Verve
1963
Jazz Sebastian Bach [Compilation]
About This Album
Ward Swingle's achievement as the mastermind behind a series of attractively arranged and smoothly executed group vocal jazz interpretations of preludes, canons, fugues, adagios, airs, gavottes, and bourees by Johann Sebastian Bach constituted one of the great international artistic successes of the 1960s. These pleasant and unique recordings first appeared in the U.S. in 1963 and 1964 on the Philips LPs Bach's Greatest Hits and Going Baroque. In 1968 Verve records compiled both volumes into one package under the title used for the original French releases: Jazz Sebastian Bach consists of 23 beautifully rendered wordless jazz versions of some of the composer's loveliest creations. Since Bach was a master improviser and jazz is partially based in the most creative aspects of the European classical tradition, it makes perfect sense for these pieces to have been reconfigured as exercises in collective scat singing. During the '60s the sounds of the Swingle Singers appeared within all kinds of unexpected contexts, even showing up where the Swingles probably never dreamt it would materialize. Perhaps the most unusual application of this comforting music was its incorporation into The Hour of the Furnaces, a relentlessly challenging underground Argentine socialist film by Fernando E.
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