- Between the Devil & the Deep Blue
Sea
- A Sleepin’ Bee
- Come Rain or Come Shine
- Stormy Weather
- Over the Rainbow
- Let’s Fall in Love
- Day Dream/Prelude to a Kiss
- Good Queen Bess
- Things Ain’t What They used to Be
- It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got
That Swing
- Five O’Clock Whistle
- Come Sunday
- C Jam Blues
Andre Previn - Piano
Mundell Lowe - Guitar
Ray Brown – Bass
If ever a record had all
the ingredients of success; it’s this one!
Three master craftsmen of the music business
playing the compositions of Harold Arlen,
Duke Ellington and a few other great names.
In no way does the performance disappoint,
Andre Previn is in great form, he is probably
the most comprehensive musician of the age,
capable of exceptional classical piano concerts
and world renown as a conductor of famous
symphony orchestras. Unlike the majority of
his classical contemporaries, the majority
of whom could not bash out a decent 12 bar
blues to save their lives, Previn is in the
very top league of jazz pianists. The finest
bass player the jazz world ever produced,
the wonderfully talented Ray Brown, supports
him. Mundell Lowe also plays his part beautifully
in what I consider one of his finest performances.
Like Oscar Peterson, Previn
favours the Bosendorfer piano and after listening
to the combination of man and man and machine,
the choice is a good one!
It is strange how this instrumentation
for a trio, pioneered by Nat ‘King’ Cole works
so well. Oscar Peterson and Andre Previn have
alternated the third instrument between guitar
and drums. The answer to, which is best, is
probably that it depends on who the three
musicians are.
In a recent edition of the
always interesting Crescendo magazine Mike
Hennessey listed his ‘Seven Deadly Sins of
Jazz’, his sin No3 is that many talented jazz
musicians are useless composers. That does
not stop them from releasing whole albums
of their own compositions, the majority of
which are often never played again by them,
let alone anyone else! If the likes of Andre
Previn can avoid this temptation there has
to be a lesson for others to learn. Few if
any of us are likely to get anywhere the composing
talents of Harold Arlen and Duke Ellington
and these two composers alone wrote enough
great tunes to keep us all happy for a long
while.
To pick out any particular
track of this album would be a travesty, they
are all excellent and this album is a ‘must
buy’ for all lovers of the jazz trio, this
one gives virtuoso performances on every track!
Don Mather
CD Reviews
TELARC JAZZ CD 83303
