The Duke had suffered the fate of most big jazz bandleaders in the second half of the 20th century a major drop in popularity despite the fact that he continued to tour solidly.
Despite swing's fall from grace, Duke's band's set at Newport ending up being a raging success. The record company (as record companies are wont to do) rushed to capitalise on it and release this album... only to find that recordings of the show were pretty damaged. Columbia dealt with this by getting Ellington into the studio to re-record the set. The album was then patched together using the studio recordings, surviving pieces of the live recordings, and assorted canned applause.
Apparently there has since been a recording pieced together of the original show and it is something special... to be fair though, this version is great too; just a tight band playing some hot music!
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