At the time, however, the album was a considered a commercial flop through no fault of Fuller or Albam. Which is both tragic and baffling, considering its spectacular qualities and the musicians involved. Here's who were talking about...
On the tracks with strings: Curtis Fuller (tb), Eddie Costa (vib,perc), Hank Jones (p), Barry Galbraith (g), Milt Hinton (b), Osie Johnson (d) and Margaret Ross (harp) along with unknown strings
As you can see, the date featured many of New York's finest. So what was the problem? To find out, I pulled Ashely Kahn's The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records off the shelf...
The trombonist remembers that for a session requiring intricate coordination with large ensembles, all went surprisingly welluntil extra studio time was requested.
'They allowed me three hours with the strings and three hours with the brass. The strings, obviously, went perfect; we got that done, boom, with time to spare. But we needed time to fuse the thing, to connect the strings with the brass... I said, No, [three hours is] kind of harsh, can we have another hour? They raised hell for about a week.'
'I think Creed [Taylor] would have run that over with me. But Bob Thiele was, Let's just do this and let's let it be done. But once the album came out, I just don't think that the company was prepared to put the kind of [marketing and promotional] money into it."
If you are unfamiliar with Fuller's Cabin in the Sky, you will be knocked out by the trombonist's conversational style and Manny Albam's extraordinary gift for turning an orchestra into a rip-tide of brassy energy.
JazzWax tracks: Cabin in the Sky has been remastered
JazzWax pages: Ashely Kahn's The
This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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