Recordings

After a few stunning singles, including A Very Special Love,Johnny Nash (ABC-Paramount 224) gets his chance to soothe a raft of standards (Imagination, That's All, etc.) in his first LP. He's a new and polished entrant into the Johnny Mathis school of celestial piping and his debut is the mellowest of ear balm ... Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (Capitol W1053) is, as you might expect, a slowtempoed journey to unrequitedsville during which an in-voice Frank, backed by a knowing Nelson Riddle, offers solace to "the Losers," as Frank likes to call them. Willow Weep for Me, Angel Eyes, What's New and a specially-scripted Only the Lonely, by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, are the standouts in another smash Sinatra platter. Extra dividend: a painting of a punchinellopussed Frank on the cover ... Ungimmicked and gently swinging is Carmen for the Cool Ones (Decca DL 8738), not a hipster's reading of the Bizet bit, but rather Carmen McRae thrushing prettily to beat the band (Fred Katz') on the likes of Any Old Time, The Night We Called It a Day, All the Things You Are ... Other eminently listenable pop vocal platters: Eydie in Love (ABC-Paramount 246), Miss Gorme alternately nuzzling and belting the lyrics to some of this generation's most romantic roundelays (When the World Was Young, In Other Words, Wee Small Hours, etc.); Dakota Staton's Dynamic! (Capitol T1054), on which Dakota rears back and roars like a Fury to the utter delight of everyone within listening range, easily half the population of the U.S.A. ... For contrast, try the winsome whisperings of Julie Is Her Name, Vol. II (Liberty 3100), Miss London's latest exercise in sexy breath control, backed by naught but a bass (Red Mitchell's) and guitar (Howard Roberts').

•

To ye who are truly, baroquely long of hair and musically large in the dome department, two impeccably performed and recorded new discs are particularly commended. Dietrich Buxtehude: 5 Sacred Cantatas (ARC 3096) continues Archive Productions' history of music, belongs in the German Baroque period and belongs on your record shelves; Music for Three and Four Harpsichords (Angel 45022) features a Bach three-harpsichord concerto, a Bach adaptation for four harpsichords of a Vivaldi four-fiddle concerto, a Thurston Dart adaptation of another Vivaldi concerto, and winds up with a four-harpsichord showpiece by George Malcolm: variations on a theme of Mozart. A unique disc that should become a collector's item.

•

Manny Albam, one of the most prolific composer-arranger-conductors in the biz, has delivered himself of The Blues Is Everybody's Business (Coral 59101), a spunky, funky four-part jazz suite flavored with elation and torment, grins and groans, the stuff the blues are made of. Embellishing the brilliantly written work is a rare performance rapport, thanks to such nifty instrumentalists as Bob Brookmeyer and Urbie Green on trombone, Art Farmer on trumpet, Ed Costa on piano, Al Cohn on tenor, Vinne Burke on bass and some 20-odd more. The suite stands as one of the unique musical offerings of the month ... Blues bound also is Belafonte Sings the Blues (Victor LOP-1006), about which Harry says, "This is the area -- the blues -- with which I have the strongest identification ... Here I can just step out and sing wholly the way I feel." Harry must have felt just fine, because this disc is the best he's done to date.

•

The team of Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley is well served by the simultaneous issue of a set under Miles' name, Milestones (Columbia CL 1193), and another under Adderley's, Somethin' Else (Blue Note 1595). Both have an umbrageous, intense quality that comes through most effectively at slow tempos. The Columbia set has a sextet personnel, with John Coltrane's tenor as busy as ever. The Blue Note item just offers the two horns with a first-rate rhythm team -- Hank Jones, piano: Sam Jones, bass; Art Blakey, drums. In view of this and the fact that Miles' Autumn Leaves is one of the mellowest mood-makers of the years, we'll give the nod to Blue Note, while recommending that you give a hearing to both teams.

•

Mort Sahl at Sunset (Fantasy 7005) is just-out-of-UCLA Sahl, freshly released but cut in the days before he became the besweatered darling of the politically and socially hip. The LP was recorded at Sunset Auditorium in Carmel, California, at an early Brubeck concert, and the audience, then as now, dug him deeply. There's the yarn about the hi-fi nut who moved his family into the garage and used his home as a giant speaker enclosure. And the 1953 Jaguar that came with lubricating instructions by T. S. Eliot. And his description of the sincere Ivy Leaguer: one who buys a four button charcoal gray suit with five vents and wears glasses with wrought-iron frames. His definition of East Coast Jazz: any record with Shorty Rogers on it. Five-year-old fare served up by Sahl sounds better than most of the freshly baked ham handed out by most other funnymen.

•

No tricky chords, no oddball voicings, no falsetto screams, but a lot of toe-tapping, good clean fun is the stuff of Baubles, Bangles and Beads (Columbia CL 1211), spotlighting the Kirby Stone Four. Most infectious vocal renditions: the title tune and a rollicking In the Good Old Summertime, but just about everything on the platter makes for happy, uncomplicated listening.

•

The wild oscillation in quality of stereo discs is leveling off a bit, we're happy to relate; an excellent example of the better stereo engineering now available is Moussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (Victor LSC-2201) played impressively -- in the Ravel orchestration -- by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner up. Equally worthy is Stravinsky's Petrouchka (Omega OSL-8) in a lively yet sonorous performance by the Cento Soli ork of Paris, under Rudolf Albert, a young comer in the conducting dodge. Both pieces are bravura compositions which give the best stereo rigs a challenging chance to show their stuff.

•

Want to be #1 Santa to a Mozart buff? Then gift him or her with the new stereo Don Giovanni (London OSA-1401) done handsomely by the Vienna Phil, State Chorus, Josef Krips (blowing baton) and socko soloists; four discs, boxed, libretto in Italian and English.

•

On the jazz scene, excellent stereo engineering can be heard on several discs which are musical worthies, too. Jazz on the Bounce (Bel Canto SR/1004) features the quintets of Curtis Counce and Buddy Collette, one side to each: Counce seemed to us not quite at his best and pretty preoccupied with boppish zip-zip; Collette's collection pleased us mightily ... Soft Swingin' Jazz (Coral 57208) aptly describes the music of the Joe Newman quartet, might have given us even greater joy if it had dispensed with an obtrusive jazz organ and concentrated more on ex-Basieite Newman's beautiful trumpet ... Saxophilic swinging to satiate the senses of the gonest saxophile swells forth from The Saxophone Section (World Wide MGS-20001), which gives free rein to Coleman Hawkins and four other blowers of Adolphe Sax' invention (Marshall Royal, Frank Wess, Frank Foster, Charlie Fowlkes); their blues numbers are especially glossy.