Earl Hines - Earl Hines Plays Duke Ellington

In the late '20s, when Duke Ellington was creating his first masterpieces, Earl Hines was defining the art of solo jazz piano, combining bright lead lines and potent rhythm with startling and erratic flights of keyboard invention. After decades of leading swing and Dixieland bands, Hines returned to small groups and solo piano in the '60s. If his creative powers had changed, they had actually increased, and his later recordings provided both much improved sound and the length (with full-length LPs) to let him trace his magical and unpredictable path for chorus after chorus. This two-CD set drawn from his recordings of Ellington material is among the finest of his later work, as Hines plays with genuine spontaneity and an elastic imagination on familiar and obscure compositions, from "Come Sunday " and the early "Black and Tan Fantasy" to the seldom-heard "Black Butterfly." Stuart Broomer Amazon.com