 Various Artists The second installment in Capitol's Ultra-Lounge series was a no-brainer for the series producers: an all-mambo album spotlighting the cheesiest mambo-flavored pop hits in the Capitol vaults. As expected, there are plenty of rapid-fire bongos and assorted Latin percussion tossed in every which way to augment the TV-Orchestra big band arrangements of most of the tracks, which, by the way, are not technically all mambo (there's some cha-cha in there as well as some rumba) but in the spirit of the shallowness this series represents we can let that slide. The disc is incredibly bright and sunny, one of the more purely fun listens in the Ultra-Lounge catalog. Not watered-down jazz like many of the other volumes, this one is that purely American conception of Cuban music that permeated the American consciousness in the 50s and found its manifestation in "authentic" performers like Desi Arnaz. Mambo Fever is split between "real" Cuban orchestras and American approximations, but the sound is virtually the same, as it's very much middle-America mambo. Some of the results are hilarious ("Hooray For Hollywood (Cha-Cha)," "Oink Oink Mambo"), others are just good (Dave Barbour's "Mambo Jambo"), still others are just bad ("Peter Gunn Mambo" … I simply do not understand the fascination with that song). Most of the cuts are either funny-good or generically-good, plus there's some Yma Sumac thrown in for good measure ("Tiki Rari" and "Malambo #1"). There's not a great deal of variety to this stuff, but it's programmed well, with kitsch like "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans Mambo" kept away from "Glow Worm Cha-Cha-Cha" so as not to create a simple comedy album, and swank stuff like "Hernando's Hideaway" kept away from craziness like "Chihuahua." So, a decent entry from a tired series. I'd say the two Christmas volumes are the only ones actually worth having, but if you must dive in, then this is as good an Ultra-Lounge as might be recommended. Oh, and while you're at it, why don't you get into "My So-Called Life?" After all, it MUST be 1994 … in your mind.
Review by Habeas R. Corpus |