Soft and Sweet
MIDNIGHT. To Milton it was 'blackest,' to Keats 'still'; Shelley found it 'profoundest,' Poe 'dreary,' Shakespeare 'dead.' To the lyrical disc-jockeys on late- night AFN it is 'the witching hour' (Hamlet's epithet), and to Frankie Vaughan it is the time when he asks himself what's going on behind that Green Door.
Primarily, however, one's reactions to midnight depend on where one is at the time. Brunswick have tried to capture on disc that variable mid- night spirit as it manifests itself musically in seven of the great night-owl haunts of the world— London, Paris, Rome, Manhattan, New Orleans, Hollywood and Rio. Each is given a twelve-inch LP to itself (LAT 8186-8192), and four of the seven certainly succeed in conveying their in- tended atmospheres.
Dante Varela and his orchestra have an easy task in painting the gaiety and bright lights of midnight in Rio. And 'nitwit a Paris presents no problem to Skitch Henderson, his piano and his orchestra. Ellis Larkins tries to evoke the diamond-studded sophistication of midnight on Manhattan. He succeeds, too, but this should not be too much of a strain for the pianist of New York's Blue Angel. Perhaps his music has more beauty and subtlety than a Manhattan midnight deserves.
The thought of midnight in New Orleans brings only one sound to my ears—gut-bucket blues on a horn. This sound, it appears, is an anachronism and does not occur on the disc—instead there is attractive piano by Marvin Ash, backed by Van Eps, Malty Matlock and others. One somehow imagines that Basin Street at midnight still echoes to the horn of a King Oliver or a Freddie KeP- pard : and it's a bit of a disappointment to hear that it doesn't.
ROBIN DOUGLAS-HOMI3
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