Jazz Albums? Maybe. But Are They Worthwhile? Definitely

The increasing compartmentalization of the music world is placing at risk albums that don’t easily fit into any single category. In the process, fascinating recordings often tend to sink beneath the horizon without a trace.

Here are two especially interesting examples--albums that deserve, at the very least, a fair hearing:

Raymond Scott, “Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights” (*** 1/2, Columbia/Legacy Records), is a name unlikely to ring bells for anyone under age 60. Yet, in the 1930s and ‘40s, his quirky tunes were heard everywhere. As music director at CBS Radio, he organized the first racially mixed studio orchestra (which included Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Charlie Shavers, among others), and in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s he was the conductor on the enormously popular “Your Hit Parade.”

Although Scott seemed to disappear at the advent of the rock era, he simply shifted his focus. He spent much of the ‘70s doing electronic music research and development at Berry Gordy’s Motown, building such pioneering devices as the Clavivox (a keyboard-controlled theremin) and the Electronium (an early groove-generating synthesizer).

But Scott’s most sustained legacy has been the music he wrote for and recorded with his quintet between 1936 and 1939 (the group actually included six pieces, but he didn’t like the term “sextet” because he “wanted listeners to keep their minds on the music”). The music’s permanence was guaranteed in the early ‘40s when Carl Stalling, music director for Warner Bros., acquired the rights to Scott’s music publishing and incorporated much of it into “Merrie Melodies” and “Looney Tunes” cartoons.

Twenty-two selections from the quintet’s original recordings are included here, with such typically oddball Scott titles as “Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals” and “Bumpy Weather Over Newark.” The music is utterly unique, filled with suddenly shifting rhythms, herky-jerky melodies and wildly manic enthusiasm. Although the solos apparently were not spontaneously improvised, each of the pieces was assembled in improvisational fashion, with Scott putting the pieces together--without written music--in extensive rehearsals.

Is it jazz? Perhaps not in the traditional sense of theme and improvised variations. But the feeling of swing, the spirited ensemble playing and the gutsy quality of the soloing are deeply rooted in the American jazz experience. Fortunately, Columbia has made it possible for this eccentric but highly ingenious music to survive in its original incarnation, beyond the boundaries of soundtrack music.

The period black-and-white photo on the cover of “The Comedian Harmonists” (***, Hannibal/Rykodisc) reveals six young men in tuxedos, hair slicked back, looking a bit like escapees from a wedding scene in an F. Scott Fitzgerald album. They would appear to have little to do with jazz.

But the Harmonists’ story is far darker than anything even Fitzgerald could have imagined. Formed in 1928, in the last roller-coaster years of Germany’s Weimar Republic, the vocal sextet assembled a repertoire of works balancing German precision with American music, including jazz.

The results--clearly evident in this 14-song collection--were extraordinary. Jazz? In a way--spiced with strong traces of the blend of barbershop quartet music and jazz produced by the now sadly forgotten American vocal group the Revellers, a powerful influence upon the Harmonists.

There is, for example, a lush, wordless rendering of Ellington’s “Creole Love Call,” in which the Harmonists mimic instrumental sounds. There are quirky, beautifully arranged renderings, sung in English, of “Night and Day” and “Tea for Two.” Each is enhanced by the group’s (and, especially, founder and leader Harry Frommerman’s) insistence upon having the arrangements unfold with new ideas throughout each of the choruses.

There also are numbers underscoring the “Comedian” aspect of the group’s name: a humorous sendup (in German) of “The Last Roundup”; a similarly whimsical German version of “Happy Days Are Here Again”; the hilarious “Kannst du pfeifen, Johanna?” (“Can You Whistle, Johanna?”); and the ultimate combination of oom-pah and yodeling in “Die Dorfmusik” (The Village Band).

But the Comedian Harmonists, despite their huge popularity throughout Europe, were destined to have a short career. Three were Jewish and three were “Aryan.” First banned by the Nazis from singing Jewish-composed songs, they were then attacked for “Judeo-Marxist caterwauling” and eventually blacklisted by Goebbels. The three Jewish members left the country and formed their own sextet, as did the members who remained in Germany; each had little success.

The recordings of the original ensemble remain as full of optimistic life and sheer, joyous musicality as on the day they were created. An underground buzz about the group has begun, Web sites are proliferating, and Barry Manilow is reportedly hoping to tell their story in a Broadway musical, perhaps next year. (An early version was produced at the La Jolla Playhouse in 1997.) The music of the Comedian Harmonists deserves to be heard, and this collection is a prime starting point.