Collaboration - Rogers & Previn

 

40º Below

Collaboration

Rogers & Previn

Shorty Rogers and Andre Previn

RCA Victor LPM-1334

1955

From the back cover: This is a really unusual album. It presents two of the country's top arrangers in collaboration – as the title suggests – but it also pits them against each other in competition. In a sense it's sort of an arranger's challenge, a la the challenge routines you've seen by dancers, when first one will hoof a few steps and then the other will step out and try to outdo him.

The routine here is pretty simple. Both Shorty Rogers and Andre Previn wrote for and led exactly the same group of musicians. On the first side, Shorty leads off three different standards songs, via his arrangements of them. Following each of these, Andre presents an original instrumental, based on the same chords, but with, of course, numerous variations. On the second side of the record, this procedure is reversed, with Andre arranging the standard and Shorty producing the original based on its chords.

Ether to show that there are no hard feelings – or else because each has so much respect for the other as an instrumentalist – Shorty plays trumpet on the Previn pieces, and Andre plays piano on the Rogers arrangements. The rest of the group includes Bud Shank on alto and flute; Bob Cooper on tenor and oboe; Jimmy Ginffre on baritone sax; Milt Bernhart on bass (except on Glaudio, 40º Below, Some Antics and General Custer, where Curtis Counce takes over), and Al Hendrickson on guitar (except on It's Delovely, Poterhouse, You Do Something To Me and Call for Cole, on which Jack Marshall appears instead).

It's Delovely

Porterhouse

Heat Wave

40º Below

You Stepped Out Of A Dream

Claudia

You Do Something To Me

Call For Cole

Ev'rything I've Got (Belongs To You)

Some Antics

It Only Happens When I Dance With You

General Custer