Take Ten
Despite the times in which he lived, Paul Desmond was never one to succumb to either exoticism or the purely funky, so rarefied was his butterfly tone and his delicate phrasing. Still, here, with Connie Kay's drums prodding him, and a recent trip to Brazil heightening his bossa nova senses, Desmond goes as musically far afield as he would ever travel with "Take Ten," "El Prince," "Embarcadero," and bossas such as "Samba de Orpheu" and "The Theme from Black Orpheus." He negotiates the Brazilian material as gracefully as aStan Getz, but as always with Desmond it's the ballads that stay in the memory, and here "Nancy," "Out of Nowhere," and "Alone Together" are as sweetly played as is imaginable within the jazz tradition.Jim Hall's guitar is as fine as it has ever been, his chorded melody lines always surprising, his single-string work pureCharlie Christianrevisionism, all of it in service of creating a swing setting for Desmond. The occasional fade and the unreleased longer takes of "El Prince" and "Embarcadero" suggest that RCA was thinking of Desmond in pop terms, and probably correctly so, for his solos--gemlike miniatures as they are--do not need development to make their point.--John F. Szwed