The Swingle Singers & The Modern Jazz Quartet

I recently posted some music from the second incarnation of Ward Swingle's a capella group and you should check out that post for the background to The Swingle Singers. 

The group had formed in Paris in 1962 and as a sight-reading exercise had sang through some of J.S.Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Being pleased with the results, they recorded the album of scat vocal jazz swing arrangements Jazz Sebastien Bach which became a cult success.

Place Vendôme (original sleeve)

The Modern Jazz Quartet, under John Lewis's direction, had developed into a chamber jazz ensemble with a cool, elegant and restrained presentation, and with sophisticated counterpoint influenced by baroque classical music. Successful tours in Europe had led to John Lewis and Ward Swingle planning a collaboration, and this eventually came to fruition in 1966 with the recording of Place Vendôme (named after the square in Paris). Allmusic has this to say about the album:

"For a short time in the mid-'60s, the Modern Jazz Quartet were working primarily in Europe and recording for the French division of Philips, with the results coming out in the United States on the MJQ's regular label, Atlantic. There was only one exception to this rule: Place Vendôme, which comprised the collaboration of the MJQ with the Swingle Singers, and which appeared in the U.S. on Philips' American subsidiary through Mercury Records. For Philips, the collaboration must have seemed like an inevitability; Ward Swingle had sung with the Double Six of Paris, which had backed up Dizzy Gillespie who, of course, had led the big band out of which the MJQ was formed in 1952. The Swingle Singers had been jazzing up the music of Johann Sebastian Bach since at least 1963 with phenomenal success, and while John Lewis wasn't quite as into the Bach bag in 1966 that he would be later, his MJQ compositions had long been taken up in European devices such as fugue and the renaissance Canzona. Although Swingle and Lewis agreed to collaborate backstage after an MJQ concert in Paris in 1964, it wasn't until 1966 that the two groups found themselves in Paris at the same time. The resultant album, Place Vendôme, was a huge international success commercially, with the track "Aria (Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068)" -- though then popularly called "Air on a G String" -- charting strongly in Europe and the album easily earning its keep in the U.S., though it did not chart there. Not everyone was pleased; jazz critics savaged the album, the consensus being that a pop vocal group like the Swingle Singers had no business making an album with an exalted jazz group like the MJQ."

Here is side 2 of the album on a Polydor reissue label, including the (in)famous Air on a G String - noted for its use in Hamlet Cigar adverts! Bach's original can be heard here.

Cartridge: Soundsmith Zephyr MIMC Star

Phono amp: Graham Slee Accession MC

Turntable: CTC Classic 301 with SME M2-12R

Click to enlarge