The Manhattan Transfer - Cheryl Bentyne, Janis Siegel, Alan Paul, and Trist Curless - celebrates 50 years here on the just-released, and aptly-named Fifty, with a collection of songs - some reimagined favorites, even something new - all with symphony, the WDR Funkhausorchter with whom they’ve performed.

With performances alongside Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald and so many more, the group wanted to share harmony - the harmony in their new recording, to share the harmony of bringing people together in this dedicated recording to founder Tim Hauser, and Laurel Masse.

This recording is their love letter to their fans over 50 years, to the many honors and awards they’ve received, and celebrating a career spanning 50 years!

IN THE FALL OF ’72: It’s been fifty years since Tim Hauser, a former Madison Avenue marketing executive, paid his bills by driving a New York City cab while aspiring to form a harmony vocal quartet sui generis that could authentically embrace varied musical styles, and still create something wholly unique in the field of American popular song.

A LEGACY OF SONG: Signed to Atlantic Records by the legendary head of the label, Ahmet Ertegun, the group released their self-titled debut in 1975; the second single from the album, a remake of the Friendly Brothers gospel classic “Operator,” gave the group their first national hit.

“Operator” took radio stations by storm, from the opening four-part a cappella intro to Siegel’s emotional lead vocal, eventually peaking in the Top 20.

1. Agua
2. The Man I Love
3. Paradise Within
4. On a Little Street in Singapore
5. The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul
6. Twilight Zone / Twilight Tone
7. Blues for Harry Bosch
8. Chanson D’amour
9. What Goes Around Comes Around
10. God Only Knows

This most perfectly manicured and wholly heartfelt new album opens on the free flowing gossamer of Agua and the politely perky, rhythmically stunning The Man I Love and then goes on to bring us the cinematic reach of Paradise Within, the layered melodies and harmonies within On a Little Street in Singapore and then we get the atmospherically-charged fervency of The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul.

Up next is one of my own personal favorites, the emotionally aesthetic, spookily-veined Twilight Zone / Twilight Tone which is itself backed seamlessly by the percussion-imbued, cinematic scope that attaches itself to APD detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch’s very own Blues for Harry Bosch, the lavishly sculptured, dance floor twirl of Chanson D’amour, the album rounding out on the hard-noted, hand-clapping, pop-jazz beauty What Goes Around Comes Around, coming to a most beautiful, harmonious close on the layered ambiance within the veritably crystalline God Only Knows.

The Manhattan Transfer with WDR Funkhausorchester – “God Only Knows” (Official Video)

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