Monday, October 09, 2006
Dreamsville
I decided Gaylord's show would be a good opportunity to dip into the Henry Mancini catalogue, staying away from obvious hit songs & novelties. There are certain albums I wish I had, like Shelly Manne's small group arrangements of Peter Gunn tunes, performed as the 1950s TV private eye would have heard them on the bandstand at "Mother's," the jazz club he frequented. There are countless versions of Mancini songs, but hardly anyone pulls them apart & reconstructs them, as the Oranj Symphonette did on their two albums. Mancini's music for Arabesque is exotique even by his standards, & he rarely featured "action" sequences on his soundtrack records. This set could easily have been twice as long & gone deeper into covers.
What else. David S. Ware's interpretation of "Autumn Leaves" is like standing under a maple tree on a breezy day in late October. There's "Bad Passion," Italian electro-disco with a ridiculous vocal. The sophistication of Freddie Hubbard with Wayne Shorter. The Jive Bombers are known for their "human echo chamber" lead singer, but he sure listened to Louis Armstrong. The Supremes turn a Four Tops hit emotionally inside out just by being The Supremes. A forgotten great vocal perfomance from David Ruffin late in his career ("I wasn't born with a broken heart; it took somebody else to tear it apart."). & Sonny Rollins, & so the program ends on a melancholy note, which is always quite lovely when I do it right.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
What else. David S. Ware's interpretation of "Autumn Leaves" is like standing under a maple tree on a breezy day in late October. There's "Bad Passion," Italian electro-disco with a ridiculous vocal. The sophistication of Freddie Hubbard with Wayne Shorter. The Jive Bombers are known for their "human echo chamber" lead singer, but he sure listened to Louis Armstrong. The Supremes turn a Four Tops hit emotionally inside out just by being The Supremes. A forgotten great vocal perfomance from David Ruffin late in his career ("I wasn't born with a broken heart; it took somebody else to tear it apart."). & Sonny Rollins, & so the program ends on a melancholy note, which is always quite lovely when I do it right.
