Styne, Instrumental
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Jule Styne achieved his first successes writing for swing bands. But great soloists of all genres and instruments have performed his songs ever since. “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry” was beloved by tenor saxophonists; Cannonball Adderley played it slowly in long meter, with throbbing vibrato that approximated a male singer. “Time After Time” probably holds the record for most interpretations by standout saxophonists: Stan Getz, Ben Webster, Hank Mobley, John Coltrane, Paul Desmond.
Tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson recorded a beautiful rendition of the Barbra Streisand hit “People,” but by and large it became the province of pianists, principally Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans. The latter, displaying all the sensitivity that Ms. Streisand lacked, recorded a standout, 14-minute solo reading in 1975.
Trumpeters put their mark on “I Fall in Love Too Easily.” Chet Baker played it in 1954, and also sang it. Miles Davis began playing the 1944 song in 1963, but, surprisingly, kept doing it long after he stopped playing other standards. Well into his modal and early electric periods, he kept tearing up his audiences’ hearts and guts with his increasingly anguished renditions.
Trombonist J.J. Johnson, accompanied by pianist Wynton Kelly and bassist Charlie Mingus, performed achingly slow readings of both “Time After Time” and “It’s You or No One.” The latter is normally done as a romper (as it was, marvelously, by Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt, and Lou Donaldson). There are two full jazz albums of the “Gypsy” score, one by saxophonist Herb Geller and one all-swinging interpretation by singer Annie Ross. There’s also a marvelous Styne songbook album by Maxine Sullivan.
Coltrane did at least three Styne songs, including “Sunday” done as a two-tenor joust with Paul Quinichette. My single favorite jazz take on a Styne melody is Coltrane’s reading of “You Say You Care” (from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”), off one of his first albums as a leader, the 1958 “Soultrane.” Coltrane virtually sings “You Say You Care” (which Sullivan also recorded) with an uncompromised rapture, an innocence rarely heard in his other work. It makes him sound the way leading men do in Broadway musicals when they realize that they’ve fallen in love.
