Legrand Jazz

Michel Legrand

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Three Great Jazz Days in New York

In early June 1958, the French composer, arranger, and pianist Michel Legrand came to New York on a heady mission. Just beginning to make a name for himself with film scores, Legrand intended to gather some of the biggest names in jazz and have them play his unconventional interpretations of tunes associated with specific moments in the music's history. He wrote the charts in three weeks, and spent time corralling stars like Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, and Ben Webster—as well as lesser-known young players who went on to have impact later, trumpeters Donald Byrd and Art Farmer and saxophonist Phil Woods among them.

Exactly how Legrand convinced the luminaries is unclear. One possibility is that, since his other gigs at the time included conducting for French crooner Maurice Chevalier, he likely could afford to pay decently. What matters is he assembled three separate "dream team" bands to record on three different days, and walked away with one of the greatest allstar sessions in jazz history. Legrand Jazz is the rare summit of titans that is engrossing all the way through: These arrangements inspire thoughtful, expansive, anything-but-typical-big-band solos.

Starting with a shifting-meter treatment of Fats Waller's "The Jitterbug Waltz," Legrand reimagines jazz from the Louis Armstrong era ("Wild Man Blues") to bebop. In each case, he honors the original melodic shapes, but places them in strikingly modern frameworks—the beautiful "Nuages" features four trombones playing wide Stravinsky-like chords, while the arrangement of "A Night in Tunisia" pumps up the original theme into a multilayered fanfare.

Just about every selection features a different soloist (or several), and it's clear that Legrand, who went on to make his name with such film scores as The Thomas Crown Affair and Summer of '42, thought deeply about the background textures surrounding these solo passages. Emphasizing colors rather than riffs, he creates settings that coax spellbinding solos from his hired guns—among the best are Davis's disconsolate mutedtrumpet turn on "'Round Midnight" and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster's rhapsodic swirl through "Nuages," which is saturated with smoky romance. Legrand might have been an outsider, but he understood something about jazz that eluded many of its full-time practitioners: The mood of the music can be as powerful a lure as the notes.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 1958, Philips
Key Tracks: "The Jitterbug Waltz," "'Round Midnight," "A Night in Tunisia," "Don't Get Around Much Anymore"
Next Stop: Gil Evans: Out of the Cool
After That: The Thad Jones–Mel Lewis Big Band: Consummation
Book Page: 445

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