A Threesome Quartet of Stupidity

I'm sure you've heard about the so called jazz people asking questions like "how many musicians are in Dave Brubeck Quartet". But this latest entry in stupidity of the industry is a new peak in their effort to show how illiterate they are, and how history of jazz and aestethic of this music is not their concern at all.

A considerate friend gave me this DVD of Duke Ellington that as the cover of DVD suggests, is a quartet in concert. The very first moment I saw it, I knew we have no quartet in concert by Duke. I assumed that it couldn't be Big 4 sessions, produced by Norman Granz which reportedly been filmed by him. They are  courtesy of the late Norman's Pablo label, and so an obscure label can't release it. All these thoughts came and went, till I unpacked the stuff and put it on DVD player. Yes, it is simply Duke Ellington Trio at Danish TV. A great performance indeed, and beautifully photographed by cameramen of Copenhagen TV,  including magisterial Meditation, On the Fringe of the Jungle, Second Portrait of the Lion, and Take the A Train, BUT widely available on the internet, and NOT a quartet as the packaging says, or lies. No need to say, the front cover doesn't belong to the that gig - a totally different rhythm section, and oh my what a section: Jones and Lamb!

There is this Lauren Bacall line, in her interview with my friend Mark Cousins, when she says about the cinema: "The industry is shit. It's  the medium that's great." We can second that and expand it to the world of jazz, in which industry is shit and it's the music itself that is so great.