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The bird calls, the bird calls . . .

This music will mess with your mind . . .

A Swingin’ Affair — one of the lesser albums Frank Sinatra made for Capitol in the 1950s, which is to say, one of the greatest masterpieces of American popular culture.

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Tito Puente’s big-band Latin music in the 50s was always jazz-inflected, and big-band jazz in general in the 50s was getting influenced by Latin rhythms.

Someone got the idea to splice the two traditions together — not mix but splice, with Tito’s band sharing a recording studio with  Buddy Morrow’s jazz band, performing arrangements in which the two bands alternated with each other, within the numbers, on a series of standards.

The result, Revolving Bandstand, is, improbably, magical — primarily because the arrangers stuck to music that was danceable.  The dance rhythms unite it all into a complex and exhilarating whole.

A pop masterpiece from start to finish.  When it came out in December of 1965 I thought of it as a personal Christmas present from The Beatles to me.  It’s still one of the best Christmas presents I ever got.

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