Blindspotting: The Manhattan Transfer, "Vocalese"

The Legacy: If you're about my age, you grew up knowing that the Manhattan Transfer were a thing — and that they were consistently popular enough to be part of pop culture's background hum — without ever really understanding exactly what they were, or why. Throughout the '80s, I had a sort of dim awareness that this was a group for people who saw themselves as musical sophisticates, but whose sound probably trended more toward the corny side; this formative second- or third-hand first impression kept me from investigating their work even after cost of entry ceased to be a barrier.

After spending most of a day listening to several selections from the Manhattan Transfer discography, I have to say that my first impression, uninformed as it may have been, was essentially correct — but before we really get into that, it's only fair to pause for a moment so we can talk about just how successful this group really was. Although their albums never really sold in huge numbers, they enjoyed a hell of a lot more Top 40 success than one might assume would await a distinctly retro-leaning vocal group; moments before diving into 1981's Mecca for Moderns, I was stunned to discover that the record's big single, a cover of the old doo-wop number "The Boy from New York City," went all the way to No. 7.

Beyond making deep inroads at pop radio, that album made Grammy history: "The Boy from New York City" won Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, while another Mecca cut, "Until I Met You (Corner Pocket)," took home the award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Duo or Group, making them the first act to earn awards in both categories during the same year.

I could go on. (And on and on and on — these guys were Grammy magnets.) You get the idea, though: Even if they never approached Born in the U.S.A.-level sales, the Manhattan Transfer managed to carve out a unique space for themselves in American popular music throughout the '70s and '80s, regularly releasing albums that used classic four-part pop harmonies as the framework for an impressively eclectic exploration of a long list of genres. Their style of singing ensured that everything they did sounded like a throwback on some level, but they were genuinely rather brave about trying on different trappings; for example, after hitting big with Mecca for Moderns, they made a full-on '80s pop album (at least for them) with 1984's Bodies and Souls, which featured Rod Temperton and the David Foster mafia.

And then, the following year, they pivoted back toward traditionalism — at least in large part — with Vocalese. The title sounds like it might have been the name of a particularly horrible '80s jazz fusion track, but it's actually a musical style, pioneered by the mighty Jon Hendricks, that's essentially scatting with real words. Popularized with the Hendricks-assisted Sing a Song of Basie LP in 1958, vocalese adds lyrics to an existing song by more or less mirroring the lead instrument's melody — a fun exercise that, in a jazz setting, can lead to some pretty rapid-fire vocalizing.

Fittingly, the Manhattan Transfer used Hendricks' lyrics throughout Vocalese, an album whose 11-song track listing is stuffed with songs by greats. Things kick off with Benny Golson's "That's Killer Joe" before shifting into J.J. Johnson's "Rambo," Sonny Rollins' "Airegin," Thad Jones' "To You," Quincy Jones' "Meet Benny Bailey," Dizzy Gillespie's "Another Night in Tunisia"... you get the idea. Unimpeachable source material.

And unimpeachably played, too. The Manhattan Transfer weren't a platinum act, but the liner notes to this thing read like a trip through the triple-scale section of the musicians' union white pages: McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, John Pattitucci, Freddie Green, Grady Tate, Marshal Royal, John Robinson... again, you get the idea. I'm not even counting the cameos from Bobby McFerrin and Ray Charles, or Gillespie's trumpet solo on "Sing Joy Spring." If you were the type of listener who was excited about Linda Ronstadt's records with Nelson Riddle, you were salivating over Vocalese.

First Impressions: Even having said all that nice stuff about this album, I would still argue there's a sort of queasy disconnect between what Ronstadt was doing with Nelson Riddle and what the Manhattan Transfer did here. For starters, this is absolutely not a retro record from a sonic standpoint. While I must once again hasten to point out that absolutely anything these folks slapped their voices against ended up sounding like at least half a relic of a bygone era, it's also never less than obvious that Vocalese is a proudly '80s record.

And then there are those voices, which prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that there definitely exists a spot on the Venn diagram between "objectively great" and "acquired taste."

The members of the Manhattan Transfer were incredible singers, of this there can be no doubt. I'm told they were just as amazing live as they were on record, which is a statement which, after the day I've had, I am now willing to take at face value rather than putting in the time to actually investigate. But making art isn't just about talent, it's about choices — like, for example, the choice to cover "Killer Joe" as if you're overdosing on antidepressants. You can hear them smiling:

Other choices include inviting Ray Charles in for "Ray's Rockhouse," a Charles/Hendricks original that "rocks" in the way older people thought things rocked in 1985 — which is to say it's pinned down and slathered with synths and drum machines. I guess it's worth noting that this isn't anything Charles didn't end up doing to himself on 1990's Would You Believe? and 1993's My World, but when Vocalese was recorded, those albums hadn't happened yet, so it isn't like the Manhattan Transfer needed to alter its sound to fit his. On one hand, "Ray's Rockhouse" is an example of how eagerly the band embraced different styles; on the other hand, it was frankly embarrassing in 1985, and has aged very poorly in the decades since:

Big blazers, people pretending to play the drums and/or bass, a fucking Bud Light sign — all recurring reasons that we learned never to trust a middle-aged person who told us to "rock" in the mid-to-late '80s. I don't even know if my grandparents would have thought it rocked, and they were busy collecting George Winston CDs.

In a sense, this is quibbling. I will argue to my dying breath that most of Vocalese sounds like Cheri Oteri duetting with Barry Manilow for skits cut for time from an episode of Saturday Night Live, but that doesn't matter much; the Manhattan Transfer were never, ever supposed to be "hip" or "with it," and their willingness to play at those things was always driven more by a genuine musical curiosity than an attempt to actually jibe with the times. Regardless of the sonic backdrop, the corniest thing about the Manhattan Transfer was always that they made no attempt whatsoever to hide how much they loved to sing, and even if that made their choice of material or production more awkward than it needed to be, there's still something honorable about that.

To put it another way: There used to be a restaurant in town that my father-in-law loved and my mother-in-law had to be dragged to, and I sarcastically referred to it as "a great place for soft food." That's the Manhattan Transfer, if you could have slopped them onto a plate — you can rightly bicker with the presentation, but the ingredients are time-tested, and it's all awfully easy to digest, so what are you really complaining about? I could devote another hundred words to getting worked up about the fact that Vocalese netted a DOZEN Grammy nominations, putting it second behind Thriller in the record books, but why? If you lower the volume, it just sounds like people having a good time, and I'm not sure we can ever have too much of that.

Favorite Song: I'm never listening to a minute of this album ever again, but Bobby McFerrin was a natural match for the Manhattan Transfer, and their cover of "Another Night in Tunisia" is fine.