Cinema: May 10, 1963

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Who Is Gary Burton? (RCA Victor) is a question few jazz listeners will be asking a year from now. The answer: a 19-year-old vibraphone player who sounds like Lionel Hampton's sophisticated little brother. He plays with great technique and inventiveness, and behind him is a pluperfect jazz ensemble: Phil Woods, alto sax; Clark Terry, trumpet; John Neves, bass; Joe Morello and Chris Swanson, drums; and of course, Tommy Flanagan, piano.

Orchestra U.S.A. (Colpix) presents the debut of John Lewis' new enterprise, a 30-piece jazz orchestra amazing both for the excellence of its personnel and the flatness of their group performance. Solos by Saxophonist Phil Woods, Trumpeter Herb Pomeroy and Flutist Eric Dolphy far exceed the level of their support.

Red's Good Groove (Red Garland Quintet; Jazzland) is easy, lyrical and hard-swinging music the boys can all cook to their own taste, and here the choice of the whole group is well done. Blue Mitchell plays the trumpet too prettily, but the rest of the group are drivers: Pepper Adams, baritone sax; Sam Jones, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums; and Garland on piano.

Afro-Bossa (Duke Ellington; Reprise) contains Duke's proof that he was on the scene with something like bossa nova when Brazilians and their music were still in Brazil. Duke called it "Afro-Cuban" in those days. Now he calls it "une nouvelle vague exotique" or "gutbucket bolero." But it still sounds like bird calls.

The Thundering Herds (Woody Herman; Columbia) is a collector's item of three records that covers the progress of the First and Second Herds (Woody's name for his bands) as if Herman were General Patton. The music is the hardest swing ever played by a big band.

Five Feet of Soul (Jimmy Rushing; Colpix) presents the man who inspired the song Mr. Five by Five, singing in the warm blues style no one around but Ray Charles would dare attempt. Rushing's songs are all dandies—'Tain't Nobody's Biz-ness If I Do, Trouble in Mind and My Bucket's Got a Hole in It, among others.

Affinity (Oscar Peterson Trio; Verve) is just the word to describe how Peterson and his two sidemen seem to feel about one another's music. Ray Brown's bass and Ed Thigpen's drums give substance to Peterson's filigree piano style.

BOOKS

Best Reading

Lord Byron's Wife, by Malcolm Elwin. A fascinating and scrupulously documented study of a marriage­Byron's to the former Annabella Milbanke­in which the emotional vocabularies of the partners were disastrously different.

Textures of Life, by Hortense Calisher. The obvious is made moving and the cliches eloquent by a skilled technician in this odyssey of early marriage.

The Mercy of God, by Jean Cau. A controversial young French novelist looks with rare insight into the lives of four prisoners racked with guilt.

The Tin Drum, by Günter Grass. In a sprawling first novel, the most inventive talent to come out of Germany since the war presents a comic and scurrilous dwarf's-eye view of the Third Reich.

Speculations About Jakob, by Uwe Johnson. Another gifted young German turns his novelist's eye on the small tension . and concerns of his divided world,