On Fire!?! It's Simply In Sane!
Back in the 50s and 60s a good deal of really cheap movies were made about "What Might Happen If" scenarios. For instance... What Might Happen if Nuclear Energy Affected Ants and Made them Really Big and Dangerous!?! Or... What Might Happen if Nuclear Power Were to Distort a Man's Ability to Fight Against Horrifically Enlarged (by Nuclear Power, of course) Rodents!?!
All this "What Might Happen If" stuff kinda gets me to thinking about this record. It seems a perfect example of What Might Happen if Jackie Gleason were Conducting an Orchestra When, Suddenly... He were Possesed by the Spirit of Juan Garcia Esquivel!?!
Scary, huh?
Not really, though. Michel Legrand, who's album this is, was born into a musical family (his father was a successful conductor and his sister was a member of the Swingle Singers) in 1932. He was already studying music when, in 1947, a friend gave him a ticket to a Dizzy Gillespie concert.
That being said, Michel Legrand has produced quite a few High-Brow "Real" Jazz records over the last 60 years ("Legrand Jazz," on Columbia-EMI, and "C'Est Magnifique," on Mercury, are real standouts), he has also created, conducted and/or produced a fair amount of Less Important Music. Some fault him for this. I say that it's simply because he realized a few years back that All Music is Good (unless it's Music That Sucks, of course) and that the Sound of Strings Zooming and Zinging around a room (from the speakers of a Console Stereo) was a Marvelous Thing!
This guy is GOOD! If you ever see a copy of his "Archi-Cordes" or "Plays for Dancers" in a Thrift Shop... GRAB IT!!!
In the meantime... Enjoy this.
- Perfidia
- El Choclo
- Boulevard of Broken Dreams
- What Is This Thing Called Love
- Everything I Have is Yours
- Jezebel
- Jalousie
- Close Your Eyes
- Temptation
- Come Back to Sorrento
- Tabu
- All or Nothing At All
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