Album Reviews

Twelve Broadway chestnuts from the days when Broadway shows were produced for New York sensibilities instead of for the midwest bus-hoards. Nothing poisonal, mind you, but Broadway today is aimed at tourists, not New Yawkers.

Whomever it’s aimed at, comb through the pseudo-operatic drek passing for “show tunes” today in most of the shows on the “Great White Way”and you wouldn’t add up to an album’s worth of standards coverable by the likes of Mel Tormé, speaking which there’s no one like the likes of Mel Tormé either!

Here, The Velvet Fog, backed by arranger Marty Paich’s Orchestra, which for this session included Paich on piano, Art Pepper (alto sax), Bill Perkins (tenor sax), Bill Hood (baritone sax), Al Porcino and Stu Williamson (trumpets), Vince DeRosa (French horn), Frank Rosolino (trombone), Ray Callender (tuba), Joe Mondragon (bass) and Mel Lewis (drums), covers the steamy “Too Close For Comfort” (Mr. Wonderful), “Once In Love With Amy” (danced by Straw Man Ray Bolger in Where’s Charley?), “A Sleepin’ Bee” (House of Flowers), “On The Street Where You Live” (if you don’t know, don’t ask!), “Old Devil Moon,” (Finian’s Rainbow), “Whatever Lola Wants” (Damn Yankees), “Too Darn Hot” (Kiss Me Kate) and other standards are so designated because they stand up over time.

As the reader who was kind enough to supply the orchestra members wrote in the email, "Hard to believe the liner notes (of the reissue) didn't indicate this."

Of course, the reissue remains true to the original cover, so it's really the fault of the original production.

Paich’s arrangements are crisply turned out and jumpily jazzy, filled with brass stings, sax solos and syncopated musical mayhem. Tormé, as the liner notes point out, saw himself as one of the band and not the “front man,” so the band gets to play more than just a back-up role.

This set, issued in 1960 sounds the way 1960 felt, for those of you too young to remember. It was a vibrant, upbeat, optimistic, sophisticated time, filled with the promise of the future when anything seemed possible.

Stereo on disc was but a few years old and demo style separation was in vogue, so the soundstage is somewhat artificial, with drums hard right and upfront, with saxes hard left, brass hard right and Mel mostly alone dead center with the L/R bridged by reverb. is by The rich, warm, yet extended and detailed recording more than compensated for the somewhat less than enticing spatial layout, with Tormés voice being especially satisfying.

Kevin Gray’s mastering perfectly compliments the recording and the time frame in which it was recorded. Knowing the recording venue and the who’s playing what would add to the reissue’s luster, but even without that information, this is an entertaining thowback to a long gone, sorely missed era. Mel lives on!