Customer Reviews

Moonlighting

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First things first. Bobby Darin was one of the greatest, most audacious interpreters of swinging standards in American music. He certainly deserves tribute. Gary LeMel is wise not to imitate slavishly on this album. He has picked a program of excellent tunes associated with Darin, and surrounded himself with some of the best musicians in the business. He avoids the mannerism and excessive ornamentation that ruins many non-jazz singers who try to sing in a jazz context.

And yet. And yet upon repeated listenings I found myself thinking that something is out of place on this album. The singer's breathiness and occasional forced vibrato drew attention to his limitations as a vocalist. The arrangements are unusual and interesting, the playing by an astonishing group including Lew Soloff, Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, Grady Tate, Roger Kellaway (who also wrote the charts), and Elvin Jones. Yes, *that* Elvin Jones. But those interesting arrangements--particularly Kellaway's needless virtuosity and Jones's polyrhythms--sometimes seem to be engineered to distract the listener from the singer's obvious shortcomings. I got suspicious.

It finally hit me. Gary LeMel is what's out of place on this album. I had never heard of him, which doesn't prejudice me against him, but he's just simply not in the same musical realm as his cohorts on this date. But who could afford this band? And why would Atlantic, a major label, put it out? I searched on his name. Turns out he's a Hollywood film producer.

So it *is* a dilettante with a dream band. A dilettante with some cash and some influence, presumably. His talent is not equal to his effort and taste. The disjunction between the voice and the context is too great. The quality of the players and charts just draws attention to the prosaic singing.

In the hands of a real singer, this album would have been an event. As it is, it's a curiosity

this is one of the great cds of the year. i c an,t stop listening to it.

Schmaltzy. . . I am trying to figure out why this merrits good reviews. The whole disc smacks of people in the biz trying to get on this guy's good side. He's a decent singer, but the arrangements are really overdone (even though one reviewer I saw said that he managed to keep it not too overdone). If you want a really good/different version of Mac the Knife look to the Kurt Weil's Lost in the Stars CD with Sting. I guess this really doesn't matter much because the disc is out of print.