Ballet With A Beat - Hal Mooney

Mambo ("West Side Story")

Ballet With A Beat
Hal Mooney And His Orchestra
Design: Marvin Glick
Photo: Don Bronstein
Mercury Records PPS 2017
1961

Outstanding space-age big band set arranged with a driving beat that doesn't stop from start to finish. Attractive book-fold jacket that feature virtually the same front and back cover art. Excellent engineering.

From the inside jacket notes: "I treasure the years," Hal Mooney said recently, "that I put in with the swing bands. That's where one really learns how to handle melodies so that they bounce with a beat and how to devise licks or figures that make a band swing. But it really is not enough. To be adequately prepared for the demands of stereo, I needed all those years with the many different vocalists. Out of this experience came a respect for melody, a feeling for changing colors in the use of instruments, an understanding of the role of counter-melody in enhancing, not distracting from, the basic melody, and a constant search for clear, well-defined "singing" lines.

Waltz Of The Flowers (from "The Nutcracker")
Sabre Dance (from "Gayne")
An American In Paris
Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy (from "The Nutcracker")
Mambo (from "West Side Story")
Pas De Fleurs (from "Naira Waltz")
Slaughter On Tenth Avenue
Barcarolle (from "Tales Of Hoffman")
March Of The Toys (from "Babes In Toyland")
Sleeping Beauty Waltz
Coppelia Waltz
Pizzicato (Cha-Cha from "Sylvia")