LATEST ADDITIONS

Forget the Van Gogh-like cover. There’s nothing crazy going on here, or perhaps these four guys just wanted to subliminally suggest that you lend an ear. I’m glad I did.

Riverside issued this Charlie Byrd album in 1960, two years before his collaboration with Stan Getz on the classic Jazz Samba (Verve V6-8432), which has been reissued by both DCC Compact Classics and Speakers Corner (still in print, I believe).

It’s taken almost forty years for someone to be sufficiently inspired by Van Dyke Park’s epic Song Cycle to attempt an equally grand and ambitious musical undertaking, but with the release last year of this album by 25 year old Bay area harpist/composer Joanna Newsom (San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is a second cousin), the wait has proven worthwhile.

Bop clarinetist Tony Scott (born Anthony Joseph Sciacca in Morristown, NJ), who plays on this Sarah Vaughan album as part of an octet that includes Miles Davis (then 24), passed away the day before this was written, on the last day of March, 2007. An obit I read says that the eclectic Mr. Scott also arranged “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)” for Harry Belafonte. As I write this sentence, his velvety clarinet sings prettily behind Vaughan at the end of “It Might As Well Be Spring.”