Tears of Joy - Don Ellis

In the summer of - oh, probably 1983, I was obsessed with a Don Ellis piece called Strawberry Soup that was being performed by the Madison Scouts drum & bugle corps.  I thought I had the meter figured out as a constantly changing one - probably lots of 3/8 and 6/8 with some 2/4 and 4/4 mixed in (since there was no other way to stitch the thing together).  I later copy a friend who had this copy to run me a copy of SS, and that's been the only version of the original I have ever ben able to lay my hands on.
It turned out that Ellis' compositions were all kept at Eastfield Junior College in Mesquite - literally across the highway from my roommate's home, so at some point he went over and copied the manuscript score for SS.  To our shock, with the exception of the 4/4 finale, the entire composition was in 9/4.  Even for college music students, the thing was nearly impossible to follow, even with the 1971 recording playing, and the score right in front of us.  We transcribed a few of the more familiar parts for trumpt, trombone and horn, but generally just shook our heads.  And kept listening to the album.
Over the years I have never been able to locate a copy of the original album (of course I haven't had a turntable since 1993, so it wouldn't have done me much good).  Then, I just discovered this CD at a Virgin store in Chicago Tuesday night.  When I listened to it this week, I discovered that you could actually make out much more than on my 23 year old cassette recording of the album, and that what I'd always heard as a thin, bass-less performance actually had pretty much all the sound range you'd want from a big band performance.  Couple of other surprises as well - this 1971 double album includes Loss, which was a highlight of the drum corps theatrical production BLAST! a few years ago.  (Haven't listened to it - or anything else - yet, but am looking forward to it).