Search - George Shearing, Red Norvo :: Midnight on Cloud 69

A Short CD with a Misleading Title

Timothy Allen | San Francisco, CA United States | 02/07/2004

(2 out of 5 stars)

"The Amazon site lists this album "Midnight on Cloud 69: Shearing/Norvo." But don't expect to get Shearing and Norvo together; this is about 24 minutes of a Shearing quintet, and an altogether separate 12 minutes of Norvo's first trio. The Shearing group, featuring the obscure Marjorie Hyams on vibes, is his original quintet, recorded in 1949. The group works smoothly together, though the music settles into a compromise between improvisatory freedom and commercial-sounding melody that seems dated now. The four Norvo selections are 1950 recordings, widely released on other albums, with Tal Farlow and Charles Mingus. Red was never bad, and Mingus has a great drive, but these early trio arrangements are choppy and awkward. By the 1953-1955 recordings (reissued on Prestige), Norvo and his bandmates had developed ways to make this difficult musical combination much more successful. Some might disagree with my assessment of the musical quality of this album, but it would be hard to dispute that the limited quantity of music--twelve 3-minute cuts--makes this album a poor value. The recording of Hyams may be of interest to die-hard vibes music collectors, since she was rarely recorded and retired from music in 1949. But there are many, many better Shearing and Norvo albums."