Today, instead of The Penguin Guide, the two main sources of record reviews are AllMusic.com, or for the truly indiscriminate, Amazon.com. If you are buying a garden hose an Amazon review may be reliable, but if you are relying on Amazon to help you select music, odds are that you are at the start of an exceptionally long and frustrating learning curve. So that leaves one choice—AllMusic. AllMusic has an excellent stable of writers and of course lists far more titles than any paper volume could ever hope to cover. And its free—a vast improvement over plunking down a wad of cash every few years for the newest edition of the Penguin Guide. However, if you base your listening or record purchases on AllMusic reviews, you need to have some grasp of the individual reviewer’s tastes and even then, your lens will be limited. Back when Indigos was issued it earned a 4 ½ (out of 5) star review in Downbeat Magazine—not a rave, but an extremely high recommendation. AllMusic’s review of Indigos is 2 stars out of 5) –in most people’s minds, the mark of a true stinker!
What accounts for this inversion of critical opinion (as embodied in the AllMusic review) and the relative absence of re-issues? The first thing is tempo. Unlike most of Ellington’s output, this album takes a measured pace, without the usual quicker numbers to break up the slow ones. Remember that Ellington’s big band development ran through The Cotton Club, and the temperature of his music has generally been on the hot side of the spectrum. In this vein, Indigos is not representative of Ellington’s output, but is it “easy listening” or, as Charles Granata suggests in his essay appended to this re-issue, more of a development – like the direction taken by Miles on KOB. Indigo, as both a color, and an album is in some ways Ellington’s “kind of blue.”
Second, most of the songs are not Ellington compositions. While this might not work against most artists, Ellington is not ‘most artists’. His reputation is built on, amongst other things, being one of the greatest jazz composers of all time. With Ellington compositions taking up only three of the eight spots, this suggests to some critics that this is somehow less than a characteristic Ellington album, even though all eight compositions are of the highest order.
To some, the lack of self-composed songs, and the more measured, balladic, dance paced rhythms, has weighed down the album’s reputation. This evaluation, in my mind, ignores compelling mitigating factors. First, this is not some assemblage of second chair musicians. Ellington’s band members include, among others, Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonzalves, Jimmy Hamilton, Harry Carney, Clark Terry and Ray Nance. And these guys are not just going through the paces to earn another paycheck. One of Ellington’s trademarks is that he composes and arranges his music to afford his players ample solo opportunities and spotlight their strengths. Indigos is no exception. Ray Nance takes star turn on both trumpet and violin. The ballads play to Hodges strengths and his solos here are jaw droppingly gorgeous. And the list continues, through almost every player in the band.
