Columbia's series of Piano Moods collections is a continuing group of records designed to give a cross- section of major piano styles of the day, and incidentally to supply record collectors with tasty examples of standard songs and thoughtful popular compositions not too often heard nor recorded. Each of the Piano Moods collections contains two continuous medlies, selected and played by one of America's foremost popular pianists. Among the most admired and respected pianists on the current scene is Joe Bushkin. As even cursory attention to one of these medlies will show, the man plays a lot of piano, and he plays it with wit and a technique that is as dazzling as it isunobtrusive. As the leader of his own orchestra, as key man in a small outfit and as a solo pianist, he has within recent years become widely recognized as a singularly acco plished musician and accompanist. In the medlies on this record, as in most of his work, there is an approximately equal portion of Bushkin and the composer represented. It is his agreeable fancy to take a melody and build a counter-melody around it, referring to the basic theme when necessary, but transforming and disguising it in a variety of ways. Thus the result becomes a base of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin or Richard Rodgers, with a delicate superstructure of Bushkin ideas for decoration, but a decoration that is woven into the whole conception. Joe Bushkin opens his Piano Moods medlies with a lively, light-fingered presentation of Vincent Youmans' exuberant Hallelujah ! After a brief statement of the theme, he moves over into a group of jaunty variations slowing down only at the final bars and the transition into George Gershwin's "I 've Got A Crush On You." This quiet, intimate melody is presented in an admirably relaxed version, including the verse among two choruses of individual piano playing...
(from the original Liner Notes)
Joe Bushkin
Piano Moods
(Columbia B-231)
Tracks
1 Hallelujah (Robin, Grey, Youmans) 2:45
2 I've Got A Crush On You (Bushkin) 3:20
3 They Say it's Wonderful (Rodgers, Hart) 3:08
4 Portrait Of Tallulah (Bushkin) 2:53
5 Here in My Arms (Rodgers, Hart) 2:50
6 Pennies from Heaven (Burke, Johnston) 2:53
7 Everyday is Christmas (DeVries, Bushkin) 3:22
8 The Lady is A Tramp (Rodgers, Hart) 2:50
*
Personnel
Joe Bushkin - p
Sid Weiss - b
Morey Feld - dr
Recorded in New York ; July 26 & 27, 1950