DC Share Revival: Review: Ted Heath and His Music & Edmundo Ros and His Orchestra

Rating: 90/100 - Genrés: Afro-Cuban, Big Band,
Easy Listening, (Exotica), Mambo, Swing.

When Swing vs. Latin (Decca PFS 4033 in the UK, London Records SP 44038 in the U.S., Teldec SLK 16 807‑P in Germany) - was recorded in 1963 and released in 1964, it marked a meticulously staged meeting between two orchestral titans: Britain’s swing powerhouse led by Ted Heath and the Latin music empire commanded by Edmundo Ros. The sessions were overseen by producer Tony D’Amato, engineered by Arthur Lilley, arranged by Johnny Keating, and recorded at Teldec‑Studio in Berlin using Decca’s Phase 4 Stereo system.

Phase 4 Stereo, introduced by Decca in 1961, was designed to create immersive, spectacular sound rather than replicating live realism. It used a ten‑channel console (later twenty) and scored performances to move across the stereo field with artificial reverberation, directional panning, and dynamic contrast played out in real time. In effect, this album was intended as not background music, but as a showcase of movement and space—what the label called “true musical use of separation and movement”. According to audiophile reviewers such as The Skeptical Audiophile, Swing vs. Latin remains one of Phase 4 Stereo’s most successful titles, delivering immediate, explosive dynamics, “zero smear,” severe clarity of transient response and a sonic picture more lifelike than many rock pressings.

The 1964 album Heath vs. Ros: Swing vs. Latin stands as a rare document where big band swing and Latin orchestration confront each other not as rivals but as sophisticated counterparts. Ted Heath, born in 1902 in Wandsworth, South London, led Britain’s foremost postwar swing orchestra, modeled on the precision of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, but with a brass-forward style all his own. His ensemble featured up to 18 musicians, including a classic five-man saxophone section, four trumpets, and four trombones. Their arrangements, often shaped by Johnny Keating, were known for their tight voicings, full-section unisons, and harmonic boldness rooted in Ellingtonian color.

Opposite him stood Edmundo Ros, born December 7, 1910, in Port of Spain, Trinidad, raised in Venezuela, and trained at London’s Royal Academy of Music. His orchestra, famous from the 1940s onwards at venues like the Coconut Grove Club and the Dorchester Hotel, specialized in pan-Latin idioms—mambo, beguine, cha-cha, and bossa nova. Ros’s rhythmic arsenal included congas, guiro, timbales, and maracas, played by a battery of up to six percussionists, with brass and reeds in supporting roles. His Latin phrasing was influenced by Xavier Cugat, but stripped of showbiz cliché and rich in Afro-Caribbean integrity.

Musically, Swing vs. Latin is engineered with a dual-panned stereo field: Heath’s band occupies the left channel; Ros’s fills the right. In “Malagueña”, a Cuban classic by Ernesto Lecuona, Ros’s group begins with flamenco-derived harmonic tension, layered over 6/8 Afro-Cuban rhythms. Heath’s band, by contrast, plays “In the Still of the Night” with aggressive brass interjections and syncopated shout sections reminiscent of Billy May’s high-octane swing charts. Each ensemble was recorded live in separation, then mixed with dramatic stereo separation by engineer Arthur Lilley, exploiting Phase 4’s wide dynamic range and frequency response, often cited by audiophiles for its crisp transient detail and headroom.

The intriguing concept of the album was dramatized even before the first note: lore surrounding the sessions describes Heath’s musicians and Ros’s ensemble warming up in adjacent partitioned rooms—brass tuning, maracas rattling, piano and percussion warming up—creating the sense of two bands preparing for a staged confrontation before the “red light” switched on and the recording began. On the album itself Heath’s orchestra delivers sharply executed interpretations of standards such as In the Still of the Night, Come Rain or Come Shine and Speak Low with tight ensemble discipline and brassy punch, while Ros’s side answers with renditions of Desafinado, Misirlou and Malagueña full of rhythmic heat, flute and percussion textures that seem to flow across the stereo image in contrast to Heath’s more static swing center. At the album’s midpoint the composition Ted Meets Ed serves as a symbolic convergence where swing and Latin patterns collide and interlock in vivid stereo interplay, reinforcing the dialogue concept.

Collectors and vinyl enthusiasts frequently praise the UK and German Decca pressings for their rare dynamic integrity, noting that many U.S. London Records pressings suffer from compression and limiting that reduce punch and clarity. The better Decca variants deliver what many consider “shootout winning” analog sound: crisp, clear, with no muddy decay or smeared transients, especially in the percussion and brass sections. One long‑time audiophile reviewer wrote that the pianos can overpower at times, but when held in check, the huge stage effect and percussion leaping from the soundfield makes it an experience of it's own - a level above most stereo LPs of the era.

Beyond the sonic engineering, the album captures a cultural crossroads: by 1964 Edmundo Ros, born in Port of Spain in 1910 to a Scottish father and Venezuelan mother, had become the undisputed “King of Latin Music” in Britain, running supper clubs like the Coconut Grove, producing dance schools, BBC broadcasts, and maintaining a high‑society clientele until his club’s decline in the mid‑1960s. Meanwhile Ted Heath, leading Britain’s foremost swing band since the mid‑1940s, remained the symbol of precision and power until his death in 1969. This collaboration was therefore not just musical but strategic: two orchestral traditions confronting changing tastes head‑on, with phase stereo technology as their theatrical canvas.

The venture was expanded in 1966 with Heath vs. Ros Round 2 (Decca PFS 4111), which introduced additional repertoire such as Tiger Rag, Begin the Beguine, Granada, America, and Baby It’s Cold Outside. This second volume maintained the same Phase 4 production ethos and was later reissued in a deluxe 180 g vinyl package mastered at Abbey Road in 2016, often paired with the original in boxed editions, thereby cementing the project’s reputation among big‑band collectors and audiophiles alike.

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Review: Ted Heath and His Music & Edmundo Ros and His Orchestra - Heath vs. Ros: Swing vs. Latin (1964)

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