MANHATTAN TRANSFER
Couldn't Be Hotter

Telarc

Read the Jazzitude review of Cheryl Bentyne's Talk of the Town
Read the Jazzitude review of Janis Siegel's Friday Night Special
Read the Jazzitude review of Janis Siegel's I Wish You Love

When an artist or group has been around as long as the Manhattan Transfer, a live album is generally an opportunity to mine gold from the performer’s vast back catalog of material, and generally forms something of a greatest hits collection with some new material thrown in. Not so here, as Alan Paul, Janis Siegel, Cheryl Bentyne, and Tim Hauser lean heavily on more recently recorded material. The group has eschewed some of the more modern, pop-oriented material and sounds they once embraced and presents a more straightforward jazz and swing orientation on such recent recordings as Spirit of St. Louis and Swing. That emphasis is in evidence in this live set recorded at Tokyo’s Orchard Hall in December of 2000. The result is an album that swings and entertains while demonstrating that the group has lost none of its tightness and vocal prowess.

Certainly the mere fact that Manhattan Transfer is made up of four formidable singers with distinctive voices and a great deal of talent when it comes to interpreting their chosen material is not enough to insure success in this day of prefab, TV-spawned pop singers and market driven musical decisions. But if you listen to this well-recorded CD (it was produced by the group’s own Tim Hauser) and realize that these are four human beings who have dedicated their lives to the art of singing and to really getting inside their material and that they are singing their intricate arrangements in perfect four-part harmony live, with no studio trickery, you cannot help but be impressed.

They lead off with an energetic reading of Louis Armstrong’s “Old Man Mose” that will make you want to get up and dance even if you don’t know any swing ballroom dance steps. The group’s Spirit of St. Louis album, which is well-represented here, was a tribute to Satchmo, and besides such material from the album as “Sugar (That Sugar Baby O’Mine)”, “Gone Fishin’,” and “Blue Again,” there are also Armstrong-related performances that weren’t on the studio album, including the Janis Siegel showcase “Stars Fell on Alabama” and Alan Paul’s reading of “Up a Lazy River.” One reason that these tunes are included is the presence of jazz trumpet great Lew Soloff, who provides supportive trumpet work on both numbers. The group is also ably backed by saxophonist Larry Klimas and a rhythm section comprised of keyboardist Yaron Gershovsky, drummer Tom Brechtlein, bassist Michael Bowie, and guitarist Wayne Johnson.

Other standout numbers include a Basie-like rendition of “Sing Moten’s Swing,” a very hip “A-Tisket A-Tasket,” the lovely “Clouds,” and an adaptation of the Benny Goodman classic “Air Mail Special” entitled “It’s Good Enough to Keep.” Tim Hauser takes a star turn on the Louis Armstrong number “Blue Again,” which is languid and smooth.

The group tackles a number of pieces with lyrics by their mentor Jon Hendricks, but one of the more interesting aspects of the Transfer’s shift in emphasis and their last few recordings is the emergence of Alan Paul as a skillful writer of vocalese lyrics. He has adapted “Stompin’ At Mahogany Hall” (from “Mahogany Hall Stomp”), “Nothing Else Could be Hotter Than That” (from Lil Armstrong’s “Hotter Than That”), and “It’s Good Enough To Keep.”

The group’s sole concession to their ‘80s success is a rendition of “Twilight Zone” (adapted by Alan Paul and Jay Graydon) from the smash album Extensions. Most probably don’t know or have forgotten that in the mid-80s the group received a dozen Grammy nominations for a single album—a number surpassed only by Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It’s odd to realize that this song and others from that decade that once seemed to define the Manhattan Tranfer’s sound are now quite dated and completely out of place in the program that the band has put together here. It’s the only misstep in an otherwise perfect live performance, though. If you were a big Manhattan Transfer fan back then but have lost track of them along the way, Couldn’t Be Hotter is a great way to catch up with them. If you never quite go caught up in the group’s retro sound, this CD is worth checking out for its jazzier sound and arrangements.