The Manhattan Transfer -- The Christmas Album

 

Nope, this isn't another Reminiscings of Youth article. My personal opinion has always been that Christmas and jazz go together like hamburgers and French fries, and one fast food restaurant that has often brought that together is The Manhattan Transfer. And on this Christmas Eve, I've decided to finish off tonight's round of KKP stuff with one of my favourite music acts doing what they do best.

In November 1992, the famed vocal quartet released "The Christmas Album" which is filled with plenty of stylish jazz renditions of some of the most popular Christmas hits with the backing of an orchestra that would have Nelson Riddle smiling from the great beyond.

One fine example is the Transfer's take on "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!". A lot of folks would know this 1945 classic by lyricist Sammy Cahn and composer Jule Styne from its Vaughn Monroe original when it was used at the end of "Die Hard". That one was quite the bouncy tune about snuggling up with the significant other as the fire and repeated ingestion of popcorn added to the warmth. The Transfer's rendition takes the jauntiness out and replaces it with silky-smooth and slowly simmering romance to really get those feelings of nestling up in the lodge. I wouldn't blame the happy couple in the song if they didn't get off the sofa until the 27th.

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" already has representation on the blog through Tony Bennett's most wonderful version from 1968. But this one by the Manhattan Transfer is also plenty of fun with the orchestra going all snazzy and swingy. With the additional subtitle of "Santa Man", it's very hep, and all of the gang have put their vocalese on full. It's just a shade over three minutes but they have managed to pack in a lot of melodic dynamite.

Speaking of Tony Bennett, he makes a guest appearance on "The Christmas Album" via his and the Transfer's take on "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)", a chestnut that probably has even more articles on KKP such as the iconic version by Nat King Cole. As with all of the other versions, this collaboration between Bennett and the Transfer brings up the nostalgic warm-and-fuzzies and the Normal Rockwell images of Christmas at home surrounded by a nightly winter scene and lots of family and friends.

Let me take this opportunity then to wish all of the readers, commenters and contributors to "Kayo Kyoku Plus" a very Merry Christmas.

The Manhattan Transfer/Anita Baker -- Mystery

 

Once again, I bid you welcome to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth where I post an article on an old song from outside of Japan that I have cherished since my days as a young lad in Toronto. It's been a while, so I wanted to write something on one of my favourite pop groups, The Manhattan Transfer.

I actually saw the guys perform this on an episode of that music show "Solid Gold" decades ago, and thought it was a pretty darn cool tune. This would be "Mystery", straight from The Manhattan Transfer's September 1983 album "Bodies and Souls" which also has one of their biggest hits, "Spice of Life" that I've covered in a past ROY article. And as with "Spice of Life", the late great Rod Temperton took care of this urbane and soulful ballad. Both songs were the many examples of the Transfer's urban contemporary phase spanning from the late 1970s going into the 1980s.

Now, it was just a couple of weeks ago that I devoted the ROY that time to Anita Baker's scintillating "Rapture" album. It was there that I mentioned that there was especially one track on the album that I wanted to focus upon, and indeed, it's this one, the Queen of Quiet Storm's own cover of "Mystery". Her take fits very well with the overall mood of the album and she handles it with absolute aplomb. If I had to make a choice between the two, though, I would have to go with The Manhattan Transfer's original because of those wonderful harmonies elicited from the group.

Going with the September 1983 release of "Bodies and Souls", what were some Japanese singles being released that month?

Naoko Kawai -- Unbalance （ＵＮバランス）

Checkers -- Gizagiza Heart no Komori Uta （ギザギザハートの子守唄）

Yu Hayami -- Lucky Lips (ラッキィ・リップス)

Airplay/The Manhattan Transfer -- Nothin' You Can Do About It

 

All these years, I knew about Canada's David Foster since the 1980s when he was coming up with these pop instrumentals such as "The Love Theme from St. Elmo's Fire" and "Winter Games", and also songs for acts such as Earth Wind & Fire and Kenny Loggins. Then much later, I discovered that he helped out Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）and Ami Ozaki（尾崎亜美）for their own albums. Finally, I realized that he was part of a band called Airplay that was around for just 1980. 

A Canadian songwriting legend was paired up with one of the great American guitar icons, Jay "Peg" Graydon, and according to Wikipedia, their backing band consisted of the members of Toto and other session musicians who have had their own connections to Japanese singers such as Jerry Hey and Gary Grant. This is the ultimate AOR grouping!

In the aim for total transparency, this week's Reminiscings of Youth is actually a bit of a misnomer because I never found out about Airplay or its arguably most famous track "Nothin' You Can Do About It" on their lone self-titled album when it came out in 1980. It was only within the years that I've been working on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" that I first discovered this really snazzy song via YouTube and it's been the eternal earworm ever since. For some reason, I don't ever recollect hearing "Nothin' You Can Do About It" on the radio when I was a kid, and yet it sounds like the type of song that would have gotten heavy rotational airplay (pun fully intended) considering what was being played on the stations back then. The horns and the keyboards are amazing, and who knew that Graydon could sound that good as a singer? I'm just glad that I was able to finally come across it in my older years (circa 2018) and that one song was enough for me to order the album from Amazon.

The thing is that the song created by Airplay and Steve Kipner was originally recorded by The Manhattan Transfer as a track from their 1979 "Extensions". And "Nothin' You Can Do About It" fit hand-in-glove with the Transfer's move into smooth classy pop that time. Still, when I think of the arrangement, I have to go with Airplay's cover.

I'm just lifting this brief excerpt from a 2014 interview with Graydon via Wikipedia:

Interviewer: Did you guys ever envision Airplay becoming a full-time, touring type of band? 

Graydon: David wanted to tour and I didn't. A dumb move on my part.

Well, no worries Jay! It looks like you made up for that oversight with the above performance in 1994!

I gave my compliments to Neo-AOR Norwegian singer-songwriter Ole Børud about a month ago for "Find a Way". Well, he and his band gave his own tribute to the song a year ago.

Going with the Manhattan Transfer's October 1979 release of "Extensions", what other songs were coming out in Japan at that time?

Saki Kubota -- Ihojin （異邦人）

Yellow Magic Orchestra -- Technopolis

As a PS, I also read that Foster played for the band Skylark in the early 1970s. Me, I ate at Skylark! And the crazy thing was that the manager looked like a Japanese Jay Graydon!

The Manhattan Transfer -- Spice of Life

 

I figured last week that I would be doing this Reminiscings of Youth article today on the legendary vocal group The Manhattan Transfer. However, I didn't know that this year would mark the 50th anniversary since the formation of the second and current incarnation in 1972. It's just a pity that founder Tim Hauser is no longer around since he passed away in 2014 but perhaps somewhere, I'm hoping that he's looking fondly and proudly at his fellow Transfer mates still singing, scatting and crooning away to thrilled audiences.

My first ROY article regarding The Manhattan Transfer was a little over a year ago and not surprisingly, it was focused on the first two songs that I had probably ever heard by them as a little kid "Tuxedo Junction" and "Chanson D'Amour" back in the mid-1970s. Of course at the time, my musical vocabulary was extremely basic but even then I knew jazz when I heard it, thanks to all the standards that I heard on my parents' stereo.

However, as all Transfer fans know, their heroes didn't want to stick with doing jazz and chanson covers. In the latter half of that decade going into the 1980s, the Manhattan Transfer got onto some of the R&B and disco bandwagon. That culminated into one of their most famous hits "Spice of Life", a song that I heard frequently on the radio. This was a single which came out in 1983 with the source album being "Bodies and Souls" which was released in September of that year. "Bodies and Souls" was the very first Manhattan Transfer album that I ended up buying but certainly not the last.

After listening to "Spice of Life" at least hundreds of times over nearly forty years from radio to CD to YouTube, I really cherish this one. Looking back, I think that it's one of the truly great examples, alongside Swingout Sister's "Breakout", of sophisticated jazzy pop of an age when folks on either side of the Pacific were enjoying their caviar and champagne. It's sumptuous listening and vicarious living for a fun and luxurious night on the town. If such a thing were possible, I would even grant both "Spice of Life" and "Breakout" honourary Japanese City Pop status.

Not only is Stevie Wonder helping out with his harmonica solo, there are also plenty of musicians contributing to "Spice of Life" that have been well known among Japanese singers and their works, including Jerry Hey and Gary Grant on trumpet, Ernie Watts on sax, Paulinho da Costa on percussion and Neil Steubenhaus on bass. Perhaps it's no surprise then that "Spice of Life" was also popular in Japan. In fact, the Manhattan Transfer did a commercial over there for Suntory Brandy while doing an acapella version of the song.

Now, I would do the Oricon Top 3 for September 1983 but those three positions have already been mentioned for another ROY article back in May 2021. So, instead I'll cover Nos. 6, 7 and 8.

6. Seiko Matsuda -- Sweet Memories

7. Akina Nakamori -- Kinku （禁区）

8. H2O -- Omoide ga Ippai （思い出がいっぱい）

(cover version)

Masae Ohno -- For Darling (Four Brothers)

 

The first time that I had ever heard of the musical expression Vocalese was, not surprisingly, through The Manhattan Transfer's 1985 album "Vocalese". I soon learned that it was that form of jazz singing in which lyrics were crafted and grafted hand-in-glove onto original pre-existing solo instrumental performances. My first question was "So, is it like scatting?", and the answer to that was "No!" since scatting was using nonsensical wording instead of the actual words for Vocalese.

The Manhattan Transfer wasn't the first group to come up with Vocalese. According to Wikipedia, that honour goes to Eddie Jefferson and then I found out about Lambert, Hendricks & Ross among other artists who had been practicing their Vocalese before the Transfer. However, when I think of the famed quartet and their Vocalese virtuosity, I usually remember their incredible take on "Four Brothers" which came out on their 1978 album "Pastiche". Just to give credit where credit is due, though, "Four Brothers" had originally been composed by jazz saxophonist and composer Jimmy Giuffre in 1947.

Just to be able to create that stream of Vocalese and then make it sound seamless while performing at warp speed is a supreme feat, but just imagine trying to do the same thing with "Four Brothers" in Japanese. And yet, someone did try to do just that.

Almost a couple of years ago, I noted the Queen of Commercial Songs, Masae Ohno（大野方栄）, pulling off her version of "Lover, Come Back To Me" under the title of "Eccentric Person, Come Back To Me" for her 1983 debut album "Masae A La Mode". It looks like for this album, Ohno wanted to do covers for a few of the standards, and Track 1 was "Four Brothers" under the title of "For Darling". There may be no Big Band horns in this rendition but it's still plenty of jazz, and Ohno indeed takes on the big task of putting her own lyrics onto the quicksilver Giuffre melody. She does pretty well for the most part, I might add, as she dives into the pool and cuts through the water like a shark's fin, although I'm sure that she was absolutely exhausted in the recording booth.

I've also got to marvel at the lineup backing her up. Yuji Toriyama（鳥山雄司）and the late Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）, who I usually see in the City Pop file, were jamming happily away on guitar and piano respectively while the members of fusion band Casiopea were also helping out. Sato took care of the arrangements for the entire album.

The Manhattan Transfer -- Tuxedo Junction/Chanson D'Amour

 

It's a two-for-one thing on this week's Reminiscings of Youth article and the first one for one of my favourite bands, The Manhattan Transfer. In fact, it's so much one of my favourite bands that for a person like me who doesn't really attend concerts, I actually paid out the yen to get the ticket to see them with my own eyes at The Blue Note in Tokyo, some time in the last few years of my life in Japan. 

It was a packed house and as has been the case with a number of other acts over the decades such as The Ventures and Carpenters, The Manhattan Transfer has been a beloved musical guest in Japan. I've known about Tim Hauser, Alan Paul, Laurel Masse (to be replaced by Cheryl Bentyne), and Janis Siegel since I was an elementary school student, and to see Hauser, Paul, Masse and Bentyne a mere four or five metres away from me on the stage at last performing their biggest and most recognizable hits was a singular thrill. I remember one middle-aged fan even closer in front jumping to her feet as either Siegel or Bentyne sang right to her face. Hygiene issues aside, I'm sure that the fan's life was fulfilled. For me, it was also poignant because Hauser would pass away a few years later at the age of 72.

Although I did pick up their "Bodies & Souls" album from 1983 when I was in university, I really didn't go onto the purchasing binge for their discography until my time in Japan. I was in my jazz phase then so being a regular at the various CD stores, I started snatching up a number of their early albums including the two BEST compilations that you see at the top and bottom. The wonderful thing about The Transfer was their ability to tackle not only vocalese jazz, but also urban contemporary, Latin and doo-wop (and others). Their vocal stylings were truly magnificent instruments on their own and although a lot of their songs were covers of earlier numbers, they really made them their own.

One such example is "Tuxedo Junction" (Buddy Feyne, Erskine Hawkins, Bill Johnson, and Julian Dash) which was originally recorded in 1939 by legendary trombonist and band leader Glenn Miller. However, the first version that I heard was by The Manhattan Transfer for their self-titled 2nd album from April 1975. I'm always going to enjoy that intro with Hauser, Masse, Siegel and Paul (oo-pah, oo-PAH...I think), and the collaboration of those joyous harmonies and the boogie-woogie horns helped me decide that this Tuxedo Junction was truly the happening place in Birmingham, Alabama where folks got together in their finest clothing for a magical night of dance and music.

I very vaguely recall that The Transfer did have a TV show as a summer fill-in which turned out to be in 1975. Perhaps it can be said that Sunday nights on the network back then were indeed the televised Tuxedo Junction. I've known that "Birdland", another landmark song by the quartet, has been considered to be their theme song, but I have to admit that I enjoy "Tuxedo Junction" better as the song by them so it was nice to read on the article for the song itself that it was indeed the theme for them.

I definitely remember the first time that I heard "Chanson D'Amour" which was a track (and a 1977 single) on The Manhattan Transfer's 3rd album "Coming Out" from August 1976. When I was in junior high school, my friends and I were picked up from the school one Friday afternoon by my friend's father. As we were waiting for the last guy to come in, "Chanson D'Amour" was playing on the car radio and along with the Edith Piaf imitation by Siegel, there was the catchy "ra da da da da" chorus to insinuate it deep into my musical memories.

Reading about "Chanson D'Amour" on Wikipedia, I discovered that The Transfer's take on the song was a cover of the 1958 original created by American songwriter Wayne Shanklin and recorded by the husband-and-wife singing duo, Art and Dotty Todd.

As with a lot of the other singers and bands covered in ROY articles, The Manhattan Transfer will get some more of their songs covered here in the months to come. But of course, we have to find out what was being released in Japan when "Tuxedo Junction" and "Chanson D'Amour" made their presence known Stateside.

Well, in April 1975 (although once again, J-Wiki reports that it was March) it was:

Sayuri Ishikawa -- Chiisana Himitsu（ちいさな秘密）

And in August 1976:

Craft -- Kototoi Bashi（言問橋）

Keiko Maruyama -- Douzo Kono Mama (どうぞこのまま）