George Shearing led one of the most popular jazz combos in the world in the 1950s and '60s, and no collection of bachelor pad music was complete without at least several of his sophisticated recordings of standards that he released on Capitol. The combo was sometimes augmented by strings.
The success of these recordings often overshadowed Shearing's accomplishments as a soloist and as a pioneer of small-combo Latin jazz.
His first album for Capitol, after a period at MGM, was The Shearing Spell, released in 1955. One of the standards on this LP was Autumn in New York, which later turned up on a budget CD release entitled By Request. The MP3 is taken from a cassette copy of this album.
Autumn in New York
The sound on By Request, released on the Pair label, was merely adequate and you can purchase a copy quite cheaply. If you're fussy about sound quality you'll want to search for the pairing of The Shearing Spell and Velvet Carpet, released by Collector's Choice in 2000 but now unfortunately out of print.
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