Les DeMerle: Once in a Lifetime

Drummer Les DeMerle recorded his first album, Once in a Lifetime, when he was a twenty-year-old prodigy in 1967. However, as is sometimes true in the music business, the album was lost in the shuffle at Atlantic Records and sat gathering dust until someone had the good sense to retrieve and release it some fifty-six years later. As the saying goes, better late than never.

To share the front line on this dynamic (mostly) studio date, DeMerle recruited such "young lions" as trumpeter Randy Brecker, alto saxophonists Lanny Morgan (three tracks) and Alan Gauvin (six) to enhance a spirited program which is weakened only by the inclusion of three run-of-the-mill vocals by Genya Ravan (who fared much better in the rock world as "Goldie"). She sings modestly on "Alfie," "On a Clear Day" and "That's Life."

There is one more vocal, on the final track, but that one does more to enhance the album than impede it, as Rosemary Clooney (not at her best but good enough) guests with DeMerle and the Mike Douglas TV Show band on the enduring standard, "Taking a Chance on Love." The penultimate track, Leslie Bricusse & Anthony Newley's "Once in a Lifetime," was also recorded live on the Mike Douglas show. The album opens in high gear as DeMerle's quintet sprints through a high-powered reading of Burton Lane & Alan Jay Lerner's "Come Back to Me." No solos are needed, as DeMerle drives the ensemble relentlessly onward in a manner reminiscent of his role model, the incomparable Buddy Rich.

Another Bricusse & Newley theme, "Feelin' Good," is slower, but only moderately so, its Latin cadence lending itself well to an earnest declamation by Gauvin (Brecker was so youthful he had not yet earned his solo stripes). The other instrumentals are Frank Foster's shuffling "Raunchy Rita," Joe Zawinul's forceful "Sticks" (on which Brecker does solo with Gauvin, pianist Danny Sandridge and bassist Terry Plumeri) and DeMerle's gospel-flavored "Signifyin.'"

In sum, a generally bright and pleasing session hampered to a degree by Ravan's indifferent vocals and a concise thirty-nine-minute playing time. Most persuasive as an early example of young Les DeMerle's remarkable proficiency at the drum set.

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