Records

Most of the guys we know tend to like music with their romance. Our own idea of that duo under optimal conditions would, perforce, involve Peggy Lee's smoothest offering to date, The Man I Love (Capitol T864), for which Frank Sinatra conducts the ork. (And Frank told us: "I'm as proud of this LP as of anything I've ever done.") With Peggy's honeyed voice at its sexiest, Nelson Riddle's arrangements at their lushest, and tunes like My Heart Stood Still and There Is No Greater Love, this disc is one of the best of the year. The unbilled instrumental obbligatos, incidentally, are by such Hollywood bright lights as Harry Edison, trumpet, and Buddy Collette, sax ... If you're really out to score of an evening, follow up Peggy's platter on the turntable with This Is Nat "King" Cole (Capitol T870), a boodle of ballads that includes the flammable Forgive My Heart and That's All. Nat, like Peggy, latches on perfectly to Nelson Riddle's luscious scoring, and the result is sure-fire ... Same evening, same girl: for a heady nightcap, add Carmen McRae's After Glow (Decca 8583) a torchy yet jazz-happy rendering of some of the prettiest pops ever to tickle our ears (My Funny Valentine, I'm Through With Love, et al.). You should be cozy by now. Bon chance.

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Two modern-swing nifties (with just a trace of cool around the edges) delighted our ears on first hearing, seemed even better on successive plays. Sweets (Clef 717) features the Harry Edison orchestra in nine numbers all arranged by him, six of them his own compositions. Besides Sweets' compelling trumpet, there's lovely music from Ben Webster's tenor, Barney Kessel's guitar, the piano of Jimmy Rowles and Joe Mondragon's bass, plus Alvin Stoller's dynamic drumming. The other highly recommended disc is The Hawk Flies High (Riverside 12-233) featuring, natch, the peerless tenor of Coleman Hawkins, abetted by such classicists as J. J. Johnson, Hank Jones, Jo Jones, Oscar Pettiford, Barry Galbraith.

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Hear ye, o long of hair: the trouble with the gorgeously packaged Vivaldi, 18 Concerti for Flute and String Orchestra (Vox DL 353) is that although this de luxe, boxed album is a perfectly posh present for a music-loving giftee, you'll keep it for yourself if you buy it. The superb recording features Gastone Tassinari, an impeccable flutist, and I Musici di Milano back him up; together they blow these Baroque classics as good as Vivaldi could have wished.

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Two of the best piano LPs of the month sport an identical title, 'Round Midnight. Named for the Thelonious Monk tune heard on both LPs, they are by the west coast pianist Claude Williamson (Bethlehem 69) and the east coast doll Hazel Scott (Decca 8474). Claude swings like mad, and if you dig Mel Lewis' drum solos this is the one for you; but if you want something in a more conventional mood, the tasteful modern keyboard of Miss Scott is it. Her choice of lesser-known standards is delightful and all swings gently and quietly. We doubt whether anyone who sees the cover photo will contest Hazel's right to consider herself the world's prettiest pianist. (All right with you, Claude?)

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There are times when, listening to a whole batch of new releases, we get to wondering whether we're jaded, whether it isn't a failing of our own that makes so many records sound adequate but not especially exciting. Happened to us the other night – and then we put on Lee Konitz Inside Hi-Fi (Atlantic 1258) and the old electric thrill bounced right back. This is cool jazz as we like it: musicianly but uncontrived, precise yet relaxed, modern in its attitude but with its swinging ancestry in evidence throughout. Side One brings us Konitz' alto in four first-rate bands, two of them Konitz originals. A solid rhythm goes with: guitar, bass, drums. Side Two is a surprise; all of a sudden here's Konitz on tenor – for the first time on a record – with piano, bass, drums backing him up. It sounds good enough to make us hope he'll do it again.

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The pomp and pretension that have marked so much of the Modern Jazz Quartet's work are pleasantly and conspicuously absent from their latest effort, The Modern Jazz Qartet (Atlantic 1265). This time the cats are content just to swing most of the time, reminding us that three-quarters of the group are Gillespie alumni. Night in Tunisia and Bags' Groove are top drawer. There's even a medley of five ballads, mostly media for Milt Jackson's melodic viberations. And lamp that cover pic: the four solemn poseurs constitute the most unintentionally funny pic of the year.

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In 1912, the Titanic sank, New Mexico and Arizona were admitted to the Union, a carpenter named Schicklgruber was plying his humble trade in Munich and Igor Stravinsky started to compose his dissonant, impulsive Rite of Spring. When the ballet was premiered in Paris the following year, all hell broke loose in the audience: catcalls and derisive whistles led to fist-fights between the pro-and anti-Stravinsky factions and conductor Pierre Monteux could hardly hear the music he was making. In 1957, Monteux can conduct the same work (and does, on Victor LM 2085) and the abrasive harmonies and spiky rhythms cause not one mid-century eyebrow to rise. The world has caught up with the radical Rite. Though originally conceived as a series of prehistoric tribal dances, it is hard for anyone who saw Disney's Fantasia to now dissociate the writhing, raucous sounds from the gurgling lava and rampaging dinosaurs with which they were allied in the film: not a bad thing to our way of thinking, for the music seems more aptly geared to the throes of Creation than the stomping of stone-age sidemen.

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Having been Gallically spellbound by Edith Piaf long years ago, and more recently by Juliette Greco, we were all ready to execute a gentlemanly swoon for Patachou on Paris C'est une Blonde (Audio Fidelity 1814). Swoon we did, too, under repeated hammer blows of ze tallest corn ever to cross ze ocean. This gal may have been great back home, but the affected way she tackles such classics as Just One of Those Things induces severe mal de mer. It also generates the notion that, like some other sophisticated imports, this lady went down Wrong Street in trying to give those simple Americans what they want ... Bet you can't tell us who's the first American to sing calypso in this country. It was Brooklyn-born Josephine Premice, a passion-voiced wench who delivers herself of a passle of native plums on Caribe (Verve 2067). Two of the tunes are straight from the islands; in fact, right off the banana boat: The Man I Love and Taking a Chance on Love. Calypso Jo, however, makes it all sound just right.