In 1958, a young, successful French composer-arranger with a major infatuation on American jazz, worked his way to New York and convinced the very best players of the time to record an album of largely jazz standards. Michel Legrand would go on to win numerous prizes and accolades (3 Oscars, 5 Grammies, 2 Palmes D’or, etc.), but little of what followed matched the sheer brilliance of Legrand Jazz.

Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Ben Webster, Phil Woods and practically every other session man in town signed up for sessions with Legrand to record his idiosyncratic arrangements of standards (“Django”, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”, “Night in Tunisia”, etc.). Instead of regurgitating then current bop styles, he reinvented the very nature of orchestral jazz band repertoire to make a unique and forward-looking statement on the genre.

 

Tracklist

Side 1:

  1. The Jitterbug Waltz (Fats Waller)
  2. Nuages (Django Reinhardt)
  3. Night In Tunisia (Dizzy Gillespie)
  4. Blue And Sentimental (Count Basie)
  5. Stompin’ At The Savoy (Benny Goodman)
  6. Django (John Lewis)

 

Side 2:

  1. Wild Man Blues (Jelly Roll Morton)
  2. Rosetta (Earl Hines)
  3. ‘Round Midnight (Thelonious Monk)
  4. Don’t Get Around Much Anymore (Duke Ellington)
  5. In A Mist (Bix Beiderbecke)