A great, if not the greatest Krautrock engineer recording Duke Ellington in 1970 at Rhenus Studios in Cologne Germany? Sounds implausible, some fevered dream if not outright fiction. And yet it briefly happened. Upon hearing the results, one enthusiastic Kraftwerk fan was heard to intone, “it’s like Chaucer and Galileo were in the same room.”
Conny Plank, who began his career in music working for Marlene Dietrich, became a master at multi-track recording and a Svengali at creating the soundscapes that were the bedrock of European electronic music. An advocate for electronic music, his publishing company, Kraut! was the source of the term Krautrock. He worked on a number of Kraftwerk records including Autobahn and is said to have influenced Brain Eno. While any unreleased Ellington is a big deal—and truth be told two tracks from this session were later released but with less than fabulous sound—this is not a huge discovery. This CD features three takes of a pair of tunes, “Alerado” and “Afrique.” Neither tune is a classic but “Afrique,” which would later appear on the 1971 album The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, features a tom tom rhythm (probably from drummer Rufus Jones) and lots of organ from Wild Bill Davis who is the strongest instrumental voice in both tunes. It’s a slow boiling groover with great charts for trumpets and saxophones. Latter day Ellington star, trumpeter Cat Anderson, is the other prominent voice heard here. The band, which in 1970 still had a great saxophone section that included the likes of Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges and Russell Procope, is its usual precise and well-drilled self in these recordings that are really a taped rehearsal. A wordless vocalist in the final take of “Afrique” goes uncredited.
The only revolutionary thing here is how little Plank does in the booth. Sorry Guru Guru and Os Mundi fans, Plank does not work any studio magic here. Clearly he must have been awed by the great composer and bandleader’s presence because the sound is natural and not manipulated in the least. There is speculation that a pair of matched stereo mikes were used. There is also talk that a malfunctioning tape recorder was used. Whatever the actual circumstances, this is Ellington, mostly unheard until now, and best of all, aural evidence of a chance meeting between two very influential figures from completely different musical worlds. Certainly, one of the oddest discoveries of 2015.
