Search - Shorty Rogers :: Planet Jazz

Great arrangements!

GA Russell | Four Oaks, NC United States | 01/27/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"These sixteen songs were included on the 1987 CD "Short Stops" (RCA 5917-2-RB), along with four songs from the Marlon Brando movie The Wild One.All songs were recorded between January 12 and July 14, 1953.The bands are West Coast all-stars, including Art Pepper, John Graas, Hampton Hawes, Joe Mondragon, Shelly Manne, Maynard Ferguson, Pete Condoli, Bud Shank, Marty Paich, Curtis Counce, Jimmy Giuffre, Herb Geller, Bill Holman, Bill Perkins, Bob Cooper and Russ Freeman.This is some of the best West Coast Jazz I'm aware of. I wonder if the critics of West Coast Jazz are familiar with these recordings. No apologies are needed to like this stuff!"

Great Shorty Rogers !!!

Plastic Pixel | Concord, CA United States | 04/22/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album represents one of the first examples of the new sound called "progressive jazz". Wonderfull harmony and originality. Far and above my favorite Shorty Rogers album. I first purchased these "cuts" on two ten inch LP's in the 1950's. I liked them so much that I wore out the grooves. I was delighted to find them again on CD. These recordings are of course mono. But are very clean on this CD. I highly recommend this CD to anyone."

If you don't like this CD, you just don't like jazz

madamemusico | Cincinnati, Ohio USA | 09/03/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Few jazz musicians have given so many people real pleasure over the years as Milton "Shorty" Rogers. A technically adroit if imaginatively limited trumpeter and flugelhornist, Rogers left the big bands of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton to create his own microcosm within West Coast jazz, a middle-sized progressive swing band that had all the warmth and comfort of West Coast cool but also some of the fire and excitement of East Coast band music. With a virtual all-star line-up of musicians (cited in the previous review), he wrote and/or arranged a massive book of pieces that were musically challenging but still accessible to the average listener, thus giving his all-stars great solo exposure while still pleasing the masses.



Shorty was so successful at this that after his score for the Marlon Brando film "The Wild One" made him a star, he eventually gave up the jazz band in favor of film-score writing. Because of this, many critics consider him a sell-out, just as they do Quincy Jones who was equally talented as a composer-arranger and who took a similar path.



These witty, soaring, exuberant performances show what all the fuss was about. Originally part of an RCA Bluebird CD that is now long out of print, they captivate the listener from first note to last. Like the recordings of Tatum, Ellington, Django and Armstrong, they have a tremendous joie-de-vivre that is not only obvious but irresistable. Don't pass this one up!"