This compilation is based around the book Living With Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings, and co-produced and annotated by that volume's editor, Robert G. O'Meally. The idea is to assemble various pieces of music with some connection to Ellison or his writings, with the specific threads -- a direct comment Ellison might have made on a track, for instance, or a song that's referred to in one of his stories -- explained in O'Meally's notes. Those connections can sometimes be quite specific and, frankly, extremely tenuous at other times. For those not immersed in Ellison's writings, it's still a pretty fair collection of jazz, usually on the soulful and bluesy sides, from the mid-'20s to the early '60s, albeit entirely jazz that happens to be administered by Sony. Certainly
Louis Armstrong & His Hot Seven's "Potato Head Blues,"
Duke Ellington's "Black and Tan Fantasy," and
Benny Goodman's "Flying Home" (a 1939 track, not the same as
Goodman vibraphonist
Lionel Hampton's more famous and influential recording) are major jazz classics.
Ellington,
Armstrong, and
Jimmy Rushing are heard from two or three times apiece, and there are also quality selections from
Count Basie,
Bessie Smith,
Teddy Wilson,
Hot Lips Page (with
Joe Turner on vocals), and Jones-Smith, Inc. (with
Lester Young on sax and
Count Basie on piano). Getting a little off the jazz track, there's also
Mahalia Jackson's "The Holy Babe"; getting considerably off the jazz track, there's flamenco guitarist Vincente Escudero's "La Farruca." The set finishes with the only commercially available recording of Ellison's own voice, "Hidden Name and Complex Fate," an excerpt from a 1964 address at the Library of Congress. ~ Richie Unterberger