Music: New Pop Records, Mar. 22, 1954

The Boys from Syracuse (Portia Nelson, Jack Cassidy, Bibi Osterwald, conducted by Lehman Engel; Columbia LP). The 1938 Rodgers & Hart musical (based on A Comedy of Errors) in a dazzling record reduction. Such hits as Falling in Love with Love and This Can’t Be Love are treated overtenderly, but the album is worth having, if only for the late Lorenz Hart’s remarkable rhymes.

A Dance Concert (Jerry Fielding Orchestra; Trend LP). A fine, fresh-sounding band from the West Coast gives a new lilt to such oldies as When I Grow Too Old to Dream.

The Artistry of Stan Getz (Clef LP). The famed West Coast jazzman and Co. warbling some strangely appealing dissonant counterpoint. Getz’s felt-toned tenor sax blends humorously with a valve trombone.

Dizzie Gillespie with Strings (Clef LP). Bop Trumpeter Gillespie, backed by the Paris Opera-Comique Orchestra, plays with appealing simplicity and delivers some startling riffs, but is given a poor recording.

Mel Powell Septet (Vanguard LP). A classical label gives jazz the hi-fi treatment, with first-rate results. Seven top jazzmen play as if for themselves, turn out some of today’s finest group improvisations. Notable for a long (7 min.), brooding I Must Have That Man, featuring Buck Clayton’s trumpet.

Fats Waller First Editions (Joe Sullivan, piano; Epic LP). Eight unpublished Waller compositions, from blue moods to impudent bounces, played by one of Chicago’s alltime greats, Joe Sullivan. No Waller fan will complain if most of the longs sound like his familiar Honeysuckle Rose or Ain’t Misbehavin’.

Blue Moon (Duke Ellington & His Quintet; Capitol). The Duke tries a small combo for this fevered version. Jimmie Grissom sobs out the vocal.

Thou Swell (Beryl Booker Trio; Discovery). Slightly nervous but mighty high-flown ivory-tickling on another Rodgers & Hart oldie, with firm drum and bass support by an all-girl combo.

Young-at-Heart (Frank Sinatra; Capitol). A pretty tune which has put Frankie on the bestseller lists again. Chief thought: “Fairy tales can come true; it can happen to you.”