Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 10

Record label: Capitol

Produced: Dave Cavanagh and Pete Rugolo

Recorded: Capitol Studios, Hollywood; 1955

Released: February 1956

Chart peaks: 6 (UK) 6 (US)

Personnel: Ross Barbour, Bob Flanigan, Ken Errair, Don Barbour (v); Frank Rosolino, Harry Betts Jr, Milt Bernhardt, Tommy Pederson, George Roberts (tb); Claude Williamson (p); Barney Kessel (g); Shelly Manne (d); Joe Mondragon (b)

Track listing: Angel Eyes; Love Is Just Around The Corner; Mamselle; Speak Low; The Last Time I Saw Paris; Somebody Loves Me; You Stepped Out Of A Dream; I Remember You; Love; Love Is Here To Stay; You Made Me Love You; Guilty

Running time: 31.62

Current CD: Collectors Choice CCM0172 adds: Four Freshmen And Five Trumpets album

Further listening: Tune in to The Hi-Lo’s Cherries And Other Delights (1994), a compilation of their radio appearances, to hear another exceptional array of harmonies and a sound that still resonates throughout contemporary vocal groups such as Take 6.

Further reading: American Singing Groups (Jay Warner, 1992); www.4freshmen.com

Download: Not currently legally available; selected back catalogue on iTunes and emusic

A four-piece vocal (and instrumental) group whose innovative harmonies completely changed the way such outfits sounded. Without them, there’d most likely have been no Beach Boys, no Jan And Dean. It could be argued that The Hi-Los were an even more inventive vocal group than the Freshmen, technically superior and, thanks to Clark Burrough’s stratospheric flights of fancy, totally astounding to all raised on the traditional big-band harmony group sounds produced by artists like The Pied Pipers (with Tommy Dorsey) or Glenn Miller’s Modernaires. But the Freshmen were warmer, somehow more human, able to reach a commercial market (something The Hi-Los were unable to do) without relinquishing their intricate way of doing things.

Voted Best Jazz Vocal Group of 1953, having earlier been dropped (and then reinstated) by Capitol – who initially failed to see the quartet’s potential – they released their debut album Voices In Modern the following year. But it was with Four Freshmen And Five Trombones that the breakthrough came. The format was hardly earth-shattering – just harmony interpretations of standards by such songwriters as Kern and Weill and lyricists who included Johnny Mercer, Ogden Nash and Oscar Hammerstein II, performed against a backdrop supplied by a team of Hollywood’s top trombonists plus an equally stellar rhythm section. But the songs were sometimes delivered in surprising tempi, the traditionally romantic You Stepped Out Of A Dream virtually bursting out of its groove, Weill’s Speak Low acquiring a Latin patina. And somehow, the album appealed to both those who tuned into the progressive jazz sounds of Stan Kenton and Woody Herman, and the family man who’d just cottoned onto hi-fi and wanted something spectacular but easy-on-the-ear.

When Brian Wilson heard the Freshmen, he became obsessed by their harmonies and contemporary arrangements. Claimed brother Carl: ‘Months at a time, days on end, he’d listen to Four Freshmen records.’ Later, the Beach Boys would even turn in an exact copy of the Freshmen’s Graduation Day. No-one disputes that Pet Sounds started here.