Johnny Hodges: Don't Sleep in the Subway

"Everybody knows Johnny Hodges," went Duke Ellington's standard introduction. By the mid-'60s, it was no longer true. Record-buying kids didn't know Ellington, much less Hodges. They did, however, fancy singer Petula Clark, who made this song a Top 5 hit in 1967. Verve Records missed Miss Clark, but prospered by merchandizing jazz masters Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery as trendy schlockmeisters. Alas, what worked for them did not work for Hodges, who sounds like a refugee from a halfway house, wandering dazed and disoriented in the subway, where, hounded by Hank Jones's clattering harpsichord, Johnny can't even catch some z's.