Green Lantern 21 25

Dimensions in Sound is one of Stanley Black's weirdest albums. A product of the mid- to late '60s, it taps into contemporary pop culture with "These Boots Are Made for Walking," "A Taste of Honey," "Michelle" (grossly intoned by the London Festival Chorus) and "Alfie" (played on acoustic guitar with sugary strings and oddly detached voices). Black shows off his keyboard chops with a reasonably dignified rendering of Chopin's "Fantasy Impromptu" and a suitably epic take on the music from Exodus; he also demonstrates a marvelously eccentric and creative sense of humor by basing what amounts to an eight-and-a-half-minute piano concerto on the ancient folk ditty "Three Blind Mice." Black's big-band treatment of Billy Strayhorn's "Take the 'A' Train" begins and ends with the sound of a passing subway…