Such Sweet Thunder is a Duke Ellington album, released in 1957. The record is a twelve-part suite based on the work of William Shakespeare.
Background
In August 1956, Duke Ellington and his orchestra were in Canada, performing in the same city as the ongoing Stratford Shakespearean Festival. Curious, Ellington and his longtime composer/arranger Billy Strayhorn talked to festival staffers, and Ellington soon announced his next album project would be a conceptual piece, paying tribute to Shakespeare's varied works with appropriate jazz compositions. In addition to the Such Sweet Thunder album, he promised the entire suite would be performed at the 1957 edition of the festival. Ellington and Strayhorn began building a home library of Shakespeare, seeking out Shakespeare experts, and reading through the canon during orchestra downtime. The suite that would constitute Such Sweet Thunder was written in just under three weeks and recorded in early 1957. Although most of the compositions were created for the suite in conjunction with Strayhorn, a few were versions of older Strayhorn songs that were reworked and re-titled for the collection.
has included this album on their Basic Jazz Record Library. The Penguin Guide to Jazz gave the album 4 stars Allmusic gave the album 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Contemporary reviews and journalism
“Ellington Suite to Bow April 28” New York Times. 15 April 1957.
Parmenter, Ross. “Music: Weill and the Duke.” New York Times29 April 1957.
“New Ellington Suite Hailed By Coast-to-Coast Audience.” Daily Defender. 2 July 1957.
Wilson, John S. “Duke Bounces Back With Provocative Work.” New York Times. 13 Oct. 1957. esp 113
Wilson, John S. “Jazz: Ellington.” New York Times 13 October 1957.
Historical and analytical writings (in reverse chronological order)
Bradbury, David. Duke Ellington. London: Haus, 2005. Esp. pp. 91.
Lanier, Douglas. “To Be-Bop or Not to Be-Bop; Minstrelsy, Jazz, Rap: Shakespeare, African American Music, and Cultural Legitimation.” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation Vol. 1, 2005 .
Buhler, Stephen M. “Form and Character in Duke Ellington’s and Billy Strayhorn’s Such Sweet Thunder.” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation Vol. 1, 2005 .
* Harrison, Max. “Max Harrison: Some Reflections on Ellington’s Longer Works. The Duke Ellington Reader. Tucker, Mark, ed..
* Crouch, Stanley. “Stanley Crouch on Such Sweet Thunder, Suite Thursday, and Anatomy of a Murder.” The Duke Ellington Reader. Tucker, Mark, ed..
Hasse, John. Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1993. Esp. pp. 331–333, 362.
Timmer, W.E. Ellingtonia: The recorded music of Duke Ellington and his sidemen. Metuchen, N.J.: Institute of Jazz Studies: Scarecrow Press, 1988. Esp. pp. 450.
Marsalis, Wynton. “What Jazz is and Isn’t.” New York Times. 31, July 1988.
Ellington, Mercer. Duke Ellington in Person: An Intimate Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1978. Esp. pp. 117.
Ellington, Duke. Music is My Mistress. New York: Da Capo Press, 1976, c1973. Esp. pp. 192.
