DESCRIPTION:
This is a revised video in HD. The original, has 5,572 views and 38 Likes as of January, 28, 2013. Originally uploaded on Dec 3, 2011
and is at http://youtu.be/M6K2STbSa_Q

(Ruth Thornhill / Claude Thornhill)
Recorded: New York, May 21, 1941

Other Recordings by:
Jackie Gleason & His Orch. - 1956
The Montgomery Brothers - 1961
Tony Bennett - 1968
Henry Mancini - 1970
Emily Remler - 1988
The Manhattan Transfer - 1992
Also recorded by: Doris Day; Glenn Miller Singers;
Helen Merrill; Ahmad Jamal; Ramsey Lewis.

In the early 1940s, the opposite of "hot jazz" wasn't "cool jazz." The term "cool jazz" didn't exist at the time. A jazz fan at the time would have told you that the sweet bands were the antithesis of the hot swing orchestras. These sweet ensembles specialized in the tepid and sentimental, and didn't put much faith in cookin' tenor solos and smokin' chase choruses.

But how do we fit Claude Thornhill into this binary opposition? Jazz didn't get any more ethereal or mood-oriented than "Snowfall," his signature song. This is closer to Debussy than to Duke Ellington, and yet there is a ineffable quality at the heart of this music that resists assimilation into the sweet Guy Lombardo-ish camp. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this music anticipates the 'cool jazz' revolution of the 1950s, and it comes to no surprise that many of the artists associated with that movement either worked with or were influenced by Thornhill. These linkages would become even more apparent when the Thornhill band reformed after World War II. Gil Evans, who would serve as Thornhill's arranger, summed up the ethos of this music best when he commented: "The sound hung like a cloud."

Snowfall
Softly
Gently drift down
Snowflakes
Whisper
'Neath my window
Covering trees
Misty lights
Velvet breeze
'Round my doorstep

Gently
Softly
Silent
Snowfall
Covering trees
Misty lights
Velvet breezes
'Neath my window

Gently
And softly
Silent
Snowfall
Drift down
Drift down
Drift down
Snowfall

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