BST 84344

Duke Pearson - How Insensitive

Released - 1969

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 11, 1969
Duke Pearson, piano, electric piano, flugelhorn, arranger; Al Gafa, electric guitar; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Mickey Roker, drums; Airto Moreira, percussion; Andy Bey, vocals #2; New York Group Singer's Big Band, voice; Jack Manno, arranger, conductor.

4019 tk.3 Cristo Redentor
4018 tk.9 Give Me Your Love
4017 tk.17 Stella By Starlight
4020 tk.21 Little Song

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, April 14, 1969
Duke Pearson, piano, electric piano, flugelhorn, arranger #1,2, piano #3; Al Gafa, electric guitar #1,2; Bob Cranshaw, bass #1,2; Mickey Roker, drums #1,2; Airto Moreira, percussion #1,2; Andy Bey, vocals #1; New York Group Singer's Big Band, voice #1,2; Jack Manno, arranger, conductor #1,2.

4021 tk.29 Clara
4022 tk.39 My Love Waits
4024 tk.44 How Insensitive

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 5, 1969
Duke Pearson, piano; Dorio Ferreira, guitar, percussion; Bebeto Jose Souza, bass; Mickey Roker, drums; Airto Moreira, percussion; Flora Pulim, vocals.

6181 tk.16 Sandalia Dela
6182 tk.24 Tears
6201 tk.34 Lamento

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Stella by Starlight	Ned Washington, Victor Young	April 11 1969
Clara	George Gershwin, Dubose Heyward	April 14 1969
Give Me Your Love	Duke Pearson	April 11 1969
Cristo Redentor	Duke Pearson	April 11 1969
Little Song	Jack Manno	April 11 1969
Side Two
How Insensitive	Antônio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes, Norman Gimbel	April 14 1969
Sandalia Dela	Pearson, Manno	May 5 1969
My Love Waits (O Meu Amor Espera)	Pearson, Manno	April 14 1969
Tears	Eumir Deodato, Ray Gilbert, Paulo Valle	May 5 1969
Lamento	Jobim, de Moraes	May 5 1969

Liner Notes

The center of serenity of this album is Duke Pearson. Pearson as pianist (from the solo inner flight of How Insensitive to his interweaving with the New York Group Singers' Big Band). Pearson as composer (Give Me Your Love; Cristo Redentor; and, with Jack Manno, My Love Waits). And Pearson as arranger of a number of the tracks and as producer of the album as a whole.

It is also because of Duke that throughout the first side and in My Love Waits on the second, Jack Manno's New York Group Singers' Big Band has its first hearing on record. Manno, 30, born in Philadelphia, based in New York since 1962, and actively engaged as a singer in studio vocal groups since 1965, has become increasingly absorbed by the challenges of arranging.

Hearing Lambert, Hendricks and Ross some years ago started Manno thinking of the orchestral possibilities of writing for voices as instruments. But it was his frequent listening to the Thad Jones—Mel Lewis big band at the Village Vanguard, close to where Manno lives, that more directly led to the formation of the New York Group Singers' Big Band. "One night," Manno recalls, "a couple of singer friends and I were enjoying the Jones-Lewis band when it occurred to us that it was worth working on the idea of getting a vocal group to sound like a big band. Not just three voices, but a full complement of seventeen."

The subsequent result, as heard here, evolved through two years of writing and rehearsing. "I'm greatly indebted to Duke Pearson," Manno emphasizes, "because he was the one of the people in the record business I approached who responded enthusiastically to what we were trying to do and gave us this initial chance to record."

As presented in this set, the New York Group Singers' Big Band consists of eight female voices as the trumpet section; four male voices as trombones; and a reed section of two gjrls (as alto saxophones) and three men filling out the section.

"What we've done here," Manno points out, "is to indicate some of the potential of voices as an orchestra; and it's a concept which can and will take many different forms as it evolves."

For the rest, the music speaks for itself. I would note the characteristically lucid, economical and flawlessly tasteful playing of Duke Pearson throughout. (On Clara, incidentally, Duke returns to one of his earlier instruments, the Fluegelhorn). There is also the richly textured solo singing of Andy Bey on Clara and Give Me Your Love and the lithe, resilient, beguilingly resourceful work of Flora Purim on Sandalia Deja, Tears, and Lamento. Throughout, moreover, the rhythm section is a crisply supportive model of not only fluently buoyant pulsation but also a constant source of complementary, variegated coloring.

Although there is considerable diversity in the repertory — from gospel and bossa nova to refurbished popular standards and affecting originals — the pervasive ambience of the album is that of lyrical, reflective warmth -— an extension of Duke Pearson's own quintessential qualities as player and writer.

Any more verbalizing here, it seems to me, would be superfluous, except to point out that although the music is immediately assimilable, yet—because of the care with which it has been crafted, the subtle interplay of vocal and instrumental textures, and the gentling nature of the songs themselves — this is a set which should prove a durable reservoir of relaxation and easeful stretching of the imagination as each listener draws from his own reservoir of memory and desire with each hearing.

— Nat Hentoff