It’s the Talk of the Town
LP Verve VE-2-2521
This is a good example of how I fell in love with a recording by taping it to reel to reel tape from the radio and listen to it in certain situations in my youth. Thus, the tune, the chosen tempo and the musicians’ performance becomes equally important. I was lucky to find a good copy of the album later. Dizzy Gillespie is of course one of my favorites as a trumpet player and his importance for the development of bebop can not be overstated. But I’m especially fond of his ballad work.
Stan Getz who followed the path of Lester Young is also very much at home in the ballad mood.
Norman Granz produced the album and the session in question was done in Los Angeles on December 9, 1953. The other musicians are Oscar Peterson, piano; Herb Ellis, guitar, Ray Brown, bass and Max Roach on drums.
Normally I want to hear the melody of the song but in this case I find it easy to accept that they use it as a stepping stone to express inner loneliness and sadness, and it goes well with the opening stanza of the lyrics; “I can’t show my face, can’t go any place”.