LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

In the 1950s, recorded jazz versions of Broadway musicals became popular thanks to the success of the Shelly Manne-Andre Previn My Fair Lady (Contemporary 7527). Thereafter many were called but few responded with anything resembling the combinations of material and musicianship married so well with Manne-Previn and Lerner-Loewe. In choosing Carmen, as Les Brown had done before him in Bizet Had His Day, guitarist Barney Kessel afforded himself timeless melodies that were suited without tampering (only enhancing) to the process of jazz improvisation. Previn and Manne are here, along with Buddy Collette, Ray Linn, and Victor Feldman. As Vernon Duke says: "The airs, once intoned, are then in for joyous and uninhibited airing. . . authentically inspired swinging. . ."
Track listing: Swingin' the Toreador, A Pad on the Edge of Town, If You Dig Me, Free as a Bird, Viva El Toro!, Flowersville, Carmen's Cool; Like, There's No Place Like . . .; The Gypsy's Hip