Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 20, 1995 TAG: 9505220002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUGLAS J. ROWECODY ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
After the foursome's 1991 debut for Columbia Records, the vocal ensemble had a falling-out with the record company, stemming from a dispute over whether a Christmas album should be a part of the three-album deal they signed.
The fallout from the falling-out was that we didn't hear much from Manhattan Transfer. Yes, they did ``The Christmas Album'' in 1992, and last year saw the release of the group's first children's recording, ``The Manhattan Transfer Meets Tubby the Tuba.''
But as Tim Hauser, who organized the group in the early 1970s, concedes, those efforts didn't count much in the public's consciousness, and now Manhattan Transfer is trying to pull out of its longest downswing.
``If you stay in this business long enough, you can see your career like that,'' Hauser said in a recent interview, moving his hand in a wave of peaks and valleys.
``Very few people are just like that,'' he added, sending his hand in an uninterrupted upward trajectory.
Hauser, the diminutive, bald ManTran member, feels it was accomplishment enough for them to see their way through this slump. ``We stayed together,'' Hauser said simply, as if that were the most important thing.
And now Manhattan Transfer is back to appealing to grownups with ``Tonin','' which also marks the group's return to Atlantic Records, the label they left four years ago because - as they told The Associated Press at the time - they were feeling like a ``piece of old furniture'' there.
The latest compact disc consists of songs from the 1950s and early '60s, such as ``Too Busy Thinking About My Baby,'' ``I Second That Emotion,'' ``Dream Lover,'' ``Groovin''' and ``The Thrill Is Gone.''
And comparable to Frank Sinatra's ``Duets'' albums, the group sings all but two of the songs with guest performers, including Phil Collins, Bette Midler, Frankie Valli, Smokey Robinson, Chaka Khan, James Taylor and Ben E. King.
Janis Siegel, the other Manhattan Transfer member recently here to talk about the album, admitted to having doubts about being able to bounce back. And Hauser half-joked: ``I'm so neurotic, I have doubts when we're doing great.''
After a quarter-century together, the group had even weightier issues on its mind, like its relevancy - and mortality.
``We would have conversations about our place in popular music. Are we ever going to find a place? Are we hopelessly out of date?'' Siegel said. ``We re-examined everything. Which was a good thing.''
``There's a part of me that has certain fears,'' Hauser said, explaining that he realizes at this point the group won't get to do certain things.
``Sometimes I think about that, and I never thought about that before. And I guess that's one of things that happens when people start telling you that you've been together a long time.
``It has to happen at some point in your life. You start realizing the limitation of everything.
``We're not going to do 20 more albums. We're not going to be around for another 20 or 30 years,'' he said, and then groaned like an old man trying to sing.
As a young man, Hauser was driving a cab in New York City when he picked up a conga player who introduced him to Siegel. Later he picked up another singer, Laurel Masse, and asked the two women to sing on some demo recordings.
Soon after, Masse introduced Hauser and Siegel to Alan Paul, who was appearing in the original cast of ``Grease.'' They talked for hours about the absence of four-part harmony in popular music, and soon they formed Manhattan Transfer. When Masse left the group in 1979, Cheryl Bentyne replaced her.
Manhattan Transfer's career has spanned 16 albums. In 1981, they became the first group to win Grammys the same year in Pop and Jazz categories, with both winning songs coming from the ``Mecca for Moderns'' album - ``Boy From New York City'' and ``Until I Met You (Corner Pocket).'' Their 1985 release, ``Vocalese,'' received 12 Grammy nominations, making it second only to Michael Jackson's ``Thriller'' as the most-nominated album ever.
And while the ensemble has sold its share of albums, too, it has left some fans disgruntled because its repertoire extends from the '30s to the '90s, from big band, bebop, doo-wop and vocalese to rock-laced pop, fusion jazz and Brazilian sounds.
``I think everyone sees us the way they want to see us,'' Siegel said. ``The jazz fans, I think, see us as a jazz vocal group and can't understand why we keep making these albums with these stupid pop songs.
``And then other people want to know when we're going to make another `Boy From New York City' and then other people want another `Brazil' album.''
Hauser acknowledged that the group's eclectic blend makes them ``freaks.''
``We never compartmentalized stuff the way radio stations do, other people do,'' he said. ``Like Duke Ellington said, `It's either good music or bad music.'''
And after all these years, Siegel said: ``We have the luxury of being able to look back. We have the perspective that I think a lot of new acts don't have. ... I look at us as, in a way, historians, keepers of the flame, of a form that's really American music.''
by CNB