Cheech and His Jazz Band

Certain folks might be downright disappointed that Cheech and His Jazz Band was not a collaboration between stoner comic and actor Cheech Marin and a backup jazz combo. Based on some of the musical sections of classic Cheech & Chong movies, this actually sounds like a fine idea. But the laid-back hippie comics could never have kept up the working schedule of the real Cheech and His Jazz Band, an aggregation of industrious studio pros fronted by pianist Frank Signorelli, who apparently so disliked his nickname of "Cheech" that he constantly pushed to have the group's material released under the name of "the Frank Signorelli Quartet." The pianist's busy studio work dates back to the late '20s and the Original Memphis Five, a group that also featured trumpeter Phil Napoleon, eventually to become an important programming director on New York radio. Of Italian descent (real name Filippo Napoli), the trumpeter would continue boiling up musical pasta with his old bandmate in a variety of different studio aggregations. By the mid-'50s, Signorelli was well-established as part of a clique of players recording regularly for producers such as Joe Davis. Membership of a studio group such as Cheech and His Jazz Band or the Park Lane Trio was known to vary from session to session, depending on the availability of players. Getting the biggest bang out of their studio rental dollar, a shrewd producer would record Signorelli and his men warming up with instrumental numbers, after which typically a second session would begin. A doo wop vocal group such as the Manhattan Mellotones might be scheduled to record a half-dozen numbers, or soulful vocalist Betty Thornton would be brought in to cut a number such as "I'm a Stationary Woman Looking for a Permanent Man." The singer's friendly...