In his liner notes for the album, Lawrence D. Stewart observed that:
“Geometry insists that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts; but when the proposition is Mel Tormé plus Marty Paich, the result is far more than a combination of singular talents. Tormé and Paich have made over half a dozen records together, always experimenting in the balancing of this jazz equation. But the formula they have uncovered for this set is the most astonishing yet.
Tormé does not conceive of himself as a soloist with a background accompaniment. Instead, he treats his voice as one more instrument in the band and achieves his effects by balance, counter-rhythm and even harmonic dissonances, which ring against these instrumental changes. ‘Most singers want to finish singing and then have the band come in for a bar and a half – and then they’re on again,’ observes Paich. ‘But Mel’s always saying “Let the band play – let the band play.” It’s quite unselfish from his standpoint and it doesn’t overload the album. It makes for good listening.’ It does even more than that: it gives a totally new conception to some rather traditional music.”
Richard Cook & Brian Morton had this to say about the album in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD: 6th Edition [London: Penguin, 2002]:
“This is arguably Tormé’s greatest period on record, and it captures the singer in full flight. His range had grown a shade tougher since his 1940s records, but his voice is more flexible, his phrasing infinitely assured, and the essential lightness of timbre is used to suggest a unique kind of tenderness.
Marty Paich’s arrangements are beautifully polished and rich-toned, the French horns lending distinctive color to ensembles which sound brassy without being metallic. There may be only a few spots for soloists but they’re all made to count, in the West Coast manner of the day.
It’s loaded with note perfect scores from Paich and a couple of pinnacles of sheer swing ….” [p. 1456].
If you haven’t heard these recordings by Tormé and Paich, get them and listen to sheer genius at work.
In 1959, the year before the Shubert Alley recording, vibraphonist Terry Gibbs began fronting a big band on Monday nights [the customary off night for working musicians] at a few venues in Hollywood. Later to be called the “Dream Band,” during its initial existence is was sometimes referred to as “The Bill Holman Band” because most of the bands early charts were “loaned” by Bill as Terry could barely afford to pay the musicians, let alone, buy arrangements.
However, the band did “make a go of it” for a couple of years and Terry did commission three charts from Marty for the band. These were: Opus One, I’m Getting Sentimental Over You and Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise. Lest anyone be concerned about what Marty could do with a “full Armada under his command,” the three arrangements announce immediately that Paich could take the additional instrumentation of a larger band to new heights of power and propulsion. These charts for the Terry Gibbs Dream Band provide a microcosmic laboratory for studying a master, big band orchestrator at work.
Beyond his continuing work with Tormé and the definitive, big band arrangements for Gibbs, Marty would be involved with two more very special projects in 1959.
The first of these involved alto saxophonist Art Pepper whom Marty once described this way:
“When I first met Art he was the greatest saxophone player that I had heard. Far above anybody else. I couldn’t believe how beautifully he played. And at that time there was the battle going on: a lot of writers were writing about East Coast Jazz and West Coast Jazz. Art to me was the ‘sound’ of West Coast Jazz, that melodic style he played, rather than that hard-driving New York style that a lot of guys were playing. I just fell in love with him the first time I heard him. And then eventually we worked together.” Gordon, p.165].
At the time, Marty’s devotion to Pepper turned out to be a good thing for us Ted Gioia points out: “Between 1958 and 1960, Paich was directly or indirectly responsible for about half of the recordings in the Pepper discography.” [Gioia, p.303]