Customer Reviews

On Broadway/The Colorful Percussions

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As someone who likes the music of Arthur Lyman especially his warm, romantic and tender melodies I am highly delighted about the release of this set of 9 CDs as a reissue of part of his recordings. The reissue appears in good quality close to the original issues of vinyls in the late 50's and 60's.

Unforunately there are a few remarks:

Examples:

1. at least on Lyman '66 "The Boy From Laupahoehoe": a rhythm error

exists at 1:33 where some portion of the recording is missing. This

could have been corrected resp. compensated easily. I have tried it

successfully.

2. "Colorful Percussions": Dropout on left channel between 2:41,900 and

2:42,700. That dropout appears on the original vinyl too. Even that (I

have also tried to correct successfully) could have been done during

mastering.

3. There are a few tracks in mono, but why the complete 12 tracks

of "Bwana á" are in mono cannot be understood.

Hawaii-born Arthur Lyman joined with Martin Denny to invent "exotica" on the latter's 1957 debut album. Exotica combined the melodic sounds of the islands with unusual percussion (notably the scratching sound of the guiro), pop changes, and human-voiced bird calls to create a soundtrack to the late `50s fascination with all things tiki. As a vibraphonist, Lyman's jazz background added an element of cool to Denny's classical training. Splitting after their debut release, Lyman created a new quartet and recorded dozens of exotica-inflected albums for the Hi-Fi, Life and Crescendo labels. Collectors' Choice latest series of reissues gathers eighteen of Lyman's releases from Hi-Fi and Life, fits them two per CD, includes full-panel reproductions of both album covers, adds a full-panel back cover and new liner notes from Scram's Kim Cooper and David Smay.

Like his mentor and partner, Martin Denny, Lyman's lengthy catalog of exotica-influenced LPs often looked beyond the South Seas for material. Like Denny, Lyman looked to both Hollywood and Broadway for melodies. On his seventh album (his third and final release in 1959), Lyman produced an album of four medleys, each drawn from a classic Broadway show. Two are drawn from the oeuvre of Rodgers & Hammerstein (The King and I, South Pacific), and one each from Lerner and Loewe (My Fair Lady) and Gershwin (Porgy and Bess). More importantly, Lyman wrote mostly straight-ahead jazz arrangements, devoid of the exotica flair predominant in much of his catalog. His vibraphone is heard throughout, but played more for cool than as a florid island call. Even South Pacific, with its shimmering melodies' natural fit to the island sound, is played more as show jazz than exotica. Highlights include Lyman's hot-mallet run through "I'm Getting Married in the Morning," the blue chords of "Summertime," the triumphant Latin arrangement of "I've Got Plenty of Nothing," and a dynamic take on "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair."

Lyman's tenth album, 1962's The Colorful Percussions of Arthur Lyman, was the first to follow his 1961 top-10 pop hit, "Yellow Bird." It opens with the theme to the film "Exodus," establishing itself with bold chords and drums, dropping to a sparse, melancholy statement of theme on harmonica, and then slowly rebuilding itself with a marching beat to the dramatic climax. The film themes continue with "Never on Sunday," and Lyman returns to Broadway for Lerner & Lowe's "I Talked to Trees," drawn from the musical "Paint Your Wagon." John Kramer's flute and the backing percussion on "Carabunta" bring to mind Herbie Mann's Afro-Cuban original, and the dramatic piano of "Rhumba Rhapsody" brings to mind the exotica standard, "Misirlou." Island sounds waft through "Blue Hawaii," "Aloha No Honolulu," and "Tanga Tiki" (the latter of which has a melody reminiscent of Canned Heat's "Going Up the Country"), and the early '60s folk music revival provides "The Wreck of the 'John B'." The album closes with a straight-ahead rendition of Bobby Timmons' jazz classic "Moanin'."

Both albums are mastered in stereo, with only a minor glitch to be heard at 1:11 of the "My Fair Lady" medley of On Broadway. Of the two, Colorful Percussions is the more satisfying spin, with broader source material, more inventive arrangements, and the band playing at the top of their game. 3-1/2 stars, if allowed fractional ratings. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]