Jackie & Roy
The ABC-Paramount Years (Koch Jazz 7927)

This disc presents the best of Jackie Cain and Roy Kral's output for ABC-Paramount Records from 1956-1958, and it's a serious quandary for the jazz fan. For it is undoubtedly real jazz, but it's also whiter than white, in parts making Steve Allen look like Archie Shepp.

Jackie Cain's voice is great, an amazingly pleasing instrument that blends perfectly with husband Roy's innocuously solid voice. They apply their harmonic magic to an assortment of standards and quirky jazz-pop tunes ("I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," "Say Cheese," "I Love You Real"), breezing through them in a cool-bop style backed by top players and arrangers (Urbie Green, Art Farmer, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, Bill Holman, Quincy Jones).

The result is pleasant, almost remarkable in places but ultimately quite a bit less amazing than similar work by Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross or even the Hi-Lo's. Jackie & Roy ride the line between straight jazz and novelty jazz, but I suppose the important thing is just the sound, which is fun and light throughout.

No songs I'd deem truly great or even mix-disc-worthy, but much of this is quite good in its own context. But when you think of it next to, say, Coltrane or Bobby Hutcherson, it seems reserved.

Of course it's playing a totally different game. But this falls into that genre of music that will appeal to people who were of the era or who wish they were. For the average person in their twenties, this period tends to offer a big blank stare, even though recordings by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong make them cream their jeans even now. 🤷

Actually, come to think of it, I like quite a lot of music from this period (late 50s) but maybe these recordings are a bit too "major label" (i.e. too straightlaced). Still, you have to like a disc that includes the line "You do for me the same thing spinach does for Popeye" (from "I Love You Real").

But truly, most of these songs blend together somewhat generically. Some will undoubtedly love this, and if you're looking for a good Jackie & Roy disc, this is way up there. But to be perfectly honest this one is hard to justify unless you have 300 or so other vocal jazz albums that you've grown tired of.

I would like to sit a bunch of annoying would-be "Rat Pack" aficionados and make them listen to this "classic music from the Rat Pack era" … just to see them squirm when they discover the tempos to be far too slow for gratuitous finger-snapping.

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Rich Hall III