How many Diana Krall albums does one need? That's a personal decision of course. However, if you have more than three but no Shirley Horn albums in your collection, you have a few too many. Ditto Sarah Vaughan, Ella, etc. That's not meant as a slight against Krall. In fact I think she'd probably agree with me.
The problem with an album like this is that there are two basically disinterested constituencies: Nino Rota fans who want to hear the actual soundtracks and people who don't know who Nino Rota is, or Fellini for that matter, and don't really care who they are or what The Umbrellas have done to interpret Rota's music.
It's an unacceptable prejudice and this review has nothing to do with me, but I admit to having had a problem with Lionel Hampton because he was a Nixon supporter. Isn't that ridiculous? I mean having a problem with it, not that Hamp supported tricky Dick. His politics are his of course, but this prejudice took hold during the 1970s.
Why bother with three phono preamps most of us can't afford? For the same reason the enthusiast automobile magazines cover the newest Ferraris and Lamborghinis: just reading about them is fun.
Elvis Costello took a quantum songwriting leap on his third album and with a generous six weeks in the studio following a world tour with new songs written, came up with intricate arrangements and sonically sophisticated production that while complex, was not detrimental to the intense propulsion of the music.
Rock ‘n’ roll historians invariably tracethe roots of the now-expansive, constantly morphing music to a Mississippi bluesman named Robert Johnson, a 1930s guitarist who ostensibly made a deal with the devil – trading his mortal soul for stellar talent - one night at a rural intersection (a “crossroads”). Johnson’s canon of songs, bolstered by his pioneer legacy and dark mythology, is embraced universally as being instrumental to the very structure of rock ‘n’ roll.