Shelley Manne’s standout 1962 LP 2-3-4 is set to be reissued on July 24 as part of Verve’s Acoustic Sounds Series.
Recorded on February 5 and 8, 1962, 2-3-4 is one of the drummer’s most celebrated small group sessions, featuring tenor legend Coleman Hawkins, pianists Eddie Costa and Hank Jones, and bassist George Duvivier. The album, a standout in the Impulse! catalog, was produced by Bob Thiele.
On the LP, Manne and his band seamlessly integrate the rich tradition of swing with an improvisatory spirit that centers Hawkins’ outstanding playing. Throughout the recording, the band moves between duet, trio, and quartet formats.
The album includes standards like “Take the A Train” and “Cherokee,” alongside “I’m Coming Virginia” and “Avalon.”
It was in 1952 that Manne made a key decision of his life: he and wife Florence “Flip” Butterfield, a former dancer, relocated to California. It was there that the drummer became a leading figure of the West Coast Jazz movement. He quickly became a go-to force in the burgeoning jazz community. “Because of my reputation, more jobs were accessible to me, so I became leader. But like most drummer-leaders, I don’t put the drums in the forefront of the group,” he was quoted in Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz.
Though he was long associated with West Coast jazz, Manne decided to fly to New York to record 2-3-4, a decision spurred by his desire to reunite with Hawkins and Jones, players he had formed a rapport with as far back as the 1940s.
The Verve / Acoustic Sounds Series presents all-analog 180-gram vinyl reissues of essential albums from the Verve and Impulse! catalogs. Mastered from the original analog tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings (QRP) in Kansas, each release pairs top-tier audio fidelity with meticulously reproduced tip-on jackets, offering faithful recreations of the original LPs for discerning listeners. Recent releases include John Coltrane’s Africa/Brass and McCoy Tyner’s Inception in April, and Coltrane’s Impressions plus a 2LP set of Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book in May.
