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...Best of Fred Astaire (Epic LP). Dancer Astaire has no voice to sing of, but he sings with nearly as much style as he dances. Included here are re-releases of some fine Gershwin tunes, e.g., A Foggy Day, Nice Work if You Can Get It, and some rosy-cheeked orchestral shenanigans by the Ray Noble and Johnny Green bands of the late...
Damn Yankees (original Broadway cast; Victor LP). Gwen Verdon, whose dancing warms up this show onstage, duplicates the favor vocally for the record. It needs her. Except for the rowdy tune called Whatever Lola Wants (TIME, May 16). nothing quite matches the lines, written by the same team (Richard Adler-Jerry Ross), for last year's Pajama Game...
Griffes: Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan (Eastman-Rochester Symphony conducted by Howard Hanson; Mercury). Gifted U.S. Composer Charles T. Griffes (1884-1920) here gets the first LP of his biggest orchestral effusion. Like his better-known White Peacock (also on this record), it proves him to be the American Delius; the style falls somewhere between French impressionism and German tone poems...
Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 4 (Tchaikovsky Quartet; Vanguard). A lovely and often compelling work written in 1949, now on LP for the first time (it was recorded in Russia). The music is not dissonant, but neither is it obviously slanted for mass consumption. Its slow movement is a full-blown melody, its scherzo trips along in anapaestic rhythm, its finale builds a sonorous castle of tone. On the reverse: Shostakovich's Quartet...
...Sumac Mambo! (Capitol LP...