Blue Angels - Joe Bushkin

Blue Prelude

Blue Angels
Joe Bushkin
Arranged and Conducted by Kenyon Hopkins
Cover photo by Harry Burns / Grumman Aircraft Corp.
Notes by Gilbert Millstien / New York Times
Capitol Records ST 1094
1958

From the back cover: This album, Blue Angels, is named for and dedicated to the United States Navy's Flight Demonstration Team, a unit consisting of four formation fliers and two solo pilots flying the new Grumman F11F-1 Tiger. For a dozen years, and before an estimated 35,000,000 people, the Angels have, with a perfection that looks effortless to spectators, executed the most demanding low-level formation flying ever seen. "From the ground," an article in the magazine Aviation Week noted, "the four airplanes seem to swing through their maneuvers so smoothly that it appears that they are tied together... "At times, the wings of one plane are no more than three feet distant from those of another.

Joe Bushkin, the pianist, composer, and arranger, who is, as well, an aviation enthusiast, first saw the Angels put on their twenty-two-minute show in Washington D. C. He was deeply impressed by the grace, beauty, and precision of such stunts as their "Diamond Roll," "Left Echelon Roll" (a maneuver so difficult it is forbidden in normal military flying), "Fleur de Lis," "Knife Edge," and "Back to Back." His appreciation of their professional virtuosity was supplemented by a private admiration of the Angels themselves with whom he later became friendly and he determined to offer them a token of his feelings.

From Billboard - November 17, 1958: "Blue Room," "Beyond the Blue Horizon" and a Bushkin original, "Blue Angel Blues," are highlights in this "blue" ballad dozen. The pianist is in fine form, with strong support, in a swinging album.

Blue, Turning Grey Over You
Serenade In Blue
Blue Moon
Under A Blanket Of Blue
I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues
Beyond The Blue Horizon
Where The Blue Of The Night Meets The Gold Of The Day
The Blue Room
Blue Prelude
My Blue Heaven
Blue And Sentimental
Blue Angel Blues