Records

Once in a blues moon a record comes along that demands to be called a classic. Such is Jam Session #8 (Clef 711), a disc that makes us wish we had recourse to an untapped larder of laudatory adjectives. For here assembled are 10 top Jazz-at-the-Phil stars, individualists all, making like a pack of blues-blooded hounds of jazz, baying at a hot full moon. Side B is a ballad medley with each of the soloists playing his favorite. It is – to use a strong word in all seriousness – superb. But it's the A side that's really got the stuff of greatness. In Jam Blues the 10 work like this: Oscar Peterson's piano leads off, richly and intricately; then up comes Johnny Hodges with his creamy alto; next Ben Webster lets go with his tenor sax; now the sharp and brilliant trumpet of Roy Eldridge takes over; Flip Phillips' tenor sax rides in, then; and now Diz comes on to blow the house down; Illinois Jacquet's tenor follows; last comes Lionel Hampton's vibraharp – and throughout the solid, riding rhythm is provided by Peterson's piano, Ray Brown on bass and Buddy Rich on drums. The space we've allotted to this recording is a measure of our esteem.

Ella and Louis (Verve 4003), who could be none other than Fitzgerald and Armstrong, mingle pipes and passivity in a packet of pretty standards that includes the likes of Foggy Day, Moonlight in Vermont and Stars Fell on Alabama. Joyfully, Ella bears most of the vocal brunt, while Louie clears his throat from time to time and interjects some noodling trumpet counterpoint in the background (aided by simpatico cats Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown and Herb Ellis). Out of it all glides some deliciously romantic, jazz-flavored stuff for toast-warm fireside moments. Miss Fitzgerald – as ever – doles out her lyrics with a palms-up purity that is the wonder of our age: it is impossible for the effortless Ella to err ... You'd be wise to follow up the Ella-Louis effort on the turntable with the George Shearing Quintet's When Lights Are Low (MGM E3264). You know the style – piano, guitar and vibes blowing in quiet unison – and you know how evocative it can be in the right surroundings. This is a round-up platter of the Quintet's best work over the past several years; it's not new but it's nifty.

Good songs and bad, good Sinatra and bad: these are the mixed ingredients of That Old Feeling (Columbia CL 902), an LP of re-issued singles most of which were cut during Frankie's nose-dive period. The Voice's voice sounded pretty punk then, even on such top tunes as Autumn in New York and The Nearness of You. He just didn't come across as casually crisp as he does today (on the Capitol label, with Nelson Riddle's fiddles); his phrasing was jerky and unsteady, his pipes sounded scratchy, his breath control seemed shot. Add to these singer-faults a couple of arias as abysmally wretched as That Lucky Old Sun and you may understand why we can't call this a heel-clicking disc, even though it has its moments.

Composer Gioacchino Rossini had a reputation for facility ("Give me a laundry list: I'll set it to music"), flexibility (pressed for an overture to a new comic opera, he re-used that of an earlier tragic opera and it fit perfectly) and laziness (he retired at 37 to live in blissful idleness for 40 more years). Despite the long vacation, he cranked out, along with other stuff, 35 operas (one of which, The Barber of Seville, is maybe the best musical comedy ever written). He is, today, known to even the lowest of brows and shortest of hairs: everybody's heard that "Figaro, Figaro!" bit from the Barber and the Lone Ranger's theme music (otherwise known as Hi-yo, Silver or, more rarely, the overture to William Tell.) Less well-known are Rossini's Sonatas for Strings, the first four of which are now done up gleamingly by the 13 members of the Solisti di Zagreb, under Antonio Janigro (Vanguard 488). These are sweet, lively, melodic neo-Mozart, but Mozart sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, for they are nothing if not Italian: warm, sunny and "vocal." Rossini said he wrote these charming chamberworks when he was 12, but you know Gioacchino – anything for a gag: he was probably all of 15.

The Blues (Pacific Jazz 502) is a worthy, full-flowering sampling of the Pacific manner. It's not only a fine example of that genre, but the eight well-known star combos that each play one number (including the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, the Bud Shank Quintet, the Russ Freeman Quartet) stay happily unexperimental throughout. Incidentally, if you have a secret acquaintance with anyone who doesn't dig modern jazz, it's our bet you can wean him in 6:07 flat with the Bill Perkins-John Lewis Quintet's rendition of 2 Degrees East–3 Degrees West, the kind of indigo that haunts you in the stilly night.

Those of you who enjoyed Gordon Jenkins' heartstring-plucking paean to New York City, Manhattan Tower, when it first appeared in 1946, should break out in goose bumps over the fact that Jenkins has pressed it afresh. But don't. It stinks – for a couple of reasons: the new version (Capitol T766) is three times longer than the original, and the added ditties, characters, scenes and interludes have turned the Tower into an embarrassing bore of crashing dimensions. In addition, the new twist finds Julie (the girl) giving a firm brush to Steven (the boy), a ridiculous boob who wants to get hitched. Even the Dignity of Man is forsaken. Happily, one unforgettable tune to come out of it all still sparkles 11 years later: New York's My Home.

Even before the birth of jazz, New Orleans could boast a fountain of musical Americana in the person of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a French-American piano virtuoso who wrote glittering keyboard pieces filled with the flavor of his adopted country. An American piano virtuoso of our own day, youngish Eugene List, has resurrected a dozen all-but-forgotten Gottschalk numbers and plays them enthusiastically on a quaint, colorful collector's item platter called The Banjo, and other Creole Ballads, Cuban Dances, Negro Songs and Caprices (Vanguard 485). The title piece, The Banjo, emulates that instrument and cribs a chunk of Camptown Races to good effect; a hint of a slowed-down Skip to My Lou runs hauntingly through the gentle La Savane; Old World gavottes dance cheek-to-cheek with New World cake-walks throughout; and if you keep your ears open, you may even catch an occasional shy, fleeting forecast of ragtime. Tremolo-embroidered corn like The Dying Poet (a favorite of fair, be-bustled 19th Century piano students) inevitably calls to mind the silent screen's most poignant moments, for which Gottschalk's lacier creations provided eternal accompaniment. A disarming, highly listenable disc.