I love swing… but for me it is always eternally leading up to that midsummer midnight moment in 1956 when Paul Gonsalves’ tenor sax takes flight.
“It’s thrilling to hear Gonsalves’s confidence grow over the six minutes, as he finds new ways to vary the tune, with the occasional slip through sheer exhaustion only adding to the tension. Drummer Sam Woodyard keeps driving the band forward magnificently, and we hear Ellington and others shouting “dig in Paul, dig in!” and generally whooping with joy, not quite believing how in alignment everything suddenly is. Festival organiser George Wein was signalling for them to wrap up, increasingly concerned by the bacchanalian abandon of the audience, which now famously included a woman dancing on stage and concluded with a mini riot”. - Matt Groom, writing for PrestoMusic.
No real footage of this legendary moment in jazz actually exists (and even the initial released recording was a partial reconstruction), but Ron Murvihill has certainly done an amazing job here trying to recreate it from other concerts.