Giants of Jazz: 'Round Midnight is a 12-song trawl through the vaults of the storied jazz label Savoy as well one of the labels (Muse) that the current incarnation of Savoy Jazz licenses. The liner notes state that the intention of the collection is to show off the beautiful side of jazz, and at that they succeed to a limited degree. The mellow pieces by
Erroll Garner ("Moonglow"),
Milt Jackson and
the MJQ (" 'Round Midnight"), and
Marian McPartland ("A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square") are lovely, lyrical songs imbued with laid-back grace and tunefulness. Other songs on the disc are more uptempo but no less melodic;
Charlie Parker and
Dizzy Gillespie's live version of "A Night in Tunisia" combines a haunting melody with superlative playing,
Lester Young's "Blue Lester" is a loping ballad that
Young plays like a sad and lonely fella walking along a dark street boozily whistling to himself to stave off the darkness, and best of all,
Charlie Parker and
Miles Davis make beautiful music together on
Bird's classic "Now's the Time." So far, so good. Where the disc gets into trouble is when the modern recordings from the 1980s are worked in. The sterility of the production is rather jarring when juxtaposed with the primitive sound of the recordings from earlier, and the playing is not nearly as inspired.
Jack McDuff's "Long Day Blues" is nice enough, but pales next to his hot soul-blues sides of the '50s and '60s;
Wallace Roney's "Blue in Green" is also pleasant enough but lacking in fire and originality. That the producers chose a modern-era track from
Dizzy Gillespie (a tepid "Stardust") when he recorded some of his best early cuts for Savoy is puzzling. Worst of all is a version of "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," not for the music, which is decent, but for the fact that it is mis-credited. The song is not by
Charles Brown, it is by
Ron Carter. That kind of sloppiness is hard to excuse and it makes it very hard to recommend this half-decent collection to anyone. ~ Tim Sendra