Features:
Description:
By 1962, when these particular installments of Steve Allen's Jazz Scene USA series aired, the West Coast Jazz zeitgeist that had gripped California for nearly a decade had begun to wan, and the surf was up for many of the mainstays of the era. Most of the musicians featured here would go on to lucrative studio and soundtrack work to pay the bills and not return to their roots until the jazz revivals of the '80s. That said, these two bands, giants of their era, Shelly Manne and Shorty Rogers, turn in fantastic performances, and the sidemen featured (Conte Candoli, Russ Freeman, and Richie Kamuca, among others) are inspired as well. Rogers and crew's reading of "Greensleeves," in particular, is an interesting amalgamation of John Coltrane's fiery rendition and the West Coast "cool" aesthete. The snappy black-and-white photography adds to the mood and harkens back to a time when things really did swing. --Kristian St. Clair
| 
