Search - Mel Torme, Gerry Mulligan, George Shearing :: Classic Concert Live

Ken D. (Allthatjazz)
Reviewed on 9/2/2009...

Excerpted from a longer concert aired on NPR's Jazz Alive! in Nov. 1982, this excellent CD finds all three musicians at the top of the game. Too bad additional material, including all three of Mulligan's big band instrumentals, were omitted from this CD. There's little hope of a second volume.

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"Great old melodies" performed in startling, new ways.

Mary Whipple | New England | 06/09/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This recently discovered 1982 recording of the Carnegie Hall performance of Mel Torme, George Shearing, and Gerry Mulligan is the only known recording of these three giants performing together, and what a performance it is! Mulligan's fifteen-piece orchestra connects the artists' solos and fills the recording with atmospheric effects, haunting beats, and dramatic accents. Torme's evolution from crooner of beautiful melodies, as he was in the 1977 "London Sessions," to a full-out jazz performer just five years later, is obvious through his relaxed scatting and his use of his voice as a jazz instrument--on a par with Mulligan's sax and Shearing's piano.



Containing all the patter of a live performance, the CD gets off to a rousing start with Count Basie's "I Sent For You Yesterday and Here You Come Today," a lively swing song in which the performers are obviously having fun--an all-scat track in which the trio echoes and plays off each other, improvising as they go. Mulligan's composition, "Jeru" features Torme and Mulligan singing together in a song that is almost without a recognizable melodic line, filled with what Torme calls "crazy bridges." A Duke Ellington medley allows each man to solo, but they move back and forth, picking up each other's motifs and ending up back where they began. Thelonius Monk's bluesy "Round Midnight," sung as a haunting ballad, contains two long solos by Mulligan and Shearing, along with much improvisation and many key changes.



One of the most interesting tracks is "Line for Lyons," in which Torme, Mulligan, and Shearing, aided by Don Thompson on bass, recreate the "Mulligan Quartet" of earlier years, with Torme representing the clarinet through his scatting, and the soloists sometimes performing in different tempos simultaneously. The eleven-minute long "Blues in the Night" serves as the grand finale, a wildly imaginative treatment of the Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer standard in which the performers are so in tune with each other that they soar into new realms.



Despite the fact that they are playing in Carnegie Hall, the three stars create the feeling of playing in an intimate jazz club--experimenting with songs full of dissonances, changes of rhythm, soaring improvisation, and non-stop scat. The orchestra, generally sensitive to the solos of the stars, somewhat overpowers Shearing, on occasion, and greater amplification of the piano would have helped. This recording of three jazz greats, having fun at a time when all three were making changes in their styles, is a landmark recording, one for which some small problems with mixing can be excused. n Mary

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That Irreplaceable Mel

Rick Cornell | Reno, Nv USA | 06/24/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As we all know, nobody is indispensable. And very, very few of us are irreplaceable. But after listening to this great c.d. several times, I am reminded that Mel Torme is one of those very, very few. There wasn't a male jazz singer like him when he was alive and kicking; and there hasn't been one like him since he passed on 10 years ago.



I mention this to some, and the response is, "Was Torme actually a jazz singer?"



Hah! Are you kidding? Listen to his version of "Sent for You Yesterday and Here You Come Today", which weaves in Basie's "Everyday I Have the Blues." Or listen to how he sings the three Gerry Mulligan compositions from the "Birth of the Cool" era, "Jeru", "Walkin' Shoes", and "Line for Lyons", and ask again if you haven't figured it out!



Listening to this also reminds me of this major truth: As Bobby Short was to Cole Porter, Mel Torme was to George and Ira Gershwin. Probably Torme's magnum opus was the 17-minute Gershwin medley on "Live at the Maisonette"; but listen to how he slips some Gershwin into the Jobim medley, "Wave/Agua de Beber." Or listen to how the "terrible trio" (as they were self-dubbed) do Johnny Mercer's "Blues in the Night", like a tune from "An American in Paris." And listen to how these three jazz giants do the encore, "Lady Be Good." This is a knock-off of Count Basie's immortal version of this Gershwin chestnut, with Mulligan riffing on Lester Young and Mel doing homage to Teddy Wilson. But then, Torme slips in a quote to another swing classic, Benny Goodman's "It's Good Enough to Keep." Not a jazzman? Giddoudahere!



As I reflect back on this album and all that Torme did over his marvelous career, I think of the lyric "Embrace me, you irreplaceable you." Another Gershwin, as you know. It fits. RC







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