The Manhattan Transfer recently released a new album, which is a tribute to the great Louis Armstrong. Entitled The Spirit of St. Louis, the album was released on Tuesday, October 10, 2000 on Atlantic Records. The album was produced by Craig Street. Among the tracks on the album are the songs "A Kiss To Build A Dream On," "When You Wish Upon A Star," "Sugar," "Blue Again," "Gone Fishin'," "The Blues Are Brewin'," "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans," "Old Man Mose," "Nothing Could Be Hotter Than That" and "Stompin' At Mahogany Hall."

The Manhattan Transfer - Tim Hauser, Cheryl Bentyne, Alan Paul, and Janis Siegel - have racked up many remarkable achievements in their 27-year career. The premiere vocal ensemble in contemporary music, the group has constantly evolved, exploring musical styles from swing to doo-wop to traditional Brazilian song, and scoring Top 40 pop hits including "The Boy From New York City" and "Twilight Zone/Twilight Tone." With its acclaimed 1985 album "VOCALESE," the foursome revitalized an entire genre of jazz.

But until now, there's one thing the ten-time Grammy winners have never done: Dedicated an entire album to the musical legacy of a single individual. "THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS," the Manhattan Transfer's eleventh studio release for Atlantic, marks an important step in the quartet's history, as they delve into the catalog of the trumpet player and singer widely regarded as the most influential artist in the history of jazz: Louis Armstrong.

"What was interesting was that here was an individual whose music we never explored at all in our career," says founding member Hauser of the project, which timed out nicely with the year-long centennial celebration of Satchmo's birth. It's a wonder it took them so long. After all, as Bentyne observes, "Everything we've always done, everything all jazz musicians, rock musicians, have done, all funnels down to Louis Armstrong."

"We realized just what an all-encompassing performer he was, in so many areas," admits Siegel. "He revolutionized jazz singing." A pop artist who crossed all genres, Armstrong was a relaxed yet emotional musician who never let his impeccable chops upstage feeling. "We found that the material he did was extremely rich," she adds. That repertoire proved a wellspring of inspiration, notes Bentyne, "because it gave us all many different directions in which to go, more so than any music we've ever done."

Regardless, the challenge facing the group was formidable and twofold: a) Which selections from Armstrong's canon to tackle; and b) How to interpret them in a distinctive fashion. "We didn't want to just make an album of cliches," says Paul. "We also didn't want to make a straight-ahead jazz album."

The first task was digging into Armstrong's extensive catalog as a spotlight artist, spanning from his mid-1920's recordings with the small Hot Fives and Hot Sevens ensembles, up to his death in 1971. "We wanted to include a couple songs that are really associated with Armstrong," says Siegel, "ones someone on the street would name if you went up to them and said, 'Name two Louie Armstrong tunes!'" From that column, the quartet chose "A Kiss To Build A Dream On" and "When You Wish Upon A Star."

But finding new ways to approach those best-loved selections wasn't simple. "It's almost easier doing songs that are more obscure," admits Paul. "Steering away from the saccharine side of songs like 'When You Wish Upon A Star,' which is so well know, was really challenging. Because the tendency is to go melodically and arrangement-wise, where you think it should go, where people are used to hearing the song go. And we didn't want to do that."

Enter producer Craig Street, whose credits include acclaimed albums for k.d. lang, Cassandra Wilson, and Me'Shell NdegeOcello. Street compelled the quartet to throw its traditional approaches to creating an album out the window, and open themselves up to unlocking new modes of performance. "We usually like to be in control, and write the vocal charts out first and then put it in front of the musicians or the arranger," says Bentyne. "But this was all done the other way around, where we had to sit back and trust that we would just come up with something vocally that matched the track. We've never done that before, and it was exciting."

The producer pulled the rug out from under the foursome. "We've been together for 27 years," notes Hauser, admitting that after that long "you kind of flow with the patterns. And all of a sudden, Boom! Here we are in this whole other world. That was very healthy for us."

Street assembled a core of top-notch sidemen: Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums, Teddy Borowiecki on keyboards, Greg Leisz on guitars, and Holly Cole Trio vet David Piltch on bass. For select cuts, he augmented the line-up with some surprisingly experimental players, including fusion trumpet master Jon Hassell (on "When You Wish Upon A Star") and Beck alum Smokey Hormel (guitar on "The Blues Are Brewin'"). Guitar and loops supplied by David Torn waft through the hazy atmosphere of "A Kiss To Build A Dream On," while Los Lobos' Steve Berlin blows baritone sax on "Old Man Mose" and "Hotter Than That." Jimmy Haskell, Roger Treece, and David Campbell split duties of orchestration and arranging.

"Working with these guys was incredible, because they were very open, very flexible," says Paul of the band. "We would go in, and just feel each other out a little bit, talk about the ideas. And then we would wait... and wait... and wait. And eventually one guy would go start playing, and then the next guy, and they'd start this kind of jam. All of a sudden, you'd feel it, this whole wave." The four singers would take their cues from that spontaneous energy, "and just start fooling around, and out of that came this record."

Sonically, "THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS" feels completely distinct from any other Manhattan Transfer album, born from a weird confluence of contemporary, classic, and unexpected sounds. Accordion, mandolin, pump organ, and pedal steel are all part of the palette, along with more conventional woodwinds, strings, and vibraphone. "In the past, we've used more traditional jazz instrumentation," admits Siegel. "On this album, we used a lot more authentic, older instruments."

In turn, the four distinctive singers explored new facets of their individual vocal characters. "On this album, the group takes a lot more solo and duo turns," notes Siegel. "That was just a natural outgrowth of realizing that every song doesn't have to feature four-part harmony all the way through... that it's a lot more emotional, and interesting, for people to hear a solo voice."

As an experiment, Street asked each of the members to select a few songs they were compelled to sing. "He wanted each one of us to have at least one tune that we were just utterly passionate about because he felt it would come out on the recording," explains Siegel.

Hauser elected for "Blue Again," one of his all-time Armstrong favorites. But Street's modus operandi kept the singer from getting hung-up on preconceived notions of how it should sound. "I walked up to the mic, and had no idea where they were going to go with it," he recalls. "Here comes the downbeat, and these cats are playing a country blues. So I just started singing. When it was done, Craig said, 'That's the take.' And I go, 'What do you mean, that's the take? This is the scratch vocal.' But he said, "That's it - you're out of here."

Bentyne, whose father was a Dixieland musician himself, opted for "Sugar (That Sugar Baby O' Mine)," albeit at a much lazier pace than Satchmo's reading. "I wanted to create a little smokiness, with more of a Julie London/Peggy Lee vibe, because that's the kind of character I am in this group," she reveals. "The lyrics are so sexy and full of double entendre that I thought, 'This'll be perfect, just slow the tempo down and create the mood from there.'"

Siegel sunk her teeth into "The Blues Are Brewin'," because "I loved the melody of it. But I wanted to try to make it more of a blues, because when Louis does it, it's very elegant and sophisticated, almost like you'd sing it in a supper club... and I wanted to take it into the alleys. When we cut it, I said to the musicians - especially the drummer, Abe Laborial Jr. - "Let's pretend that we're drunk, in an alley, and you're playing garbage can lids."

"THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS" also features a pair of exercises in vocalese, with Paul setting lyrics to two Armstrong instrumentals. "It was obvious that we would wind up doing some vocalese pieces because Armstrong was such a great instrumentalist, as well as being a singer," he says. For "Stompin' At Mahogany Hall" (an adaptation of "Mahogany Hall Stomp"), Paul drew inspiration from tales of Armstrong's misadventures as an errand boy to hookers and hoodlums in New Orleans' infamous Storyville district. "Hotter Than That" couples images that'll make the mercury rise with the swinging bravura of another Armstrong disciple, Louis Prima. On both numbers, Siegel translates Armstrong's instrumental flair and distinctive timbre to the human voice with verve to spare.

"The thing that we wanted to express on this album was the pure joy that Louis Armstrong expressed in his music," Siegel summarizes. "We wanted to capture his spirit more than any literal interpretation of his music... to have him live through us for a moment, and do what we do, but have that spirit infused in the music."

No small undertaking, but "THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS" succeeds in achieving its ambitious goals. Listening back, it sounds like music the Manhattan Transfer, quite simply, needed to record. "We were ready to make an album of this magnitude," concludes Bentyne. "At this point in our life, it's time to do the world's greatest music, by the world's greatest musicians, the best that we can. And if we can't accomplish that, then it's time to retire. We've taken on a huge handful here, and I hope people feel what we've done - because it certainly has changed our lives."