Stan Kenton's orchestra was never the place to hear a nice tune played sweetly; arrangers including
Kenton himself,
Pete Rugolo, Bob Graettinger, and
Bill Holman commonly emphasized the progressive end of jazz -- advanced harmonics, complex charts, powerful soloists -- much more than such a simple thing as swing. When
Kenton decided to record an album of show tunes in 1958, however, he proceeded directly to
Lennie Niehaus.
Niehaus, an altoist with the
Kenton band beginning nearly a decade earlier, had written a chart for "Pennies from Heaven" in 1953 that proved to be a highlight of the
Sketches on Standards LP. (
Kenton would probably have chosen
Bill Russo, who had helmed his two previous standards LPs of the '50s, but he had left the band a few years earlier.)
Kenton's band of 1958 didn't boast the firepower of earlier editions, but new arrivals
Jack Sheldon and
Bill Trujillo contribute a lot to the highlight, "The Party's Over" (which,
Michael Sparke's liner notes tell us, was often used by the contrarian
Kenton to begin his sets). Elsewhere,
Niehaus gives himself a feature on the hard-swinging "Baubles, Bangles & Beads."