New Jersey-born Alan Paul was six, the grandson of a cantor, when he started singing at the South Ward Boys Club in Newark. Now as they tour Europe for the very last time, they are releasing Fifty celebrates their half-century career. Their next ten albums went Top Ten in the US jazz charts six were Top 3.ġ985’s Vocalese was nominated for twelve Grammys and won two (they have had ten to date). Jean-Paul Gaultier designed the album cover’s futuristic take on the tuxedo. In the States, the single Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone became their first Top 30 hit since Operator and their vocal remake of Weather Report’s Birdland, with words by Jon Hendricks, won a Grammy. “Europe didn’t want change, England, Germany, Scandinavia…they wanted us the way we were, but we outgrew it.” They took a chance and embraced vocalese – a style of jazz singing which involved adding words to instrumentals. That year, Laurel left the group after a car accident and was replaced by Cheryl Bentyne.
I remember playing Hammersmith Odeon, the Dominion it was wonderful…until 1979.” The second album, 1976’s Coming Out spawned Chanson D’Amour Two more UK Top Ten albums followed, 1978’s Pastiche and the platinum-selling The Manhattan Transfer Live. By then they had adopted their familiar uptown image. After three and a half years, they were signed by Atlantic Records, who released their self-funded demo as 1975’s The Manhattan Transfer.
Their exquisite vocal blend enabled the quartet to quickly achieve headline status. There was experimentation, people wanted to go out and have a good time…there was a sense of freedom, almost like what we’ve just gone through with Covid.” “Vietnam had just ended, everything had been focused on the war and now we had the luxury of expression. People were going out in jeans, we wanted to grab their attention before we’d even opened our mouths. “We were from the underground scene, not musically but we were there at the same time as the New York Dolls, and we were dressing as outrageously as them, although we had a completely different sound. Paul recalls, “We were wearing necklaces of dolls heads, outlandish wigs and outrageous make up because the girl doing the make-up was Tim’s sister Fayette who was a member of the Cockettes – an avant-garde group out of San Francisco consisting largely of Transvestites. Founder member Tim Hauser, a New York cabbie, started the second incarnation in 72, recruiting Janis Siegel, Laurel Masse and Alan Paul, then a Broadway regular. The original Manhattan Transfer fizzled out in 1971. When they started, the group could not have looked more different than their famously elegant look of tux and tails, evening gowns and jewellery. They loved the fact it was a white group doing gospel.”
“In the south, we drew a largely black audience – they thought we were black. Their first US hit was 1975’s Operator – so soulful they were assumed to be black. There, they are known primarily as a jazz vocal group – the most successful one in musical history. “It broke us in Europe but at home it wasn’t commercial.” “That song bombed in America,” Alan tells me. Classy they were, but they were a lot more than cabaret.
Sing that title to anyone of a certain age and odds on they will sing “Ra da-da da-da” back.Ī Number One here, it defined our image of the multiple-Grammy-winning foursome as a classy retro-cabaret act. Manhattan Transfer’s 1977 hit, Chanson D’Amour, opened up Europe for the vocal quartet.
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