Ellington Recordings on Compact Disc
Cross-referenced Song Lists

by
Marcus Girvan, Bjorn F. Andresen
and David Palmquist

Last update 2008-04-06
visitors since 2007-05-19

It can be frustrating to find you've just bought an Ellington compact disc that has several recordings you already have. Sometimes you may want to know what's on a CD or box set so you can tell if you already have most of the recordings. DEMS Bulletin 06/2-5 includes a complaint by a member who found his new box set had he same recordings as another one he already had.

Marcus Girvan, Bjorn Andresen and David Palmquist are building a database to help. We list song titles identified byNewDESOR discography numbers, the compact discs they're on (CD name, label and spine number) and usually track duration, composer credits and performers named in the CD label or booklet. Please see the limitations noted below.

We wish to thank Messrs. Luciano Massagli and Giovanni M. Volonté for their kind permission to use the catalogue numbers in their wonderful discography The New Desor - an updated edition of Duke Ellington's Story on Records, 1924-1974. This two-volume publication shows tremendous detail for each recording session and each recording, allowing you to identify the version of a song you are listening to. It has a section showing each recording session or recorded event, with the names of the participating musicians and all the song titles. Another section shows all the song titles, showing every known recording, the structure of each recording, who soloed, for how long, in what part of the recording. There's a section identifying the Ellington musicians, their instruments, their stay in the band and their significant solos on each instrument. Yet another section lists records and CDs by label as well. We highly recommend this discography to those who are serious about their Ellington.

We also wish to thank Herr Sjef Hoesfmit of the Duke Ellington Music Society for his encouragement and support. He has very kindly helped us identify the recordings that stumped us.

We provide 4 versions of the database, with identical information but sorted differently. Each is presented in letter size and A4 paper size version, but you probably shouldn't print them since they are frequently be updated. To read the databases you need Adobe's free Acrobat Reader or other software capable of reading PDF files.  

This work in progress will change from time to time as we add more information, find ways to improve the presentation and make corrections. Please email us with any corrections, additions or ideas for improvement.

Our databases are intended to help you decide whether or not to buy compact discs of Duke Ellington's music, but we do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness. It may not be suitable for other purposes.

Our recording date information and the performers' names are from the CD covers and booklets in our own collections. While those dates may differ from NewDESOR's information, the recordings can usually be reconciled. We can often identify a NewDESOR number by comparing its description in NewDESOR while playing the song, or by comparison with other recordings we have with the same title. Where we have doubts, we have placed a question mark beside the number.

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Limitations and suggestions

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These files are very large. If you print them, please be aware each is well over 300 pages and will quickly be outdated.

The files may take a while to open the first time if you use a modem. Your browser will cache the files, though, so subsequent access should be fairly fast. To tell if you need to refresh the database, compare the "last update" information at the top of this page with the same information on the database you're looking at.

Our listed track durations may be inaccurate. Differences arise for several reasons, including the amount of silence at the beginning and end of each track, and whether or not applause, announcements or Ellington's patter have been included or cut. (Or we may have misread those tiny numbers on the CD jackets!) The errors may be enough to confuse one "take" with another from the same recording session.

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The Song Title sort may not be accurate. Song titles are inconsistent from CD to CD and the disc may not use the title listed in NewDESOR. Many compositions had alternate titles, and CDs often exclude the leading articles "A," "An" or "The."

Suites sometimes have each movement on separate CD tracks. Other times there is just one large track, with or without the movements being "indexed." A disc may show the name of the suite as well as the name of the movement, but other discs may omit the name of the suite. When only one movement was recorded, usually the name of the suite will not be included on the CD. Where the CD shows each track separately, we have listed them in separate rows, but the Song Title sort won't place two identical recordings together if the track names are different. Where an entire suite is included in one track, we generally try to show all the relevant NewDESOR numbers as one cell in the same row.

Ellington frequently recorded medleys. Some CDs omit parts. Depending on the CD layout, the titles and references may be shown separately or together.

A solution?

We recommend using the Search or Find tools in Acrobat Reader to identify all occurences of key words in the song title you are looking up. You can use the search feature by pressing Control and F at the same time, or you can click on the Search icon at the top of the screen. Once you find your song, go to the NewDESOR Sort page to see which CDs it is known to appear on.

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In most cases we use the composer and performer information as stated on the CD. This may not be accurate.

Interpreting our use of NewDESOR numbers

In some cases, we've found differences between the recording date in the discography for the CD and the dates shown in our reference material. Where it isn't clearly the same recording, we've placed a question mark beside the NewDESOR number.

Where additional takes of recordings on a session are apparent but not recorded in New DESOR, we have taken the liberty, or executive decision, call it what you will, to add to the listing with -1, -2, -3, etc. It does not necessarily indicate the order in which the take was recorded but rather the order in which we have been made aware of it.

We have also come across tracks where we either cannot identify the the recording information or which are unlisted. These are represented by ???? or the comment "unlisted". Your help in identifying these would be welcome.

Where there were more than 26 recordings made in a session/concert, NewDESOR's numbers continue past z like this:

Instead of using aa, ab, etc., we use za, zb, etc. to allow the database to be sorted on the NewDESOR number, like so:

We are at the point now where we can start referring to the DEMS bulletins for NewDESOR corrections Our thanks to Sjef Hoefsmit for that suggestion.

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Copyright in these databases is owned by the authors. You may reproduce these for personal use, but commercial or institutional use will require our explicit permission.