Only the most incorrigible boogie casualty could find the Manhattan Transfer less than quite uncommonly delightful onstage. High-stepping Allan Paul, in ultra short hair that's parted too high and plastered down with enough Vitalis to lubricate three Coupe de Villes, café-au-lait colored tails and a matinee-idol grin, makes you feel oily up to 20 rows away with his tireless Dick Powell unction. Slinky, sultry femme fatale Laurel Massé appears capable of making even the most virile leading man on Broadway whimper, "Enough!" Somehow it isn't at all difficult to picture top-hatted Tim Hauser rushing offstage to flash at little girls or barter in souls between sets, so sinisterly do
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his little eyes twinkle above his pencil moustache. And Janis Siegel, typecast as the ingenuous little Jewish girl with the retiring manner and huge voice, knows she loves the warmth of the limelight, but can't quite figure out how she came to be sharing it with such weird costars.
Individually, each sings quite splendidly, with Paul's gorgeous melting-butter baritone and Massé's torchy, just ever so slightly tortured, alto being particular highlights. Together, as they perform engagingly preposterous little dance steps while muted brass and woodwinds play irresistibly cornball charts behind them, they sing four-part harmony — lots of it quite intricate — about as well as you'll ever hear white folks sing it live.
Only when they stop singing do they momentarily cease to be just awfully fabulous. I, who shall be quite content if I never hear another syllable of patter having to do with the back seat sexuality of the Fifties, find their, uh, raps fully as pat — and patronizing — seeming as those of stablemate Bette Midler.
But I may be picking nits. Not only is almost everyone assured of their amusing him or her live, but it would also be abundantly terrific if their stage show proved widely influential—if no one were to remain content simply with shuffling onstage in the Levi's he or she slept in and nearly motionlessly demonstrating his or her torrid chops without regard as to whether or not he or she looked, as well as sounded, outtasite.
On the other hand, few will howl with distress more loudly than I should the Transfer persist in making albums like this one: While it's cute and chicly nostalgic in spades, it's also almost entirely devoid of passion or expression.
I won't pretend to be intimately familiar with the original recordings of "Tuxedo Junction" or any of the other Big Band-era favorites that constitute the major part of their repertoire, but I'd bet that the Transfer's versions excel them only in clarity of production. Sure, it's real nice indeed to be reminded that great tunes — with beautiful melodies and hip, witty lyrics — were being sung to snazzy accompaniment even before Leiber and Stoller, but of what value (besides educational) are modern versions that are made t
