Shorty Rogers And His Giants

 

Mambo Del Crow

Shorty Rogers And His Giants

RCA Victor LPM 1195

1956

From the back cover: Modern jazz is today in need of a leader, a fresh source of ideas and an inspirational fountainhead. The leaders of the bast will hold their positions only until new men are album to publicly prove themselves and they ideas in bidding for popular acclaim. In this album, RCA Victor features Shirty Rogers, whose musical ideas are making the most potent in the present jazz movement. In order to let Shorty express these ideas in his own way, he is given free rein as to composition, arrangement and choice of musicians.

Beginning his career with Red Norvo, who became his brother-in-law, Shorty was later drafted into the Army where he played trumpet in numerous service bands. After his discharge, he joined the original Woody Heron Herd. In composing such great instrumentals as Back Talk and Keen And Peachy for the full Herd and the majority of numbers performed by the Woodchoppers, Shorty soon became a bulwark of the fabulous Woody Herman arranging staff. Later, with Stan Kenton, he scored brilliantly on trumpet and with such compositions as Jamba and Jolly Rogers. At the moment he lives in Southern California where his time is divided between leading a jazz group, writing for films and teaching composition.

On this record you will hear two of Shorty's aggregations. The members of the first ensemble are: Shelly Manne, drums; Joe Mondragon, bass; Hampton Hawes, piano; Art Salt, alto sax; Gene England, tuba; Milt Bernhart, trombone; Johnny Grass, French horn; and Jimmy Giuffre, tenor sax. Opening their collection is Morpo, described by Shorty Rogers as having "that fundamental swing quality necessary t all jazz." This quality, said to be independent of rhythm, is illustrated by Johnny Graas in what is perhaps the first recorded jazz solo on French horn, followed by Bernhart, Salt, Shorty and an improbable quote by Hampton Hawes. Bunny musically incarnates a very real person with delicate and expressive solo work by Salt and Grass, steeped in a more contrapuntal idiom than is usual for jazz.  Powder Puff is a Latin original by Shelley Manne, who is known for his brilliant resolution of the number's final chord. During Mambo del Crow a very "hip" crow happened to fly into the studios where he participated as vocalist; the work features Milt Bernhart and Shelly Manne and proves rhythmically that jazz can borrow from Latin music to the enhancement of each.

The Pesky Serpent is a Jimmy Giuffre original arranged not unlike his great Four Brothers, and featuring him along with Milt, Shorty, Hamp and Art. Diablo's Dance showcases the taut, crackling piano of Hamp Hawes in a Latin manner, complete with tambourine introduction by Shelly Manne. Pirouette is Roger's graceful impression of a ballet which he once scored for a film, while the finals section is another number by Giuffre entitled Indian Club which combines Indian and swing motifs in an exceptionally clever way.

Shorty's second group displayed in this recording includes; Shorty Rogers, trumpet; Pete Jolly, piano; Shelly Manne, drums; Curtis Counce, bass and Jimmy Giuffre, tenor sax. Over and above the wonderfully imaginative work of the individual soloists, it is Shorty's writing which immediately sets his aggregations off from all others. Both the Rogers original, Joycycle, and the Rodgers and Hart standard, The Lady Is A Tramp, are cases in point. Their very structure is so excitingly (and often contrapuntally) formulated that the ensemble passages are as brilliantly conceived as the extemporaneous wailing by the variety of soloists. But even more than this, it is Shorty's closely styled, interdependent harmonies that make of each of his productions a thing of simple aural brilliance – simple, that is, in everything but the way they are put together.

In addition to the tunes already mentioned, this session of September 10, 1954, also produced the wonderfully stimulating version of Al Cohn's The Goof And I, and the trip-hammer wailing over the Bird's My Little Suede Shoes.

As we can at once hear in this recording, these were session like all those Rogers has led in the past and like those which he will undoubtably go on leading as long as his conception of jazz maintains its present high level of intelligence – full of vital perception which cannot but fall easily on tired ears. 

Morpo

Bunny

Powder Puff

Mambo Del Crow

Joycycle 

The Lady Is A Tramp

The Pesky Serpent

Diablo's Dance 

Pirouette

Indian Club

The Goof And I

My Little Suede Shoes