Ladies And Gentlemen, this is Manhattan Transfer

December 18, 2023 12:43 PM

The Manhattan Transfer at The Old Grey Whistle Test (22 February 1977) is 41 minutes of the vocal group performing live. They're appearing on the strength of their single Chanson d'Amour, which was storming up the UK charts and would soon hit #1 for three weeks. This is before their emergence into US charts with Birdland [CW: eighties hair and shoulder pads] and Boy From New York City.
posted by hippybear (18 comments total)

Such talent. I still frequently return to the Extensions, Mecca, and Vocalese albums in particular. Because old MH remains the best MH.
posted by thoughtful_jester at 12:53 PM on December 18, 2023 [4 favorites]

Ooh, some great tunes in that performance - I just love the MT! And they look so snazzy!
posted by davidmsc at 12:53 PM on December 18, 2023

The Manhattan Transfer performed their final show last Friday. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was on his way to the concert when he fell and broke his hip.
posted by plastic_animals at 1:05 PM on December 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

The Manhattan Transfer performed their final show last Friday. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was on his way to the concert when he fell and broke his hip.

Thanks for this. I had no idea about either of these facts!
posted by thoughtful_jester at 1:43 PM on December 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

White Christmas, Pentatonix feat. The Manhattan Transfer, arr. Jacob Collier
posted by persona at 2:05 PM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh man! My senior year of HS I finally broke down and joined zero period jazz choir. Our director passed out the MT arrangement of “Birdland” at one point and I was like, “wtf, this is the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard.” But every once in a while in choir you end up loving the song you hated the most of the beginning, and this is definitely true of “Birdland” for me… 30 years later and I can still remember every note of the tenor part.

The group that inspired me to take that vocal jazz class at an ungodly hour was Take 6, so I was pretty stoked to find this live recording of MT and Take 6 performing “Birdland” together
posted by donatella at 2:24 PM on December 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

The Manhattan Transfer performed their final show last Friday. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was on his way to the concert when he fell and broke his hip.

Boy, that is the most "tell me I'm old without telling me I'm old" thing EVAR
posted by chavenet at 2:45 PM on December 18, 2023 [11 favorites]

Boy, that is the most "tell me I'm old without telling me I'm old" thing EVAR

It's certainly two sentences I never expected to see appear next to each other even maybe in the library of babel.
posted by hippybear at 2:51 PM on December 18, 2023 [6 favorites]

Back in our leaner days my husband and I were talking about MT's "Baby Come Back to Me" and I bought it from iTunes for 99 cents. Except we didn't even have a dollar in our bank account at the time and were charged the $25.00 overdraft fee making that song the most expensive single I ever bought.
posted by kimberussell at 4:00 PM on December 18, 2023 [7 favorites]

I grew up on the Transfer so was sad but not surprised to see that they were retiring. I’ve seen them twice in concert and their voices were just magical.
posted by PussKillian at 5:17 PM on December 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

shout out to their album brasil which i had on repeat for most of the 90's. at the time, it seemed like a radical departure... mixing a ton of brazillian/pop sounds into their jazz/doo-wop style. but they were always brilliantly experimental.
posted by bruceo at 5:37 PM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think the moment that woke up what Manhattan Transfer were doing for me was Four Brothers.

The original recording of this was written for a saxophone quartet of quite famous players, with the players trading off solos, each with a very different sound and style and approach to what they're playing, but when they all come together they really blend together.

The arrangement that MT are doing personifies each of these individual saxophone players, "horn players" in the vernacular even though it sounds like this should be trumpets, and the entire song turns into a conversation between the individuals. What is most astonishing about this is the nearly religious devotion to having each note of the solos each be a separate syllable of a word. So we're not doing Whitney-like vocal glides where a single word takes up an entire bar. Instead, we're packing as many words into the melody as are required for ev.'ry.sin.gle.note.that.will.be.sung.

AND YOU CAN UNDERSTAND EVERY WORD.
posted by hippybear at 7:35 PM on December 18, 2023 [8 favorites]

I spent my early adulthood with two of their albums: The Manhattan Transfer, their debut (shoutout to Clap Your Hands because I don't like jazz all that much and it was the most pop thing on the tape) and Extensions (because I saw MT on a PBS performance and fell in love with Birdland.)

Many years later I got to see them live at the Western Washington Fair. That was indeed a magic night.
posted by lhauser at 8:20 PM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

How do I wish to be reincarnated? As a combination of Cheryl Bentyne and Janis Siegel, please. Phenomenal musicians. I am so lucky to have seen the group perform twice, the second time just a short time before Tim Hauser's passing. Thank you for posting!

Down South Camp Meetin'
The Night that Monk Returned to Heaven
Why Not?
A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:51 AM on December 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Man Tran! I seldom go to concerts but I have had the good fortune to see them twice.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:43 AM on December 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I sang "Nightingale" in show choir in the 9th grade (1989) and then saw MT live with the Baltimore Symphony in like 92 or 93. Incredible.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 7:27 AM on December 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Java Jive!
posted by tristeza at 11:45 AM on December 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was at their final show last week!
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 1:08 PM on December 19, 2023 [3 favorites]