1. Chocolate Sundae
2. When Your Lover Has Gone
3. Candy
4. Ballads: Lush Life, Lullaby of the Leaves,
Makin' Whoopee, It Never Entered My Mind
5. Woody 'n' You
Stan Getz - Tenor sax
Gerry Mulligan - Baritone sax
Harry Edison - Trumpet
Oscar Peterson - Piano
Herb Ellis - Guitar
Ray Brown - Bass
Louis Bellson - Drums
Norman Granz could be (reputedly)
difficult to get along with, but he did a
huge amount for jazz. He employed many jazz
artists to perform at concerts (notably Jazz
at the Philharmonic) and to make records,
promoting the careers of such giants as Art
Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Billie Holiday, and
Ella Fitzgerald (for whom he produced her
classic "Songbook" albums). And he resisted
the colour bar - insisting that his concerts
could be attended by everyone. Perhaps his
greatest talent was to put musicians together
from many different areas of jazz and hear
what they could produce when faced with such
a challenge.
Having said all that, I regret
to say that this album lacks some of the spark
that Granz's sessions often engendered. It
mixes the diverse styles of Stan Getz, Gerry
Mulligan and Harry Edison but, while the music
is generally of a high standard, there seems
to be little chemistry between the performers.
Each musician plays excellent solos but I
cannot sense much interplay or empathy between
them.
I am tempted to say that
the star of the session is not, as you might
expect, Stan Getz but Harry Edison - even
though the opening track includes some of
his over-familiar clichés. The melodic
approach in his solos singles him out from
the rest. The album also offers a chance to
hear what a fine accompanist Oscar Peterson
always has been - finding just the right phrases
to interpolate into everyone's solos.
Probably the best moments
come in the ballad medley, which opens with
Mulligan playing Billy Strayhorn's Lush
Life (including the difficult verse).
Next Harry Edison plays Lullaby of the
Leaves, decorating the melody more flowerily
than Mulligan did. Ray Brown gets an unexpected
ballad feature on double bass in Makin'
Whoopee, and then Stan Getz rounds things
off with a radiantly lyrical performance of
It Never Entered My Mind.
The drums are recorded very
low down in the mix, and it often seems as
if Louis Bellson was on auto-pilot during
the session: content to chug along with the
brushes, providing little lift to the proceedings.
His Latin-American rhythm in Woody 'n'
You is shaky, and Herb Ellis supplies
a stronger beat through imitating the bongoes
by tapping the body of his guitar.
The playing time (47 minutes)
is not very generous but my main discomfort
with this album is that it has little of the
dynamism of the best jam sessions produced
under the Granz aegis - for example, those
that Art Tatum recorded with a variety of
different musicians.
Tony Augarde
CD Reviews
Verve 0602517621329
