Zoot Sims - Quietly There - Zooms Slim Plays Johnny Mandel - Limited Edition 180 Gram LP

Limited Edition 180 Gram LP

Men have found themselves composing liner notes for the oddest of reasons, none odder than the fact that more than half a lifetime ago, I shared a bedroom with vibraphonist Victor Feldman. There was a period necessarily in madcap youth, when he and I, in concert with seven other hooligans, drifted up and down the English Shires in the pathetic hope of finding here and there a convocation of jazzlovers large enough to pay us for the gig. It comes back to me that in rooming with Victor, I had to be careful and so did he, for he was allergic to pollen, white bread, cats, mown grass, diesel oil and, I suspect occasionally me. But I also recall, just as vividly what might be called his unallergies, those unbounded enthusiasms he found life enhancing. These included brown bread, Aldous Huxley, Milt Jackson, Duke Ellington and Zoot Sims. As a matter of fact it was one of his fondest, wildest dreams that one day he would be able to play piano alongside Zoot, an ambition which was born out of the experience, which we all shared, of watching Zoot at close quarters during the visit to ye Olde Worlde of the Stan Kenton Orchestra in 1954, of which group of explorers Zoot was a prominent member. Ironically, when he was booked for this session Vic discovered, sadly that it wasn’t to play piano but to do the percussion parts. It is not difficult to know what it was about Zoot’s playing which commended itself, not only to Feldman but to everybody I ever talked to. It was a kind of innate vitality which brings all his playing to rhythmic life even when the harmonic foundations are merely basic. As an example, there is the statement of the first twelve bars of the theme Cinnamon and Cloves, in which Zoot, finding himself in the key, for tenor saxophone, of C minor, one of the most resonant of all keys, achieves a richness of expression and a felicity of phrasing which renders the playing very nearly tactile. A saxophonist listening to this sort of thing instinctively moves his fingers in ghostly configurations to follow Zoot’s path, wondering as he does so why it should be that when he plays the identical thing it never seems to sound one tenth as effective. Zoot is one of the great natural swingers of the modern age, that is why.

Tracklist:

Side 1

1. RISSY (Johnny Mandel) 3:44
2. A TIME FOR LOVE (Johnny Mandel - Paul Francis Webster)7:48
3.CINNAMON&CLOVES (Johnny Mandel- Alan Bergman-Marilyn Bergman)[long](7:20)
4. CINNAMON&CLOVES (Johnny Mandel- Alan Bergman-Marilyn Bergman)[short](5:45)

Side 2

5. LOWLIFE (Johnny Mandel) 6:18
6. ZOOT (Johnny Mandel)7:50
7. EMILY (Johnny Mandel-Johnny Mercer) 9:41
8. QUIETLY THERE (Johnny Mandel- Morgan Ames)6:08

Personnel:

Zoot Sims, Tenor Saxophone Mike Wofford, Piano & Electric Piano Chuck Berghofer, Bass Nick Ceroli, Drums Victor Feldman, Percussion & Vibe.

Credits:

Oceanway Studios Hollywood, California, March 20 & 21, 1984 Engineer: Allen Sides.