Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue - Performances Before 1956

Performances Before 1956

In early performances, "Crescendo" was played before "Diminuendo." It was played at the 1938 Randall's Island concert with Ellington playing the interlude on piano. During the mid-1940s, Ellington tried all sorts of pieces between these tunes, particularly in a series of broadcasts he made for the Treasury Department in 1945 and 1946. There are issued recordings of him playing "I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)", "Carnegie Blues", "Rocks in My Bed" and "Transblucency" between these two pieces. The last piece was specifically composed as a wordless vocal for Kay Davis. Later that decade, Duke once again tried a piano solo between them.

The first known instance of Paul Gonsalves taking the solo between these pieces occurred on June 30, 1951 at Birdland. During the piano break after "Diminuendo," Gonsalves leaned over to Duke and asked if he could get a piece of the action. What followed was a driving, barnstorming solo that whipped the audience into a frenzy, with people crying out and jumping on their chairs. The solo lasted 26 choruses, one shorter than the solo he would play at Newport 1956. There are several other issued recordings of Gonsalves doing this before 1956. Strikingly, though, at Birdland Gonsalves drifts a whole bar ahead during the fourth chorus of his solo in which he attempts a complicated syncopated patter over the first six bars but loses four beats in the process. It seemingly takes another eight or nine whole choruses before the listener can really be sure that both Duke Ellington and bassist Wendell Marshall having adjusted to regain synch with Gonsalves, who just storms on regardless, in his own world. Despite this, it could be argued that the solo Gonsalves played at Birdland was considerably more invigorating and both melodically and harmonically inventive than the more famous 1956 Newport Jazz Festival rendition.