Guild’s Cole Porter
compilation gets off to a very melodramatic
start in the shape of Guy Luypaerts’s
recording of Begin the Beguine.
Still, this was School of Capitol 1950
and its garish veneer was doubtless
just the thing. There’s nothing else
quite so uncompromisingly brash in this
selection of recordings though there
are moments of succulence galore, ones
to enchant the ball-gowns if not necessarily
the barflies. It’s that sort of collection.
Kostelanetz’s Night
and Day comes fully armed with pizzicati
and the swirl of counter-melodies and
this is the first of his contributions
to the disc. Despite the rather brash
self-confidence it promotes it surely
diminishes Gordon Jenkins’s own offerings.
The Jenkins band around this time seems
to have succumbed to the affliction
of tropical percussion which, when combined
with some silken violin writing, does
give the whole thing a rather queasy
taste. Jenkins returns to the theme
In The Still Of The Night – once
again not this band’s finest hour in
the recording studio.
I wasn’t expecting
Farnon to experiment with an electric
guitar solo on Just One Of Those
Things but he does, and he’s saved
by the usual articulacy of his writing
and the generally superior nature of
the bands he directed. It’s appropriate
that the French-born Eddie Barclay flies
the Tricolor in I Love Paris.
David Rose’s arrangement
of I Get A Kick Out Of You was
recorded in the same year, 1955, as
Kostelanetz’s Night and Day. And
they share a certain similarity of approach
– typically vibrant and suave, with
pizzicato kicks to urge the material
onwards. But there were other approaches
as well and other solutions to questions
of balance and colour. Stanley Black’s
solution was to infiltrate a solo piano
into I’ve Got You Under My Skin and
Easy to Love. Mantovani encourages
some waltz dancing in his very Viennese
Wunderbar. Percy Faith’s You’d
Be So Nice To Come Home To is a
warmly romantic opus and a useful rejoinder
to Gordon Jenkins and the album ends
with a fine extended suite from British
maestro Louis Levy.
The notes are as usual
with this series well researched and
enjoyable. Sound quality is good though
occasionally treble starved, especially
with the oldest material here.
Jonathan Woolf
GUILD LIGHT MUSIC GLCD 5127 [76:44] 
