Bill Takas

BOB DOROUGH & BILL TAKAS - BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT (1976)

1.Simon Smith And The Dancing Bear
2.Better Than Anything
3.I'm Beginning To See The Light
4.A Hundred Years From Today
5.I'm Hip
6.Nothing Like You
7.Small Day Tomorrow
8.Norwegian Wood
9.Because We're Kids
10.I've Got Just About Everything

Bob Dorough's first three albums as a leader came at 10-year intervals, and Beginning to See the Light was the third, on his own Laissez-Faire label. (Regrettably, the LP has never been reissued on CD.) "Nothing Like You" was an early collaboration between Dorough and lyricist Fran Landesman, the latter best known for "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" and "The Ballad of the Sad Young Men." Dorough first recorded it in 1962 with Miles Davis, arranged by Gil Evans, and the brief vocal mysteriously appeared on Miles's Sorcerer release four years later, which puzzled more than a few of the trumpeter's fans.
Bassist Bill Takas performed and recorded with Dorough from the mid-'50s until shortly before his death in 1998, and often in a duo format. They had a special rapport, as can be heard on this track. Dorough plays the churning melody on piano with Takas's reverberating electric bass alternating between unison lines or complementary chords. Subtitled "An Extravagant Love Song," the words that Dorough next emphatically sings indeed offer an abundance of laudatory sentiments regarding a lover: "Nothing can match the rapture of your embrace, nothing can catch the magic that's in your face ? no one has your magnificence." Dorough's melodic piano solo is stirring, as Takas sensitively shadows him all the way with a firm yet agile pulse. This live version is twice the length of the one on Sorcerer, and is the better for it.