Mayhew, Simmons and Ellington (the Duke's grandson) run this Legacy band between them with Simmons as chief arranger. Mayhew is the best-known soloist here (Person is only on four tracks) and the general cast of the album is to take mostly familiar Ducal themes and give them something of a new twist. Add in a Simmons original plus Reed's four vocals and you have quite a tasty dish. And yet, for all that I'm willing the record to succeed, there's something missing. It's the looseness, that innate feeling for the right note lengths and ease with the material that comes with woodshedding on the road. Not possible obviously so the album comes out as more a nearmiss than a triumph.

It opens with Simmons playing a solo version of its title piece, a composition originally offered to our Queen by Duke (but here dedicated to Mrs Edna Ellington, EKE II's mother) and seldom played since. It's an evocative melody and one that rather defies reinvention but elegantly performedhere by the under-sung Simmons, who plays well throughout (he's delightful on ‘Lush Life’) and also contributes ‘Home Grown’, a pretty decent blues. Person adds his own kind of muscular integrity whenever he appears and he's quite wonderful behind Reed on the nicely voiced ‘Solitude’, with its added percussion. Perhaps it's the drumming and percussion, less direct and snappy than I'd have liked in a setting like this that undermine the album's good intentions. For all that, the playing is accomplished and the arrangements are genuinely interesting. Oh well. Incidentally, the stylish cover painting is by Gaye Ellington, another Duke grandchild and sister to EKE II. What a family!