The Tonight Show Band with Doc Severinsen, Vol. II (1987)

Note: For this, the CD Project's 2000th blog post, I've selected the first CD I ever purchased (or second CD I ever purchased, depending on how you look at it). And not only is this post number 2000, today we're also celebrating the 14th anniversary of The CD Project, which started back on September 15, 2010 when I posted a few random thoughts about Paul Simon's Graceland album.

While the source material on Volume II isn't as attractive as what was on this disc's predecessor, the arrangements of said material are stellar. Like the earlier disc, this is 12 tracks of slick, over-produced big band (re-)arrangements of jazz standards. Top shelf music played by top shelf musicians - it's a blast to reacquaint myself with names like Tommy Newsom, Snooky Young, and Ed Shaughnessy. And while Doc himself has the occasional intonation issue, he plays like none other. The slower tunes plod a bit, but the upbeat numbers are what make this one worth a listen. Promoted as an "All Digital Recording" back when that was a big deal.

And I can't remember the last time I watched The Tonight Show. Maybe 2015?

Track 8, Take The 'A' Train, won the Grammy award for Best Arrangement on an Instrumental. The album itself was nominated for the Grammy Award in the category of Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band, eventually losing to Mercer Ellington for Digital Duke.

Press of the time:

• Billboard: "Look for similarly programmed, digitally recorded album of standards to duplicate success of its predecessor."
• CashBox: "a dozen glossy standards go zip-bang-bam.
• Downbeat: "This may be the best-equipped working big band in the world"

Album chart peaks:

• US Billboard Top 200: Did not chart
• Billboard Jazz: #22
• Billboard CD: #15
• CashBox Jazz: #30
• CashBox CD: #25
• Radio & Records Jazz Radio National Airplay: #25

Tracks, ranked in order of personal preference:

1. In The Mood (1939)
2. Jumpin' At The Woodside (1938)
3. April In Paris (1932)
4. Take The 'A' Train (1939)
5. Do Nothing 'Till You Hear From Me (1940)
6. Hamp's Boogie Woogie (1944)
7. The Jersey Bounce (1941)
8. Airmail Special (1941)
9. Stardust (1927)
10. Georgia On My Mind (1930)
11. The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise (1919)
12. Serenade In Blue (1942)

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: In December 1987, I had my mind made up that I would buy my first CD player within the next few weeks. I had my eye on a Sony D-160 just like the one owned by one of my fraternity brothers. I wanted to be able to hook it up to my car's cassette player as well as my home stereo. In my mind, it was a done deal.

On Christmas break 1987 from my senior year in college, I was visiting my parents in San Antonio. Doing some last minute Christmas shopping, I was strolling through the K-Mart at Loop 410 and Austin Highway (I believe that building is now the Business Services Operations Center of Goodwill San Antonio). In a rack near the front door, I saw this CD, as well as volume one, priced at only $9.99 each. This was at a time when these new CD things were running $15 and up. So even though I didn't have a player, I bought the two discs. Within a week or so, I listened to them on my friend Richard's sweet new Marantz CD player and within a month, I had purchased my D-160.

Previously revisited for the blog:
Merry Christmas from Doc Severinsen and The Tonight Show Orchestra (1991)
The Tonight Show Band with Doc Severinsen (1986)

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For those of you playing along at home, 2000 posts in 14 years averages out to a post ≈ 2.5 days. The chart below examines the albums about which I've written, sorted by year of release, excluding compilation discs. The chart covers albums released in the years 1955-2023 (click to enlarge):

I expected the chart to be the highest in the early '80s, which turned out to be the case. However, I also expected my recent interest in 1960's hard bop albums to have more of an impact and create more of a bell curve, but that wasn't to be. I have no explanation for the outlier that was 1997. Anyway, if you like charts, I created three others: posts to date by genre, by year, by popularity.

My sincere thanks for dropping by and supporting my music & physical media addictions for all these years.

Blog post #2000