The Louis Hayes Group
Variety in the Spice

"But in all this affair, what role did the jazz musicians play? Or rather, how did the jazz world react to 'The Sound of Music,' and specifically to 'My Favorite Things'? The jazz world did not react. Preemptive strike." From this point onwards, in the essay dedicated to "My Favorite Things" contained in his book "Storie Poco Standard - Le avventure di 12 grandi canzoni tra Broadway e jazz", musicologist Luca Bragalini will begin to review various versions of this fortunate song lent to jazz and extracted precisely from the musical "The Sound of Music" by Rodgers & Hemmerstein, known cinematographically under the title "The Sound of Music". The story of the encounter between "My Favorite Things" and jazz is fascinating and unusual, and begins to take shape within a few weeks in the autumn of 1959: with the phrase "the jazz world did not react. Preemptive strike", the author highlights how the song, curiously and contrary to current practice, began to be recorded in the jazz circuit even before the musical made its debut, and even an old master like Benny Goodman with swift intuition did not miss the appointment: "probably the publishers had released the sheet music even before the debut, certain that R&H's works would sell even without the boost of a show on the Broadway lineup", the paragraph concludes. Exactly a year from this feverish state of affairs, John Coltrane and his version will mark the point of no return, shuffling the cards and declaring everyone home. Many years would still pass before reaching 1979, the year of "Variety is the Spice" by Louis Hayes, an album whose strength lies precisely in "My Favorite Things". In the meantime, many other versions would alternate in the following twenty years (notably Dave Brubeck's 1965 version) despite the sometimes unintentionally harsh comparison that would arise with the Coltrane archetype. Louis Hayes, who served Coltrane on several occasions in the late '50s, will characterize his version (which Bragalini does not cite in his essay) with the relentless rhythmic "whip" of his drumming (a more exasperated Art Blakey), an aspect at the antipodes of the "nobility" in waltzing tiptoes of Coltrane's Elvin Jones. On the other hand, Harold Mabern, with his piano, will be the perfect counterpart, enhancing the shamelessly libertarian side, far from Coltrane's spiritual "rigidity," and almost naive of the melodic/harmonic part. But the album is a superb parade of colors: from an attractive "Little Sunflower", a famous hit by Freddie Hubbard and here sung in an exotic triumph between samba and bossa nova by Leon Thomas (those who may not know him but grew up on bread and Demetrio Stratos, you know what I mean, right?), in this case, Frank Strozier's flute will act as a counterpoint, moving to other classics like "Invitation" or "Stardust" (always with the promptness that characterizes the entire album and identifies it), from which the underrated talent of Strozier himself emerges again this time grappling with the alto sax. An album lost in the solo discography of a good sideman, in a year that in history is past its prime, neither fish nor fowl, but it is precisely in these hidden aspects that one must search if one wants to stumble upon pleasant surprises.