I Get A Boot Out Of You

Recorded across three sessions in Hollywood in the summer of 1959, this is arranger-pianist Marty Paich's tribute to swing-era standards refracted through the tightly voiced, mid-sized big-band sound he had pioneered on his celebrated Mel Torme collaborations. Paich assembled a crack roster of West Coast studio and jazz players for the date, most notably altoist Art Pepper, on loan from another label, and vibraphonist Victor Feldman, also on loan, alongside trumpeter Jack Sheldon, pianist Russ Freeman and drummer Mel Lewis, giving the session an unusually strong solo bench for what was billed as a swing repertory record. The book leans heavily on Ellington, four of the eight tunes including a swinging instrumental take on the vocalese classic "Moanin'" and the Ellington-Strayhorn staples "Warm Valley" and "Cottontail", plus Cole Porter's "Love For Sale" and other standards, each reworked with Paich's harmonically adventurous, contrapuntal charts rather than played as straight repertory. The record arrived at the height of Paich's run as one of the era's most in-demand jazz arrangers, and it stands as a prime example of the West Coast cool school's application of modern arranging technique to older material. Critically it has endured as a favorite among cool-jazz collectors less for chart innovation alone than for the quality of the blowing Paich drew out of his soloists, with Pepper's turns singled out by later listeners as some of his best studio work outside his own leader dates. It remains a benchmark of late-1950s West Coast big-band jazz and a key entry in both Paich's and Pepper's discographies.