The George Gershwin Songbook

Description

Usually when clarinetist Buddy DeFranco (1923-2014) and pianist Oscar Peterson (1925-2007) teamed up on records in the 50s, the results were up-tempo fireworks as they challenged each other. However, their collaboration on The George Gershwin Songbook is quite different, as they are accompanied by Russell Garcia and His Orchestra. DeFranco and Peterson first recorded together in 1954 in groups led by Lionel Hampton. During that same year they toured with Jazz at the Philharmonic forming a Quintet with Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Buddy Rich (one of their sets was recorded at the Bushnell Memorial Auditorium, in Hartford, on September 17, 1954 and subsequently issued by Norman Granz on Clef as The Buddy DeFranco Quintet . On October 29, 1954, they co-led a quintet session issued as Buddy DeFranco and the Oscar Peterson Quartet, which also featured Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, and Louie Bellson. The following day they participated at a studio jam session prepared by Granz, which also included Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Harris, Flip Phillips, and the aforementioned rhythm section. The Gershwin Songbook came on December 6 and 7 of that year, but after a prolific 1954, they would only record together on two more occasions: a 1955 concert in Berlin and, amazingly, thirty years later, for the Pablo label LP Hark: Buddy DeFranco Meets The Oscar Peterson Quartet , a reunion also produced by Norman Granz.