crisp

Yes, yes and yes (Stairway to the Stars was written with Signorelli). He had a thing about stars.

Yes it is. The song is supposed to be sung by a man. Any third-person substitution is down to the incompetent singer. Wow. You're hard to please. Oh, and Dylan and Reed are amateurs next to the likes of Mitchell Parish (who wrote the words to Stars Fell on Alabama).

Four months later and HMV has canceled my order. Thought £6.99 was too good to be true! The odd thing is that it doesn't seem to be available at any other UK websites, although it's out in the US and elsewhere in Europe. Bit pricey for me at the moment, though.

You know, I've been dreaming of a set of these sessions ever since reading about them in Will Friedwald's book. Never suggested it to Mosaic because I didn't think they would go for it. I'm really pleased to see so many on here as excited about the set as I am. Makes me think I should suggest a few other "pop" vocalists to Mosaic. Julie London, anybody? Nancy Wilson?

I found this new release from European Verve at Amazon.fr. Seems to be a seven-disc set but no further information so far (hey, it's Verve). I imagine there will be a lot of unreleased material.

Very gratifying! I've just placed my order, along with one for the Zeitlin select.

I will investigate. Thanks!

Me too. However, there's not much you can do about CDs bought online. If so, then they work! Those four CDs I bought took half an hour to open and the gummy strips wrecked the jewel cases. DVDs from the US have those strips on, too. On one DVD I bought, the paper cover liner had slipped inside the Amaray case before the sticker was applied, so the sticker couldn't be removed without tearing the cover. Essentially those strips force you to wreck the thing you have just bought. Not good.

I tend to rank CD cases in the order of (1) Mini LP (2) Digipak and (3) Jewel case, with the latter being the absolute worst. If I get a Digi with broken teeth, I just return the CD to the package carefully, file it and forget about it -- only to have the disc fly across the room when I take it off the shelf years later. Still prefer them to jewel cases, though. However, my number one pain is the sticky strips across the tops of American CDs. It's pot luck whether you get one that comes off easily or one that comes off in a million picky little pieces leaving a swath of glue across both sides of the case. At the weekend I opened four new CDs in a row that all had the latter problem. Almost had to lie down afterwards. Why do manufacturers put these things on? What's the point of them?

I can also recommend Simon Goddard's latest book, Mozipedia: The Encyclopaedia of Morrissey and the Smiths. Obsessively detailed, engagingly written and great for browsing. Morrissey's tastes as explored here will introduce you to a lot of great books, records and films.

It's Virginia Woolf, four tracks of which are not on the Mosaic (all of Hobo Flats is on the Mosaic, so you can skip that one). It's been a while since I played it, but I recall John Brown's Body is worth having. I'm happy I bought it. Wish that instead of Hobo Flats Verve had reissued Monster.

Take the A Train is one.

Thanks for the info above, Bev.

No. My mother and her parents all liked music, but the contemporary pop of their respective generations, which I also liked. No. I took piano lessons, but too late in childhood for it to be of any benefit. I could never relate the "boring" scales and exercises I played with "music" as I enjoyed it. I have no idea! It seems a separate thing to me, and as I understand jazz better, presumably it's a secondary interest, although I listen to it at least as much as jazz these days. That's exactly how I developed an appreciation of classical. I gravitated to classical off my own back during primary school, alongside pop bands with an orchestrated sound, such as ELO and Sky. From the age of 8 or 9 I would haunt the record department of my local WH Smiths and when I had enough money saved, buy a coveted cassette. Some of my "classical" purchases were, with hindsight, tragic (Hooked on Classics), some forgivable (Richard Clayderman*), some fine if obvious (The Four Seasons, 1812 Overture). To come back to the above quote, though, the breakthrough was when I bought Prokofiev's Lt Kije Suite because I liked Troika. Also on the cassette was the 1st symphony (the Classical), and I played it repeatedly until I was "into" it (the luxury of having very few albums and endless time). I find that approach still pays off when acclimatising myself to an unfamiliar piece (classical or jazz), but too much music, too little time these days. * Regarding him, I got into jazz partly because Michael Parkinson said "I don't know how anyone can listen to Richard Clayderman when they could listen to Oscar Peterson" BTW Bev. Which Anthony Hopkins books do you recommend?

Excellent post, fasstrack. Allen Lowe: Could you elaborate on Van Heusen if you have time?

MG, I agree with all your points. One thing: I would look again at Berlin's lyrics. He is in my view the best lyricist of them all. Nobody wrote with such simplicity, purity and clarity. There are rarely if any false rhymes, backward constructions or illogicalities in Berlin's lyrics. Harold Arlen said "They sound as if God wrote them" or words to that effect because they are so natural. Also, Frank Loesser wrote both words and music in the second half of his career. Your honorary GAS songs all fit in my book (or songbook). All from the same period as the "last gasp" songs I listed (not meant to be a definitive list).

Re standalone songs vs integrated show songs: I see what you're driving at now. That probably started to change when Rodgers left Hart for Hammerstein. Oscar Hammerstein's way of thinking came to dominate American musicals after the war, ultimately leading to the highly integrated likes of Sondheim. But there continued to be fluffy musicals from Hollywood for a few more years, yielding many standalone songs, and GAS songwriters continued to write film title songs, standalone record hits, lyrics to jazz instrumentals... Re bias: I am biased, it's true. Maybe I should have said "greatest contribution to world art". Following on from earlier comments on the last of the standards, I can't think of soft rock ballads as standards no matter how many times they are performed, but maybe that's my prejudice. It probably stems from the lyrics. Billy Joel is actually quite a meticulous lyricist, no matter how much he is criticised (and that's probably one of the reasons WHY he is criticised), but many of the others (Stevie Wonder for example) are very sloppy and unsatisfying. Harry Connick's own songs are awful. In any case, these modern songs seem to belong, not so much to a different era, but a different world; a different mindset. There is certainly more jazz in Lorenz Hart, say, than in Billy Joel. And Bacharach is a massive exception, to be sure (but even he can't tap into it these days). Witchcraft is a good suggestion for the last standard. I would also suggest I Wanna Be Around, Call Me Irresponsible, The Girl From Ipanema, The Days of Wine and Roses, Hello Dolly... all those mid-Sixties last-gasp song hits before rock 'n' roll became the dominant music of our time.

Pricey, but you can't beat John Austin Furniture, at least in the UK.

The Great American songbook is a bit like jazz in that it's hard to pin down in words, but you know it when you hear it (or don't). I think of it as (very broadly speaking) standing for songs that couple a certain level of sophistication (intellectually, emotionally) with a certain level of craftsmanship. Anything rock 'n' roll doesn't count, unless its a pastiche by a GAS songwriter (eg Irving Berlin's The Washington Twist). It roughly falls between the decline of operetta and the ascent of rock. Johnny Mercer is a sort of unifying force, since he collaborated with one of the first important GAS composers, Kern, and one of the last, Mancini. Some of the last practitioners of the GAS are still with us and working. I would definitely include Jerry Herman, Charles Strouse and Stephen Sondheim in there. Cy Coleman died relatively recently, as did Betty Comden. But the GAS ceased to be a cultural force during the Sixties. I would definitely include all the songs from West Side Story, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, all of which are incredible masterworks, whether they are to your (or my) taste or not. All the other songs you mention qualify. As for Lloyd Webber, no (he's definitely a post-rock 'n' roll composer). But you do get honorary GAS songs imported from other countries, including Britain with Ray Noble, Noel Coward and Eric Maschwitz/Jack Strachey. Autumn Leaves is a French song, but its Mercer lyric qualifies it as a GAS piece. And loads of GAS songs came out of Brazil during the bossa nova craze. And of course many GAS songs come from jazz. Ellington is one of the genre's greatest contributors. It's an important subject because outside of jazz and the films of Golden Age Hollywood, the GAS is America's greatest contribution to world culture.

I recall an interview with Dudley Moore in which he said his admiration of Garner used to raise eyebrows among other jazz musicians. That suggests Garner has always suffered from this kind of attitude.

For those of us outside the US who can't take advantage of the Best Buy offer, Concord is offering this set for $49.49, plus an additional 20% off with the code CMG1006.

CO-wrote. I don't think anybody's mentioned that here so far. He wrote the music, and Bob Russell the lyrics, as I understand it. The same Bob Russell who wrote the lyrics to Don't Get Around Much Any More, Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me and You Came a Long Way from St Louis, among many others. Russell was dying of cancer when he wrote He Ain't Heavy. I think it's a lovely lyric, especially the poignant last A section: "It's a long, long road/ From which there is no return/ While we're on the way to there/ Why not share?" Needs the right performer, though.

Although Lee Morgan did a lovely version on Delightful-Lee, with Johnny Smith's on his eponymous Verve album not far behind.

Great work -- thanks, Peter!

Amazon.com is listing this Verve title for a November 10 release, here. As usual with Verve, hard info is hard to find, but the price suggests a boxed set. A review on Amazon.de suggests that it will include the complete Crescendo, LA, live dates from 11-21 May 1961: 139 songs. Don't know where he gets that from, though.