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.  Shorter form pieces will be played and sung by Ella Fitzgerald and Lionel Hampton and played by the George Adams/Don Pullen Quartet.

The Slide Show contains threee of my photographs of musicians heard on this show.

Due to copyright restrictions, the audio from this show is no longer available. Audio links are available for one week after a show airs, starting on the Monday after the show.

This is a video of Duke Ellington and his orchestra playing "The Mooche" in 1952 with Harry Carney, Russell Procope and Jimmy Hamilton (cl) Ray Nance (tp) Britt Woodman (tb) Louie Bellson (d) and our own Wendell Marshall (b).  All of these musicians are heard on this show.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.