This release presents the complete "Jazz Giants ´58" album, which is the only recorded testimony of Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan & Harry "Sweet" Edison collaborating together in a recording studio.
As a bonus, two long tracks from a 1953 studio session which also included Getz and Edison.
Both these sessions were organized by producer-impressario Norman Granz.
Tracklisting:
01. CHOCOLATE SUNDAE (10:10)
02. WHEN YOUR LOVER HAS GONE (7:17)
03. CANDY (7:58)
04. BALLAD MEDLEY (11:53)
a) LUSH LIFE
b) LULLABY OF THE LEAVES
c) MAKIN WHOOPEE
d) IT NEVER ENTERED MY MIND
05. WOODY N YOU (9:34)
06. BALLAD MEDLEY (13:29) (*) Bonus Track
a) INDIAN SUMMER
b) WILLOW WEEP FOR ME
c) IF I HAD YOU
d) A GHOST OF A CHANCE
e) LOVE WALKED IN
f) SOPHISTICATED LADY
g) NANCY (WITH THE LAUGHING FACE)
h) I HADNT ANYONE TILL YOU
07. BLUES FOR THE COUNT (15:42) (*) Bonus Track
Total time: 76:06 min.
Tracks #1-5 from "Jazz Giants '58" (Verve MGV 8248).
Tracks #6 taken from "Norman Granz' Jam Session #3" (Clef MGC 653).
Tracks #7 taken from "Norman Granz' Jam Session #4" (Clef MGC 654).
Personnel on tracks #1-5: Stan Getz (ts), Gerry Mulligan (bs), Harry Sweets Edison (tp), Oscar Peterson (p), Herb Ellis (g), Ray Brown (b) and Louie Bellson (d). Recorded at Capitol Studios, Hollywood, on August 1, 1957.
Personnel on tracks #6-7: Harry "Sweets" Edison (tp,) Buddy DeFranco (cl), Benny Carter, Willie Smith (as), Stan Getz, Wardell Gray (ts), Arnold Ross (p), Count Basie (org on #2), Freddie Green (g), John Simmons (b) and Buddy Rich (d). Recorded in Hollywood, on August 18, 1953.
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Notes:
-Jazz Giants '58
"Producer Norman Granz (1918-2001) had an uncanny ability to create really amazing jazz albums by experimenting with the combinative chemistry of musical minds, temperaments, and personalities. While not every Granz session resulted in recordings of equal depth or profundity, the number of artistically rewarding, genre-defining albums that came together under his supervision is almost difficult for the human mind to fully comprehend. One fine example is Jazz Giants '58, a Verve album recorded inside the rented Capitol studios in Hollywood, CA on August 1, 1957 and released almost exactly one year later [...] Although it has since come to be identified mainly with Stan Getz, Jazz Giants '58 feels a lot like a Gerry Mulligan session, with Harry "Sweets" Edison perfectly complementing the other two horns. To support and illuminate the trumpet, tenor, and baritone saxes, Granz used his preferred rhythm trio Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, and Ray Brown and added master percussionist Louie Bellson, fully primed after working for his wife Pearl Bailey, his hero Duke Ellington, and with Granz's internationally famous Jazz at the Philharmonic project. This was the blossoming of the great era of long-playing records, and the participants clearly relished the opportunity to stretch out and jam together in a relaxed, intimate studio environment. "Chocolate Sundae," a ten-minute collectively improvised blues of incredible warmth and irresistible texture, is followed by seven- and eight-minute sets of creative variations on a couple of tunes that were in the air during the '50s. The nearly 12-minute manifestation of the patented Norman Granz "Ballad Medley" is especially powerful by virtue of starting out with Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life." An extended romp through the changes of Dizzy Gillespie's "Woody N You" (a tribute to the progressive sensibilities of bandleader Woody Herman penned during the 1940s) adds pure undiluted pleasure to an album that already sounds and feels like some of the best music ever recorded by any of the participants under any circumstances."
Arwulf Arwulf -All Music Guide
