When we think of genres in music, words like "classical", "jazz", and "rock" all come to mind. Then there's "pop" music. While the first three describe the music, "pop" relates more to how tapped in to the culture of the moment the music is or was. Classical, jazz, and rock have all enjoyed "pop" status and various times, and in many ways the last of those three still intermingles with pop. Jazz enjoyed its pop years back in the early half of the 20th century, primarily before the Second World War, fueled by the big band and swing crazes. Duke Ellington reached the zenith of his career in the 1930's, hitting after the "Jazz Age" but falling very much into the Swing Era of the 1930's. Although Ellington's passion was in composition and he aspired to be the continuation of the Western classical tradition (evidenced in longer pieces), he was inextricably linked to the pop era of jazz.
The problem with pop music is that is forgets too easily. It has no sense of any heritage, so its stars can easily go from being all the rage one year to being yesterday's news the next. Even though Ellington is universally upheld as a giant of jazz, shockingly, by the 1950's he was largely seen as washed up, a has-been. For a comparison look at the Billboard Hot 100 for 1999 and look at how many songs still get played on Top 40 radio (probably none), let alone the artists themselves (a few). Jazz in the 1950's was going through a transformation that shift the center to bebop, a movement largely shunned mass popularity and favored listening over dancing and (by this time), wasn't concerned about being confined to four minutes or less per song. Not only that, but the original beboppers were either dying off or spawning subgenres left and right, such as hard bop and modal jazz. No matter what Ellington thought of the new jazz movements (he was mixed), he got lumped with the pre-bop dinosaurs among jazz fans, while pop fans were moving in droves to rock and roll.
Ellington's appearance at Newport came at such as dismal time that the promoters probably included him out of courtesy or pity. Nobody expected that the Duke still had a way with his fans in a live venue. The vacuous comments from the announcer show no real interest in the fact a living legend was performing in their midst. Ellington himself generally avoided his old Blanton-Webster songbook except for "Take the A Train" and focused more on longer pieces, included a three-part suite written expressly for the festival featuring names he made up on the spot. Of course the real star piece of the performance is the stretched-out-beyond-belief "Diminuendo and Cresendo in Blue" which provoked actual dancing on a scale not witnessed since before Pearl Harbor. The oblivious festival organizers kept trying to stop the show but the audience wasn't having it! It's a remarkable document of an album just for the crowd reaction alone, capturing a near-riot not seen since Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" literally spilled blood in the aisles. (Sort of kind violence in movies, we're a little jaded these days about rowdy fans at concerts, but back then...oh wow!)
One weird thing about this album is that a lot of the music on the original album was actually recorded on a sound stage in New York, something remedied by the 2-CD reissue featured here which brings all the real live music to the front. I'm sure the perfectionists wince over each and every wrong note, but as somebody who's favorite live albums are by rock artists in the 1970's, where it is rare for a song to not have muffed lyrics or missed notes, I can assure you that the Newport recordings were just fine.
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