Shelly Manne & His Friends: Modern Jazz Performances Of Songs From My Fair Lady

The musical My Fair Lady (1956) is a story from another age. All things considered, it is probably best that a contemporary audience may not know the lyrics to the songs, let alone the tunes. The tale involves the efforts of an insufferable Henry Higgins to teach a Cockney lass, Eliza Doolittle, how to properly pronounce the Queen's English, BBC style. Alas, Higgins succeeds too well, only to render the fey Doolittle attractive to a rival suitor of some means. Doolittle, let it be said, is, well, no shrinking violet, so her willful persona might go down well today in what is an Edwardian drama written by George Bernard Shaw in 1913. Otherwise, one fears, a modern audience may wonder where Mr. Higgins gets off? Audiences in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, however, loved it. And the tunes have become classics in the Great American Songbook. In its day, this recording was a huge success.

Andre Previn may not be the first pianist who comes to mind from jazz in the 1950s, but the level of his technical competence here is simply stunning. At one point, would Previn show up in a blindfold test? He is a bit of a chameleon, Previn is. Yet, on first hearing, Oscar Peterson might not be an outrageous guess. There are times when he is simply smoking. If technique means anything, Previn's was, at that point, astounding. Shelly Manne's brilliance, of course, is not surprising. Not your usual ching-ching drummer, and his effort to inject suitably percussive effects (mallets) in "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face" is serious without managing to sound pretentious, as if he were auditioning for a philharmonic. Even better is Leroy Vinnegar.

There must be an interesting backstory here, because while no one doubted that Vinnegar was a master of the walking bass, he is allowed more creativity in his playing here. Vinnegar plays some very nice figures, finely wrought in places, as if to show he could run with Manne and Previn, and do more than attend to time and termpo. Vinnegar eventually broke with Manne publicly, ostensibly over an issue of compensation, which can explain a lot. Vinnegar could do a lot more than walk, for certain, even though that was the way he was marketed.

As one might expect from this entry in Craft's Acoustic Sound Series, the vinyl pressing is immaculate, and the sonic quality is very high. The production is fun to listen to, even if the story behind the music will strike some newcomers as, well, impossibly retro. You can do a lot worse than music and book by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, "with a low bow in the direction of the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York."