Les Baxter - Broadway '61 (1961/2022) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Les Baxter (1922-1996) used to be an utterly talented composer and bandleader who was on the go to the max during his active years. His version and as I should say vision of jazz music was a contemporary fresh and colorful sound with an exotic vibe due to the use of many elements of latin music within a modernized big band sound.

We speak of the exotica and space age era when jazz music became more than just a few musicians on stage in a back street pub sweating their life out while improvising. He draws inspiration from the various swing orchestras of the late 1920s and combines this lush big band approach with a hot south American groove that shows an affinity for Cuban club music, for mambo and salsa.

The latter is of course the field of expertise for which Les Baxter is particularly loved to this day, but particularly well-known he is for another feat, namely the metamorphosis of Margeruite Monnot's French chanson La Goualante Du Pauvre Jean into The Poor People Of Paris. A smash hit in 1956, Capitol Records of course were eager to let the composer build on that more mundane and earthen approach.

TRACKLIST

1. Les Baxter - Guenevere / Follow Me / Camelot / The Simple Joys Of Maidenhood (From "Camelot")
2. Les Baxter - I Loved You Once In Silence (From "Camelot")
3. Les Baxter - Follow Me
4. Les Baxter - If Ever I Would Leave You (From "Camelot")
5. Les Baxter - El Sombrero From "Wildcat"
6. Les Baxter - You're Far Away From Home / Angelina (Medley)
7. Les Baxter - I Ain't Down Yet (From "The Unsinkable Molly Brown")
8. Les Baxter - Dolce Far Niente
9. Les Baxter - I Wonder What It's Like (From "Tenderloin")
10. Les Baxter - Tommy, Tommy
11. Les Baxter - Artificial Flowers (From "Tenderloin")
12. Les Baxter - Lovely Laurie From "Tenderloin"



Thanks to the Original customer.