Album Reviews

To those of us at a certain age and religious persuasion, there's something bizarre about Iggy and the Stooges playing  Kutsher's Country Club, once one of the Borscht Belt's premiere venues. Of course Kutsher's and the Borscht Belt aren't what they used to be but Iggy and the Stooges still are!

The late New York Times rock critic Robert Palmer once wrote a Billy Joel review that was so scathing, so mean, so nasty and couched in personal terms, that even I, a fellow Billy Joel detractor (perhaps even a "hater" back then), cringed with embarrassment.

This impeccably produced (by Norman Granz, who literall built Verve Records and later Pablo around her), career summing concert takes Ella from her beginnings with the Chick Webb Orchestra to her then current quartet featuring Tommy Flanagan, Keeter Betts, Joe Pass and Freddie Waits, all brilliantly choreographed by master showman/producer/record executive Norman Granz along with Newport producer George Wein. 

I don't what Rudy Van Gelder was thinking or doing when he recorded the opening tune "Zoltan," by Woody Shaw who's on trumpet here. Rudy's got Elvin Jones' drum kit mixed way up front in the right channel and he's positively nailed Jones' muscular cymbal sound. And he's got Young's Hammond B-3 appearing three-dimensionally well-focused and forward of a line between the speakers. That's unusual for Rudy. He gets great presence from Shaw's trumpet in the left channel and Joe Henderson's tenor in the right.

If you're not acquainted, Pink Martini is either a large band or a "small orchestra" of 12 and occasionally more, created back in 1997 by Portland pianist Thomas M. Lauderdale and the group's lead singer China Forbes. The two began collaborating for fun while at Harvard.

The concert promoter, tour organizer, record label owner Norman Granz had a knack for assembling groups that produced successful sessions like this. Benny Green's somewhat defensive annotation tells you the story: Webster had been popular during the big band "swing" era as a member of Duke Ellington's band as its first star tenor saxophonist. He was one of the "big three," the others being Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins.