Russ Freeman & Shelly Manne - One on One (CD)

All Music Guide

A Japanese recording team took down this amazingly satisfying duo session, originally released on the Atlas label and reissued with a brace of alternate takes almost two decades later. It's a long-delayed sequel to a duo recording that the pair made in 1954 on a 10" Contemporary LP, and it carries some historical poignance. Freeman, who wrote the liner notes, says that this was his last recording, having not played jazz regularly since leaving Shelly Manne and His Men in 1967 and reconciling himself to a life of slogging away in the Hollywood studios. It is also one of Manne's final recordings, for he would be dead in two years, still in his musical prime. The collection mixes standards like "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" and "On Green Dolphin Street" with several attractive Freeman originals and a long, complex, partially free-form composition, "One on One." Yet the ultimate sparkplug for the session's success is not so much the playing of Freeman, as inventive a pianist as he is,... as it is the extraordinary drumming of Manne. He thinks like an orchestrator at all times, never content to merely lay down a ceaselessly swinging beat, coming up with an unlimited quantity of sounds and ideas that all fit together even when seeming to come out of nowhere. His is truly the sound of surprise, and he keeps you involved when Freeman sometimes seems a bit stolid in the left hand or unvarying in touch. Of the unreleased stuff, the only new title is a tongue-in-cheek ditty called "Name That Tune" (hint -- it's by Johannes Brahms). - Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide Read more Less