Jackie & Roy – TIME & LOVE

With the backing of a large orchestra, lush even by arranger Don Sebesky‘s standards, Jackie and Roy front an exquisitely recorded Creed Taylor production that mostly falls outside the idiom of jazz into a polished, jazzy, classical/easy listening plane. More to the point, the collective taste of Taylor and the Krals is incredibly rich, for they tap into a small mother lode of scintillating contemporary material that jazz people rarely touched, then or now — like Leonard Bernstein‘s beguiling “A Simple Song” (from Mass) or Michel Colombier‘s “We Could Be Flying” (the high point of his Wings pop symphony). Sebesky‘s arrangements burrow deeply into his classical sources, whether juxtaposing Bach‘s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” on top of the title cut or dovetailing Debussy‘s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” into Jerome Moross‘ “Lazy Afternoon”; Villa-Lobos‘ “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5” is a perfect choice for a genre-fusing vocalese by Jackie. Paul Desmond pokes his quizzical head into the Brubeck/Gershwin medley “Summer Song/Summertime” — who better than old Paul? — and Hubert Laws enhances the Bernstein and Colombier tunes. Although neither Jackie nor Roy do anything resembling jazz singing here, forget about categories; this is gorgeous music that cannot be shackled to one genre.