The word "legendary" is much overused in the jazz lexicon, but if any album deserves that mantle, it's Guys and Dolls Like Vibes . Vibraphonist and pianist Eddie Costa (1930-62) recorded frequently as a studio sideman during his brief career, but made only a handful of sessions as a featured artist in his own right, of which this is the most celebrated.
It's a classic not only for Costa's magnificent vibistry, but for the amazing interplay he achieves with his collaborators: emerging keyboard icon Bill Evans, heard just a few months before he would make history with Miles Davis; drummer Paul Motian, later Evans's partner in his greatest trio; and longtime Duke Ellington bassist Wendell Marshall. Then, too, there's the quality of the music being performed, as this is one of the most brilliantly conceived and executed of the myriad of excellent jazz-goes-Broadwy albums of the era.
First issued in 1958, Guys and Dolls Like Vibes has been a collector's item ever since. As Motian told pianist and annotator Dick Katz, "Everyone played great. . . .The record sounds wonderful even forty-something years later."
