STARDUST
(Hoagy Carmichael/ Mitchell Parish)
Shadows: July 1967 LP Jigsaw (UK No.8)
Ventures: June 1995 CD (Japan) Pops A La Carte
This and ‘Maria Elena’ caught The Shadows in mellow mood on the album Jigsaw, with stylish interpretations by Hank of two highly regarded standards, the latter having made the Top 5 in the UK, just falling short of that in the US, as a guitar instro in 1963 from Brazilians Los Indios Tabajaras. It attracted a suitably acoustic rendition over a couple of decades further on from The Ventures – elegant enough if a little heavy-handed perhaps in the rhythm department. There have been live versions from Japan too, one of them very elegant indeed, on the 2000 CD In Japan – Live 2000.
Their ‘Stardust’ (how did they come to put off fielding their version of such a Japanese hot favourite for so long?) is reminiscent of The Ventures’ early slowie-style, with a resonant, nicely-rounded tone to the lead guitar (“1960 vintage Bogle guitar perfection” Dave Peckett). While the pace is certainly leisurely (this always has been a “dreamy” sort of number after all, as I seem to recall Hoagy Carmichael once described a composition of which he was immensely proud), I have no sense of it "plodding along uncomfortably" as detected by one reviewer in the process of dealing out to the A La Carte album a comprehensive drubbing – a drubbing it does not even begin to merit in my estimation. That though is another story.