Various Artists: Crime Jazz: Music In The First Degree

Jazz, that most American of musical forms, is also the unofficial music of crime. Between 1945 and 1960, Hollywood married then-new jazz styles with the gritty, black-and-white mystery film, and linked them forever in the popular consciousness. Now, the compilation geniuses at Rhino have issued a pair of thematically similar CDs with 18 great film-jazz tracks apiece, and they are monsters. Much of the material will be unfamiliar, with the notable exception of the Peter Gunn theme, which is arranged by Henry Mancini but performed in this edgier version by Quincy Jones. Don't let that put you off: This was an era of unparalleled stylistic experimentation in jazz—when it was still the coolest thing around, full of blaring horns, brushes on snare drums, wicked and suspicious-sounding reeds, and perhaps the coolest basslines of the 20th century. If this music doesn't seem as adventurous now as it was then, it still overflows with feeling: Try Miklos Rozsa's tense and grating music from The Asphalt Jungle, the uneasy sensuality in Joseph Gershenson's incidentals from Touch Of Evil, the frantic suicidal energy of Shorty Rogers' fluegelhorn solos from Frankie Machine, or Frank Sinatra's theme from The Man With The Golden Arm. Heavily stylized, evocative, and the very definition of cool, both compilations are an absolute must for the jazz, film, or noir-novel buff. A delight.