The billing sounds highly significant, but the circumstances are more mundane. Plank, subsequently an influential producer through the likes of Kraftwerk and Brian Eno, merely made his recently established studio available to Duke, who wanted to rehearse and record a couple of tunes for his private “stockpile”. It was just two tunes, here in three takes each (total time 29 minutes) and you'd have to bend over backwards to find much excitement in an original by Wild Bill Davis (‘Alerado’) and a piece of Ellington exotica (‘Afrique’) that he re-recorded seven months later as part of Afro Eurasian Eclipse. There's interest of course for anoraks, in the solos on the former piece by Canadian trumpeter Stone, and the brief wordless soprano voice on just one take of the latter. Plank made no contribution other than getting the music on tape, and the preferred version of both tunes is already available on the Storyville album New York New York (reviewed in Jazzwise 124).