Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Charleston Alley
2. Moanin'
3. Twisted
4. Bijou
5. Cloudburst
6. Centerpiece
7. Gimme That Wine
8. Sermonette
9. Summertime
10. Everybody's Boppin'
11. Cotton Tail
12. All Too Soon
13. Happy Anatomy
14. Rocks in My Bed
15. Main Stem
16. I Don't Know What Kind of Blues I Got
17. Things Ain't What They Used to Be
18. Midnight Indigo
19. What Am I Here For?
20. In a Mellow Tone
21. Caravan

Disc 2:

1. Come on Home
2. New ABC
3. Farmer's Market
4. Cookin' at the Continental
5. With Malice Toward None
6. Hi-Fly
7. Home Cookin'
8. Halloween Spooks
9. Popity Pop
10. Blue
11. Mr. P.C.
12. Walkin' [#]
13. This Here [*]
14. Swingin' Till the Girls Come Home [*]
15. Twist City [#]
16. Just a Little Bit of Twist [#]
17. Night in Tunisia [*]
18. Night in Tunisia [Alternate Version][#]

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6300 in Music
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 1996-11-05
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .26 pounds

Amazon.com
This 2-CD anthology takes its title from the debut for a vocal trio that lived up to it: Lambert, Hendricks & Ross wove its magic from two men and a woman ready to push jazz vocals to a post-bop frontier built on the vocalese of Ella Fitzgerald and Eddie Jefferson (the spark behind King Pleasure's epochal transformation of jazz solos into sung lines) and fueled by a bumper crop of great instrumentals on which to build their songs. Arrangements meticulously follow the styles of specific soloists, inject healthy dollops of humor, and interact wonderfully with the accompanists, approximating the intimate scale and high-flying interplay of the small groups that dominated '50s and early '60s jazz. This is vivid, effortlessly swinging, deliriously cool jazz that will sound as good to lounge arrivistes as it will to seasoned jazz hounds, and this intelligently compiled distillation of their first few albums gets extra credit for exemplary sound and annotation. --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews

Heavy Boppin' Highwire Vocalese at Its Best ! ! !
Overall this is a great CD that combines three LH&R albums - - The Hottest New Group In Jazz, LH&R sing Ellington and High Flying with The Ike Issacs Trio (ergo a real nice bang for the buck). In my humble opinion, its the material from that 3rd LP (contained on the second CD) that swings the hardest. - - It also comes with a nice swanky 20 page booklet with lot's of pictures and some nice liner notes.

Incidentally, I'd like to add to the reviewer before me, just as The Transfer represented the "third generation" of Vocalese, for those that think it started with LH &R, check out their mentor Eddie Jefferson's CD "The Jazz Singer" - - and speaking of The Manhattan Transfer, their VOCALESE CD.

I do have one complaint though... but its a minor one... there's something odd about the remastering -- but it might be a matter of taste. I like the way the rhythm section is mastered, but something seems too "up front" and thin about the vocals... needs a bit more bottom, but mastering from 2 track tapes aren't so easy and maybe its just me. I'm curious if anyone else has picked up on this ?

Anyway, overall, until you've heard Annie Ross's wild lyics to Twisted and Farmer's Market, Jon Hendricks's wild vocal acrobatics, and the brilliant interactions between this legendary bebop vocalese ensemble... you haven't lived. By hook or by crook, dig 'em.

Great singing; tight, dry sound
I will be brief. Lambert, Hendricks & Ross were a great jazz vocal trio not just because they swung but because they always sounded relaxed and laid-back, something that Manhattan Transfer never quite achieved with superior voices. These Columbia albums, reissued here complete with a few extra outtakes, represent their peak of popularity and include some of their most famous interpretations. But the problem, then as now, is that Columbia's New York studio had just about the driest, most grating sound of any major US label. This doesn't affect Annie Ross's sweet high range too much, but Jon Hendricks sounds almost consistently brittle and hoarse, whereas on their other recordings for other labels the voice sounds much warmer (listen, for instance, to "The Swingers" on Pacific Jazz or the RCA Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan at the Village Gate). The digital remastering does the most with this 2-track stereo, however, and the performances ARE fabulous, so we will leave it at that. Highly recommended to fans of jazz singing in general and LH&R in particular.

3 Masterpieces in One
With due regard for the overused word "Masterpiece," this isn't a "Masterpiece"; it's 3 masterpieces. This is a compilation of "Sing Ellington", "Hi-Fly" and the actual "Hottest New Group in Jazz." It's hard to argue which of the 3 is best, because all have their high points, and all have so very few low points. I love "Caravan", "Charleston Alley", "Night in Tunisia" (both takes), "Twisted", "Main Stem", "Mr. P.C."--oh, what the hey--maybe I should just list what I don't love about this, and make this review shorter! At the risk of sounding redundant viz. the rave I gave to "Sing a Song of Basie", listening to this reminds me of what a tremendous jazz singer Annie Ross was in her prime. Nobody--and I mean nobody--ever sang a straighter straight tone than Ms. Ross. And Lambert and Hendricks have that rare quality about them; individually, their voices aren't the best, perhaps, but together they work magically well. I'm probably writing to people who already know about this; if you are a rare one who doesn't, then treat this as the "Hot 5's" and "Hot 7's" of vocal jazz and buy it now. Your collection isn't complete without it.