Manhattan Transfer

Swing

Vocalese Swing with great sidemen and women

Review Score:

(10/10)
Too often vocal groups attempting swing get too cutsy, and tend to emphasize the pop aspects of Swing. This is not that.

This is the vocalese heirs of Lambert Hendricks and Ross blowing hard with their singing on all of these swing tunes as a great vocalese group. They mimick the arrangements, or create their new ones in the ensemble singing here.

If that isn't enough they have not the usual studio groups that accompany them, but a bunch of Swing stars and neoswingers accompanying them. My favorite here is Stephen Grappelli who does some nice work here. His solos in the group setting here are more limited, specific, and to the point that what we get on many of his solo albums.

Of course, my friends in Asleep at the Wheel who would be terrific if they presented themselves as a jazz group, add an excitement I adore. In that regard, the recording of Choo Choo Ch'Boggie is instructive in what the Manhattan Transfer is and and offers. I have heard Asleep at the Wheel do it live about 5 or 6 times over the past 27 years, but there is a verve and swing and cleanness of line, found on all the other recordings here, that come in the recording of the tune here behind the transfer that isn't there in The Wheels performances good as they are. Working with the Transfer adds just like working with any good soloist or combo does.

The Transfer is not just a group that does a cute trick singing words to Jazz solos, but important improvisers, arrangers and soloists in their own right. They add somethign new musically, not just vocally!

All in all, this is about 500 times more swinging and useful than all the sad, pretentious, unswinging and musically ignorant neoswing that got served up in the 1990s.

This is the real thing, the real swing. It belongs in every home!

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