Mosura 1961

Lightnin' Hopkins is the star of this live recording, made at an August 1961 concert at the Ash Grove in Hollywood featuring Hopkins, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (with Big Joe Williams sitting in on three numbers…

In form, Peggy Lee's fall 1961 studio LP If You Go is a concept album in which the theme, as suggested by the title, is love that doesn't work out. Over the course of 12 songs, the singer begins as a romantic philosopher ("As Time Goes By"), then immediately begins to worry that her love affair may be in trouble ("If You Go"). Soon, her fears are confirmed ("Say It Isn't So"). By the start of the second half, she is trying to accommodate herself to separation ("I'm Gonna Laugh You Out of My Life"), but by the end she has acknowledged the pain ("Here's That Rainy Day") and returned to philosophy with her hard-won wisdom about romance ("Smile")…

Although seemingly impossible to comprehend, this landmark jazz date made in 1960 was recorded in less than three days. All the more remarkable is that the same sessions which yielded My Favorite Things would also inform a majority of the albums Coltrane Plays the Blues, Coltrane's Sound, and Coltrane Legacy. It is easy to understand the appeal that these sides continue to hold. The unforced, practically casual soloing styles of the assembled quartet - which includes Coltrane (soprano/tenor sax), McCoy Tyner (piano), Steve Davis (bass), and Elvin Jones (drums) - allow for tastefully executed passages à la the Miles Davis Quintet, a trait Coltrane no doubt honed during his tenure in that band. Each track of this album is a joy to revisit…

Cannonball Adderley's Mercury albums (most of which, like this LP, are long out-of-print) find the youthful altoist trying to unsuccessfully keep his quintet with brother Nat together. Despite the powerful bop-oriented music they consistently recorded, the band would break up in a year, only to regroup with great success in 1959…

This first matchup on records between pianist Oscar Peterson and vibraphonist Milt Jackson was so logical that it is surprising it did not occur five years earlier…

After both John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley left Miles Davis' quintet, he was caught in the web of seeking suitable replacements. It was a period of trial and error for him that nonetheless yielded some legendary recordings (Sketches of Spain, for one). One of those is Someday My Prince Will Come. The lineup is Davis, pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, and alternating drummers Jimmy Cobb and Philly Jo Jones. The saxophonist was Hank Mobley on all but two tracks. John Coltrane returns for the title track and "Teo." The set opens with the title, a lilting waltz that nonetheless gets an original treatment here, despite having been recorded by Dave Brubeck. Kelly is in keen form, playing a bit sprightlier than the tempo would allow, and slips flourishes in the high register inside the melody for an "elfin" feel. Davis waxes light and lyrical with his Harmon mute, playing glissando throughout. Mobley plays a strictly journeyman solo, and then Coltrane blows the pack away with a solo so deep inside the harmony it sounds like it's coming from somewhere else.

I Have Dreamed (1961). "The mood of these songs is dreamy," writes annotator Pete Martin, thus defining the theme of Doris Day's second LP of 1961. As usual, someone - Day herself, her conductor, a Columbia Records A&R person - had chosen a theme for her album and picked a group of songs, most of them interwar standards that derived from stage musicals or movies. Dreaminess was a concept familiar to any band singer of the 1940s, and Day was such a singer, so she certainly knew her way around "I'll Buy That Dream," even if the hit versions of the 1945 song were by such competitors as Helen Forrest (with Dick Haymes) and Kitty Kallen (as vocalist with Harry James' band)…

Sinatra Swings (originally titled Swing Along with Me) is an album by Frank Sinatra with Billy May and his Orchestra, released in 1961…