The original, Paris-based Swingle Singers, the vocal octet founded in 1962 by the American Ward Swingle (born in Mobile, Alabama), had specialized in a style more or less invented by Swingle: scatting the great hits of the classical composers. By 1969, Swingle and his group felt the need to do something else and widen their scope, and this album is the result. It manifests both change and permanence.
Change, obviously, in the choice of the musical material: no more the great hits of the classical composers (but the French Swingles would return to those in 1972, with their "Les Quatre Saisons / The Joy of Singing" album, with arrangements of pieces of Pachelbel, Bach. Marcello, Mozart and the Spring from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Les Quatre Saisons), but the American vernacular pops: a medley of country dances, of Negro Spirituals (Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho, Swing Low, Little David, Deep River), of patriotic songs (Dixie, Yankee Doodle, Battle Hymn of the Republic), of Stephen Foster (Old Folks at Home, Beautiful Dreamer, Camptown Races, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair) and of Porgy and Bess (My Man's Gone Now, It Ain't Necessarily So, Summertime, I Got Plenty of Nothin', Bess You Is My Woman) plus a few other snippets. Does it seem copious? It ain't. The early Swingle albums were always frustratingly stingy, even for LPs, never much over 30 minutes and sometimes even less, and this is exactly what you get on these CD reissues. This one is 29:58, and, other than milking us cows, I simply don't get the point of reissuing them straight on CD, rather than pairing two of these original LPS (which is what Polygram did in the late 1990s) when they started reissuing the early Swingle Albums, logically pairing the two Bachs together and the "Anyone for Bach, Handel, Vivaldi?" with "Swinging Mozart", see links above).
Permanence - other, of course, than the very principle of using the vocal octet as an instrumental ensemble, along with a drum and double-bass underpinning - is that, even when choosing compositions that were originally vocal (and other than the country dances, all are), Swingle's arrangements drop the lyrics and use only the Swingle's customary scat. The later Swingle Singers, the London group reformed by Swingle after the Paris group had disbanded in 1973, would sing the lyrics of the vocal-originated compositions they tackled (both from jazz/pop/rock and from classical music), and even superimposed newly written lyrics on music that was originally instrumental (see my review of Swing Sing), in the tradition of the jazz "vocalese" brought to a state of perfection by the famous Lambert-Hendricks-Ross trio (Sing a Song of Basie) and "Frenchified" by Mimi Perrin's Double Six de Paris, of which Swingle had been a member (Les Double Six). The disc is frustratingly short, but the little it offers is enjoyable - probably more to American listeners who have this music in their genes (although many of the songs will be familiar to foreign audiences as well, like the Negro Spirituals, the patriotic songs, "When the Saints" and the Porgy and Bess excerpts.
Change, obviously, in the choice of the musical material: no more the great hits of the classical composers (but the French Swingles would return to those in 1972, with their "Les Quatre Saisons / The Joy of Singing" album, with arrangements of pieces of Pachelbel, Bach. Marcello, Mozart and the Spring from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Les Quatre Saisons), but the American vernacular pops: a medley of country dances, of Negro Spirituals (Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho, Swing Low, Little David, Deep River), of patriotic songs (Dixie, Yankee Doodle, Battle Hymn of the Republic), of Stephen Foster (Old Folks at Home, Beautiful Dreamer, Camptown Races, Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair) and of Porgy and Bess (My Man's Gone Now, It Ain't Necessarily So, Summertime, I Got Plenty of Nothin', Bess You Is My Woman) plus a few other snippets. Does it seem copious? It ain't. The early Swingle albums were always frustratingly stingy, even for LPs, never much over 30 minutes and sometimes even less, and this is exactly what you get on these CD reissues. This one is 29:58, and, other than milking us cows, I simply don't get the point of reissuing them straight on CD, rather than pairing two of these original LPS (which is what Polygram did in the late 1990s) when they started reissuing the early Swingle Albums, logically pairing the two Bachs together and the "Anyone for Bach, Handel, Vivaldi?" with "Swinging Mozart", see links above).
Permanence - other, of course, than the very principle of using the vocal octet as an instrumental ensemble, along with a drum and double-bass underpinning - is that, even when choosing compositions that were originally vocal (and other than the country dances, all are), Swingle's arrangements drop the lyrics and use only the Swingle's customary scat. The later Swingle Singers, the London group reformed by Swingle after the Paris group had disbanded in 1973, would sing the lyrics of the vocal-originated compositions they tackled (both from jazz/pop/rock and from classical music), and even superimposed newly written lyrics on music that was originally instrumental (see my review of Swing Sing), in the tradition of the jazz "vocalese" brought to a state of perfection by the famous Lambert-Hendricks-Ross trio (Sing a Song of Basie) and "Frenchified" by Mimi Perrin's Double Six de Paris, of which Swingle had been a member (Les Double Six). The disc is frustratingly short, but the little it offers is enjoyable - probably more to American listeners who have this music in their genes (although many of the songs will be familiar to foreign audiences as well, like the Negro Spirituals, the patriotic songs, "When the Saints" and the Porgy and Bess excerpts.
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