If you've always wondered what all the fuss was about when jazz talk turns to trombonist Urbie Green, his recording of Please should bring you up to speed.
Composed by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger, Please was first recorded by Bing Crosby with Anson Weeks and His Orchestra in 1932. It also was showcased by Crosby in the movie The Big Broadcast (1932), his first role in a feature film.
Urbie Green recorded the song in December 1957 on his big-band album Let's Face the Music and Dance. It was arranged either by Al Cohn or Irwin Kostal (both are credited with the album's charts). I'm going to guess Kostal, since the arrangement is more TV pop and Kostal's bag than swinging, which was Cohn's. Urbie's tone is beautifully clear and warm, and his outro at the end is remarkable. And listen how his last note drifts off like a puff of smoke. Absolute perfection.
The big band featured the cream of New York recording-studio pros: Al Derisi, Bernie Glow, Doc Severinsen and Nick Travis (tp); Urbie Green, Billy Byers and Jack Satterfield (tb); Tom Mitchell (b-tb); Gene Quill and Hal McKusick (as); Boomie Richman (ts); Al Cohn (bs); Hank Jones (p); Milt Hinton (b) and George Wettling (d).
Here's Urbie Green and His Orchestra's recording of Please...
Other Perfection tracks in this ongoing series...
- Paul Desmond and Jim Hall: Any Other Time, go here.
- John Coltrane: You Say You Care, go here.
- Quincy Jones: Funk Junction, go here.
- Art Farmer's Work of Art, go here.
- Miles Davis: A Gal in Calico, go here.
- Gene Krupa: Mulligan Stew, go here.
- Dave Brubeck: The Duke, go here.
- Horace Silver: The Back Beat, go here.
- Horace Parlan: Up & Down, go here.
- Dexter Gordon: Society Red, go here.
- Barney Kessel: You Go to My Head, go here.
- Count Basie: Corner Pocket, go here.
- Herbie Mann: Manteca, go here.
- Donald Byrd: Bronze Dance, go here.
- George Shearing: I'll Be Around, go here.
- Ammons & Stitt: You Talk That Talk, go here.
- Count Basie: Blues in My Heart, go here.
- Moonlight in Vermont, go here.
- Johnny Griffin / Matthew Gee, Here, go here.
- Jimmy Smith / Stanely Turrentine: When I'I Grow Too Old to Dream, go here.
- Chet Baker: Estate, go here.
- Jazz Studio 1: Tenderly, go here.
- Herb Pomeroy: Down Home Outing, go here.
- Frank Sinatra: There's a Small Hotel, go here.
- Bill Harris Herd: Blackstrap, go here.
- Gerry Mulligan: Westwood Walk, go here.
- Red Garland and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis: We'll Be Together Again, go here.
- Bill Evans: Reflections in D, go here.
- Ted McNabb & Co.: Mountain Greenery, go here.
- Maynard Ferguson: Fox Hunt, go here.
- Serge Chaloff & the Herdsmen: The Most!, go here.
- Maynard Ferguson: Starfire, go here.
