Music to Watch Girls By

Read About This Recording

When musicologists a hundred years from now turn their attention to music of the 1960s, they will surely be fascinated by jazz-pop trumpeter Al Hirt. A classically trained, expressive virtuoso, Hirt devoted himself to music whose lightness seemed designed to counteract his own heaviness (Hirt, who died in 1999 at age 77, rather resembled Chef Paul Prudhomme). He was tremendously popular, especially in the '60s, thanks to his humor and musicality as well as his albums of upbeat, even frivolous songs that offered some relief from the decade's increasingly dense jazz and metallic rock. Interestingly, in concert he preferred to play straight Dixieland.

In the early 21st century, Hirt's Music to Watch Girls By will appeal to two kinds of people. First are those who remember it, now with rather guilty pleasure, from its initial release in 1967. Then, younger people who are hip to the current ironic devotion to pop music that just a decade ago would have been dismissed as unbearably cheesey.

Should we be embarrassed to like Al Hirt? There is that title to get past; Music to Watch Girls By would never cut it in today's anti-sexist world (you'll recognize the title track, even if the name doesn't ring a bell). Then there's the music itself: bubbly, like Burt Bacharach, even though there's not a single Bacharach song on the disc. It all seems so innocent, except when it sounds sleazy, as in the wonderfully suggestive first half of Willkommen from Cabaret. (The second half of that song is pure Dixieland; Hirt insinuates his Dixieland heritage into much of what he plays, sometimes quite subtly.) And don't forget the goofy, bouncy choral interjections in the six songs that round out this reissue; it's enough to take us back to the Muzak in the coffeeshop of the Stardust Motel in Yuma, Arizona, circa 1964.

But, no, why be embarrassed by something that's so much fun and so well done? Actually, Music to Watch Girls By is remembered as one of Hirt's very best albums, aside from those he made with jazzer Pete Fountain. This is an authentic slice of the '60s as originally served up to swinging Americans who were just a bit too old or otherwise disinclined to participate in the hippie movement. Think of this as a different kind of period-instrument CD, and lose yourself in the historical moment.

-James Reel

Contents

Music to Watch Girls By; Mas Que Nada; Willkommen (Welcome); Nature Boy; Theme from The Sand Pebbles; Blow Your Own Horn; Yo-Yo (Puppet Song); Six Long Days (Sechs Tage lang); His Girl; Elmer's Tune; If You Go Away (Ne me quitte pas); The Girl from Ipanema; Sugar Lips; I Love Paris (from Can-Can); Up Above My Head (I Hear Music in the Air); Cotton Candy; Three Little Words.

Al Hirt, Trumpet, with Orchestra & Chorus.