(Bop, Cool) Andre Previn and His Pals - West Side Story (1959), FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

By the time Andre Previn and Shelly Manne recorded West Side Story in late 1959, they had set the pace and the standard for jazz versions of show and movie scores. Bassist Red Mitchell had been along for most of the ride. Others in jazz quickly followed suit after the incredible success of the Manne/Previn My Fair Lady (OJC-336), but none of their efforts achieved the popularity of Lady or its successors, which included this engaging treatment of the best songs from Leonard Bernstein's triumphal Broadway musical adaptation of the Romeo and Juliet story. From the haunting ballads "Tonight" and "Maria" to the amusingly congaesque approach to "I Feel Pretty," this is not merely one of Previn's, Manne's, and Mitchell's finest show tune albums. It is one of their finest albums, categories aside.
A NOTE ON THE COVER
Ben Shahn's Handball is one of the best-known contemporary American paintings, 1939, tempera on paper over composition board, 22 3/4 by З1 1/4". It is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Fund, and is reproduced here by permission of The Museum of Modern Art. Ben Shahn was born in Kovno, Lithuania in 1898 and came to the United States in 1906. He was brought up in Brooklyn, and worked as a lithographer for many years. His first one-man show was held in New York in 1930. Since then he has been a prolific artist in many forms — posters, illustrations, drawings, prints, murals. His work has been characterized by a social awareness and a feeling for the life of the city. In 1956 he was the first painter to be named Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard, and he lectured there. He lives in Roosevelt, New Jetsey.
(1) Their first, in 1936, was My Fair Lady (M3527, stereo S7327) — still, four years later, one of the current best-selling jazz albums, Previn & Manne have alternated since as leaders on a series of show-jazz albums: as Shelly Manne & His Friends, they've done Lady, Li'l Abner (M3533, stereo S7019) & Bells Are Ringing (M3559, stereo 57559); as Andre Previn & His Pals, they've recorded Pa! Joey (M3543, stereo S7543) & Gigi (M3548 , stereo S7548).**
(2) The Joy of Music by Leonard Bernstein. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1960. Reprinted by permission of the publishers. *
* (OJC 336)
** (OJC 407)
WEST SIDE STORY is based on Romeo and Juliet, set against a contemporary background of warring gangs on New York's West Side. Unlike most musicals, this one deals with a real social problem in terms of tragic theater; yet the production is brilliantly realized in song and in dance with wit and tenderness as well as tense drama. The music by Leonard Bernstein is an integral part of the total conception, its unconventional song structures and harmonic progressions are not the kind which would seem to lend themselves readily to modern jazz treatment. Yet, possibly because of the challenge provided by the Bernstein material, Andre Previn, Shelly Manne and Red Mitchell have improvised on it brilliantly, transforming it into one of their most imaginative show-jazz albums. (1)
This process of transformation is explained by Andre: "In my experience as a jazz musician I have grown more and more aware of the fact that a great tune within its original context (Broadway show, film, etc.) does not always automatically make a great tune for jazz improvisation. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the purpose of jazz performance to alter original versions of songs; mostly harmonic alterations but sometimes even alterations in construction. Being an admirer of countless song writers, I very often have certain guilt feelings about making such alterations, and in the case of Leonard Bernstein's music, these guilt feelings are magnified a hundred-fold. I happen to be a member of one of the largest unofficial musical clubs in America, namely that of 'unqualified admirers-bordering-on-idolatry of Leonard Bernstein.' If a man like Leonard Bernstein writes songs which defy the thirty-two bar length tradition, he must have undeniable reasons for it, and changing these songs into more commonplace constructions may seem at first glance nothing short of criminal. However, if I may I would like to refer to Lennie's book The Joy of Music."
The Bernstein statement to which Andre refers is quite unequivocal on this point: "A popular song doesn't become jazz until it is improvised on, and there you have the real core of all jazz: improvisation. Remember, I said that jazz was a player's art rather than a composer's. Well, this is the key to the whole problem. It is the player who, by improvising, makes jazz. He uses the popular song as a kind of dummy to hang his notes on. He dresses it up in his own way, and it comes out an original. So the pop tune, in acquiring a new dress, changes its personality completely, like many people who behave one way in blue jeans and a wholly different way in dinner clothes. Some of you may object to this dressing-up. You say, 'Let me hear the melody, not all this embroidery.' But until you accept this principle of improvisation, you will never accept or understand jazz itself." (2)
"PREVIN'S HECTIC CAREER," said Time magazine in April 1959, "is sometimes likened to Leonard Bernstein's, a comparison he modestly rejects. The record, though, is of a Jack-of-all-musical-trades, and master of many." In any event, the meeting up of Previn's jazz piano and Betnstein's music is interesting because of the much they have in common. Each was precociously gifted, each wields an awesome command of almost every kind of music. Each seems propelled by extraordinary energy.
Previn's special field has been in Hollywood, where, since he was seventeen (he's now thirty-one), he has composed, orchestrated and conducted upwards of thirty motion picture scores, his most recent being Gigi and Porgy and Bess,
Thus far in 1960, Andre has scored The Subterraneans and handled the musical direction of Bells Are Ringing for MGM. He has given numerous jazz concerts with his trio, including a record 5000 sell-out in San Francisco's Masonic Hall, January 29. He flew to New York to make his debut in Carnegie Hall as pianist with the New York Philharmonic under Andre Kostelanetz on February 21, playing the Gershwin
Piano Concerto. The N.Y. Times reported, "Mr. Previn's playing was as brilliant as could be desired." He appeared as guest star on the Dinah Shore show and other network TV programs. He played Grieg's A minor Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Miklos Rosza March 12 at the Shrine Auditorium, and on March 22 played two Beethoven piano trios with members of the Roth Quartet at UCLA's Schoenberg Hall. He was musical director and conductor for the annual Academy Awards presentation on April 4, and incidentally picked up his second consecutive Oscar for his work on Porgy and Bess. (His first was for Gigi.)
More has been written about Shelly Manne than of any drummer in recent jazz history. An indication of his popularity is a consistent winning of first place on his instrument in all major magazine polls (Playboy, Down Beat, etc.) the past four years. One of the most versatile of jazz musicians, Shelly acts in movies (The Five Pennies, The Gene Krupa Story) and TV, has composed and performed scores for two movies, the most recent, The Proper Time, to be shown at this summer's Cannes Film Festival. Since 1955 he has led his own group, Shelly Manne & His Men, which has just concluded a successful six-week tour of Europe. He has been an exclusive Contemporary recording star since 1953.
Red Mitchell, brilliant modern bassist, is one of the group who have expanded the possibilities of the instrument so it is no longer restricted to its primary rhythm function. In Red's hands it is capable of expressive, hornlike solos of great beauty and power. Red has played and recorded with most of the great jazz stars. He works often with Andre, both in recording film scores and as a regular member of the Andre Previn Trio in concerts, nightclubs and jazz festivals throughout the country.
By Lester Koenig
April 5, 1960

REM DATE 1959
REM DISCID 6D08F708
REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v0.99pb4"
PERFORMER "Andre Previn and His Pals"
TITLE "West Side Story"
FILE "01 - Something's Coming.wav" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Something's Coming"
    PERFORMER "Andre Previn and His Pals"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "Jet Song"
    PERFORMER "Andre Previn and His Pals"
    INDEX 00 02:34:17
FILE "02 - Jet Song.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "Tonight"
    PERFORMER "Andre Previn and His Pals"
    INDEX 00 04:45:55
FILE "03 - Tonight.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    TITLE "I Feel Pretty"
    PERFORMER "Andre Previn and His Pals"
    INDEX 00 05:20:62
FILE "04 - I Feel Pretty.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    TITLE "Gee, Officer Krupke!"
    PERFORMER "Andre Previn and His Pals"
    INDEX 00 06:44:65
FILE "05 - Gee, Officer Krupke!.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    TITLE "Cool"
    PERFORMER "Andre Previn and His Pals"
    INDEX 00 04:53:02
FILE "06 - Cool.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    TITLE "Maria"
    PERFORMER "Andre Previn and His Pals"
    INDEX 00 03:18:17
FILE "07 - Maria.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 08 AUDIO
    TITLE "America"
    PERFORMER "Andre Previn and His Pals"
    INDEX 00 05:26:73
FILE "08 - America.wav" WAVE
    INDEX 01 00:00:00

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008
EAC extraction logfile from 24. December 2009, 12:16
Andre Previn and His Pals / West Side Story
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Delete leading and trailing silent blocks   : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations       : Yes
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TOC of the extracted CD
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        8  | 33:24.17 |  4:51.50 |    150317    |   172191
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