The
Richard Rodgers entry in jazz pianist
Beegie Adair's series of songbook albums for classic pop songwriters consists entirely of songs the composer wrote with lyricist
Lorenz Hart, whose name goes unmentioned in the title, perhaps because there is no singing on the album. (If there were, one might wonder how "The Lady Is a Tramp" could be considered a romantic song.) As on albums devoted to
George Gershwin,
Hoagy Carmichael, and
Irving Berlin,
Adair leads a piano trio in low-key instrumental interpretations of these standards from the Golden Age of American Songwriting, hewing to the melodies for the most part, with some modest jazz improvising that never gets very far from the main themes. The goal here is to come up with high-quality cocktail jazz, like the tinkling you might hear in the background at a good restaurant. In this case, listeners have the opportunity to use this album and its related ones as background for a romantic evening at home. ~ William Ruhlmann