Yet this first concert, the best of the three that Ellington was to organize in the last nine years of his life, holds up stunningly well today. Conservatives called it a blasphemous attempt to sully religion with jazz radicals thought it was a sellout on bended knee to organized religion. Though Duke Ellington called his first concert of sacred music "the most important thing I've ever done," it might have been more accurately called the most controversial thing he had ever done - even more so than the so-called "Controversial Suite." The year was 1965 institutions of all kinds, including organized religion, were under fire even Time magazine dared to run a cover with the legend "Is God Dead?" In response to progressive members of the clergy, jazz musicians like Ellington, Lalo Schifrin, Vince Guaraldi, and a bit later, Dave Brubeck took up the challenge of fusing Christian texts with jazz - and no project had a higher profile, nor drew more fire, than Ellington's.
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