A lovely performance
I came to hear Don Ellis after listening to Duke, Miles and Gil Evans, Monk, Brubeck, Woody Herman, and a whole lot of Getz. Monk and Brubeck prepared me for Ellis's tempo changes in his big band material; but who knew that Getz and Miles would predispose me to Ellis's ballads? It just took a while for me to hear those. The young Don Ellis had a way with ballads. Many would have been perfectly happy if he'd stuck with them, given that Miles Davis had abandoned them by then. That Ellis moved beyond ballads is to his credit -- but a lot of people who heard his inventive big band numbers in the '70s wouldn't necessarily have guessed that he had this kind of sweetness and subtlety to his slow tunes. For that reason, we're lucky to have this recording date available. The two takes of I Love You alone are worth the price, but the rest of the album is just as good. More's the pity that it didn't come out sooner, while Ellis could still garner the deserved credit.
