When You Wish Upon a Star - The Manhattan Transfer

THE MANHATTAN TRANSFER has been one of the more influential groups in modern jazz. Their vocal arrangements are world renowned and highly regarded. Since forming in 1969, the group has gone through many transformations, both in roster and in style but always delivered highly innovative jazz records.

In 2000, when the group was planning to record their final album on the Atlanic record label, they decided to record a tribute album to Louis Armstrong. They carefully selected ten songs from Armstrong's incredibly huge catalog and for some reason they selected When You Wish Upon a Star as the closing number for the disc. THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS was released and fans either hailed it as a genius reinvigoration of jazz or a sloppy, under-produced piece of garbage.

While Louis did record the song for DISNEY SONG THE SATCHMO WAY in 1968, I don't think I'd think of When You Wish Upon a Star as one Armstrong's greatest hits as MT member Janis Siegel seems to think in this article taken from The Manhattan Transfer Fan Club Webpage:

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."

"Steering away" is right! This version of the Pinocchio classic is quite different than what you normally hear when this song is covered. The sparse use of instrumentation mixed with odd harmonies and departure from the timing of the melody makes this arrangement quite unique. Is it good? Is it bad? You decide.

When You Wish Upon a Star The Manhattan Transfer 2000