Toward the end of his career, Duke Ellington found himself filling up his calendar when home in New York City, with a residence at the famous Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Plaza. This afforded fans to hear a scaled-down version of his Big Band in the form of an Octet. On this album we present a rare stereo recording of Duke's Rainbow Room Octet as they were captured playing live in New York at the famous Rainbow Room, during the summer of 1967. This is the second of only perhaps two issued live recordings of this rare instrumentation, (the other was featured in a previous release entitled Contrapuntal Riposte, SQU 216) featuring some of Ellington's great sidemen, such as Johnny Hodges, Lawrence Brown, Paul Gonsalves, Cat Anderson, and Harry Carney. Listen closely as Duke has fun bantering with his band and the fans as well, in this very intimate setting, as he performs for this Rainbow Room radio broadcast, and you will experience some of the most swingingly warm moments ever captured on an Ellington recording.
