Art van Damme - So nice!

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Genre / Жанр: Cool, Swing, Jazz-Pop
Country / Страна: Norway, USA
Recording Date & Place / Время и место записи: June 12 & 13.1973 (quintet) & March &. 1979 (strings), at MPS Studio. Villingen, Germany
Original Release Date / Год оригинального релиза: Originally released as MPS 15 412 ® 1979 Universal Music Classics & Jazz, a Division of Universal Music GmbH 
Reisue Release Date / Год переиздания: Digitally remastered 2010
Label, Number / Фирма, номер: © Universal Music Classics & Jazz, a Oivision of Universal Music GmbH, 06025 2752859, Made in the EU
Type / Тип: Compialtion

Source / Источник: Render's collection, my rip  
Format / Формат: FLAC (tracks), TAU, CUE, LOG
Rip validating / Корректность рипа: EAC ripped, correct, test and cope mode, accuratelly ripped
Covers / Сканы: Full Artworks provided. 300 dpi, png 
Total time / Общее время: 37:59

Tracks info:
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1. PERDIDO (Juan Tizol/Ervin M. Drake/Harry Lenk) 2:44
2. POLKA DOTS AND MOONBEAMS (Jimmy van Heusen/Johnny Burke) 3:12
3. MOUNTAIN GREENERY (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart) 2:25
4. WE'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN (Roger Nichols/Paul Williams) 3:27
5. SO NICE (SUMMER SAMBA) (Marcos Valle/Paulo Sergio Valle/Norman Gimbel) 2:53
6. SO WHAT'S NEW (John Pisano) 4:09
7. ON A CLEAR DAY (YOU CAN SEE FOREVER) (Burton Lane/Alan Jay Lerner) 3:20
8. HOW INSENSITIVE (Antonio Carlos Jobim/Vinicius De Moraes) 3:45
9. WORK SONG (Nat Adderley) 2:33
10. MOONLIGHT IN VERMONT (Karl Suessdorf/John M. Blackburn) 4:00
11. A MAN AND A WOMAN (Francis Lai/Pierre Barouh/Jerry Keller) 2:01
12. QUIET NIGHTS OF QUIET STARS (Antonio Carlos Jobim/Gene Lees) 3:05

Personel info:
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Art van Damme - accordion 
Siegfried Schwab - guitar 
Heribert Thusek - vibes 
Eberhard Weber - bass 
Charly Antolini - drums
Quintet arrangements by Art van Damme 
Strings arranged & conducted by Hubert Deuringer 
Willi Lehmann - concertmaster
Produced and engineered by Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer 
Recording director: Willi Fruth

ORIGINAL LP LINER NOTES
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Seven lines only is all Germany's Reclam Jazz Guide contains about Art van Damme - not all that much for a musician who's been famous for more than 30 years now. The reason for this sparse treatment can be found a few pages later in the same reference book: under the heading "accordion" it reads: "The accordion was never able to establish itself in the field of jazz because the musical possibilities for the left hand seemed to be too limited by the stiff coupling of bass harmonies."

Technical problems of this nature tend to remain theoretical questions for Art, as one can easily determine by listening to what is now his twelfth MPS LP, even if he does acknowledge such topics. He once commented in an interview: "The critical point is the coordination of both hands. It's important to have the bellows under control and to handle them in the same way a trumpet or saxophone player uses his breath."

Is the accordion a jazz instrument? For many a purist that is certainly even today a question to be answered with a clear cut no. The instrument is all too often associated with the Musette waltz or the coarse sentimental romanticism of the concertina piano. But in the last thirty years, people like Tommy Gumina, Leon Sash, Mat Mathews, Pete Jolly and, last but not least, Art van Damme have proven beyond any doubt that aside from Polka sounds, other quite different tones can be produced on the accordion. For seven consecutive years, van Damme single-handedly won the Downbeat poll among the readers of America's most important jazz magazine.

The fact that the accordion has until today remained an outsider in the jazz library also means a great advantage for a musician like Art: it secures him an absolutely unique sound. And in addition to that, there is the starkly individualistic constellation in which the Art van Damme Quintet has become a trademark: accordion, vibraphone, guitar, bass and drums.
Art stands out among his competitors on the jazz accordion not only because of the make-up of his quintet but also because of his consciously reserved, even what one could call thrifty, playing style. Accustomed to the short playing time for individual titles, which was necessary during his years of radio productions in America, he almost entirely foregoes heavy consumable choruses and in so doing achieves a playful lightness like that which also marks George Shearing, for example.

On this new LP Art van Damme performs for the first time with string accompaniment. The arrangements were written and conducted by Hubert Deuringer and are most adequate because Deuringer is a brilliant accordionist himself. In 1945 he began a career as soloist on this instrument at Stuttgart Radio, and later changed to the Siidwestfunk Baden-Baden were he led the dance orchestra. As an accordion soloist he recorded for Odeon, Teldec, Polydor and MPS, among others.

Even against the atypical background of a string section, the specific Art van Damme sound can be unmistakeably identified here. The selection of the twelve titles once again reveals the successful van Damme recipe, it includes titles that span a range from current pop standards to Broadway evergreens all the way to jazz classics.

In the modern jazz scene people like to speak of "crossover music," and by that they mean a newer current of jazz that consciously sets itself above the existing categories and is very open to all influences. If this mode word had been in existence earlier, perhaps Art van Damme's music would also have been called the same. Though its basic element is and remains swing, it similarly gains its inspirations from all surrounding fields, and in doing so creates something that usually seems suspicious to the high critics: "Music for a good time."

Rainer M. Cabanis