The Best Of The Big Bands – Artie Shaw & Friends (Jazz)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: D     Music: B-

 

 

Passport’s budget line of music compilation DVDs continues with The Best Of The Big Bands – Artie Shaw & Friends, a slightly longer and more diverse than usual disc, running about 50 minutes.  The songs here are as follows:

 

1)     Oh Lady Be Good

2)     Swing Concerto

3)     Alone Together

4)     Jeepers Creepers (Tony Pastor – vocal)

5)     Deep Purple (Helen Forrest – vocal)

6)     Air Mail Special (with Lionel Hampton/Benny Goodman to track 8)

7)     Ridin’ High (with Ella Fitzgerald)

8)     MEDLEY With Red Norvo: Limehouse Blues (Jo Stafford), Poor Butterfly, Hard Headed Hannah (Fitzgerald), I Got It Bad & That Ain’t Good (Stafford), St. Louis Blues (Fitzgerald/Stafford duet)

9)     Redskin Rhumba (Charlie Barnet to track 12)

10)  How Am I To Know? (Dorothy Allen – vocal)

11)  Lesson In Leverage

12)  Skyliner

13)  Beebe (Jimmy Dorsey to track 15)

14)  Only A Rose

15)  Long John Silver

16)  Thanks For The Boogie Ride

 

 

The full frame, monochrome, 1.33 X 1 image throughout shows its age and is down a few generations, but the performances are too good not to look at.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is equally dated, plus a little compressed.  There are no extras, though the title would make you think this is some kind of double feature.  I Got It Bad & That Ain’t Good is not as foreboding as the classic performance in Robert Aldrich’s Film Noir classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955), but it is not bad.  Miss Stafford, a fine vocalist in her time, is not exactly known for work that challenged the mind or the system, but she is underrated by today’s standards and there has to be some material that shows her vocals at their best.  Hope we find it.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo