This one is a "Six Eye" Columbia release as well.
Most of the other Ellington albums are mono and I am not as averse to mono as I used to be.
I mean I deliberately made my garage system full mono for a number of reasons.
One of which, when you have a large "voice" even in mono, it still fills a room floor to ceiling, past the walls and even farther beyond sometimes, depending upon the recording.
I know many would not listen to Eddie Arnold, but one recording I have I swear his "mouth" is twenty feet tall, establishes itself below the floor and his piano is forty feet wide, from a mono recording.
I sometimes look up and have to pause a minute because I heard something fabulous coming from behind me. I know it's a phasing trick of how the recording came out and the way the reproduction interacted with the room, but the depth, height, width we can achieve with pure mono can not be discounted.
I am anxious to continue my exploration of this stack of stuff. Most of what I have pulled out has proven to be quite a bit above a VG or a VG+ grade, you might find commonly.
My grading system, I call them closer to "cherry" meaning they do not look touched for the most part.
It seems that the ones he archived in this way and placed in special boxes are a measure above the typical old record grade most people expect from a sixty year old recording.