Scott LaFaro's favorite record reissued

[Larry Kart]

LaFaro said in an interview in "The Jazz Review" in 1959 or 1960 that "I don't ... like any of my records except maybe the first one that I did with Pat Moran on Audio Fidelity." Recorded in Dec. 1957, "This Is Pat Moran" (with pianist Moran and drummer Johnny Whited) is now out again, coupled with vocalist Beverly Kelly's Audio Fidelity album with Moran's trio. LaFaro is in quite hellacious form, gets a lot of solo space on the eight trio tracks, and is vividly recorded, too. Pat (full first name no doubt Patricia) Moran was from Cincinnati (as was Kelly). The links below lay out their backgrounds and what they've been up to in recent years. The classically trained Moran's formative influence is said to be Oscar Peterson, but she sounds more like Kenny Drew to me -- albeit rather too cocktail lounge-bluesy, if you know what I mean. On the other hand, Moran has good time, and she and LaFaro and are locked-in rhythmically. Kelly is one of those singers of that era who were poised on the jazz-cabaret edge; the conception is hip (or "hip"), the execution a bit studied. Moran was not conventionally attractive, but for some reason the Ray Avery photo of her on the back of the CD case fascinates me. Perhaps it's because she looks so casually real -- her expression, at once "flat" and alert, looks like she's waiting to come in after the drummer finishes a four- or eight-bar break.

http://cdbaby.com/cd/patti

http://cdbaby.com/cd/kellyfelber

Edited November 15, 2007 by Larry Kart

[Chas]

AFAIC , LaFaro is the only reason to listen to this . I see Moran as closer to Peterson than Drew inasmuch as she lacks the latter's deep blues feeling and swing , while evincing Peterson-like lapses of taste and subtlety in her rhapsodic 'interpretations' of standards that are at once , overwrought and square .