1965 · Album
The Groovy Sound Of Music
Recorded 1964 · RCA · Composer: Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
When Jazz Found Rodgers and Hammerstein
Burton took songs most jazz musicians ignored and made them swing like nobody else could.
In 1964, vibraphonist Gary Burton walked into the studio with a specific idea: that the Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook from The Sound of Music had been largely untouched by jazz musicians. The decision to record this material was deliberate and somewhat counterintuitive. While "My Favorite Things" had already become a jazz standard through John Coltrane's famous interpretation, the rest of the score sat waiting. Burton and his team chose to explore what those melodies could become under a jazz lens — not as novelty, but as genuine compositional material with swing potential.
What emerged was a record that AllMusic reviewer Ken Dryden recognized as genuinely valuable. Dryden noted that aside from that one Coltrane touchstone, jazz musicians hadn't really tapped into this songbook, making Burton's approach feel like "quite a treat." The vibraphone's particular voice — bright, percussive, capable of both delicacy and drive — turned out to be exactly the right instrument for this material. The record sits comfortably within Burton's body of work, neither a radical departure nor a simple genre exercise.
This is a solid interpretive effort that found an opening in the standard repertoire and filled it with swing. It won't overwhelm you, but if you're curious about what happens when a skilled jazz musician takes something everyone knows and plays it straight, this is where to listen.
Where next?
More by Gary Burton
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