By CHARLES LEVIN -
Ventura County Star Online

Eddie Arkin beamed like a proud parent as he listened back to a track from Diane Schuur's newest album in a dimly lighted Hollywood recording studio last October.

For that matter, it was all smiles in the control booth where more than a dozen of Los Angeles' elite studio musicians surrounded Arkin and his co-producer, singer-songwriter Barry Manilow, to enjoy the fruits of their collective labor.

"Whew," said Arkin, obviously taken with the work, standing behind a massive computer-controlled board of knobs, sliders and blinking RED lights. "Great, great. Was that good for you guys? If you want to do another take, we ought to do it right now."

Arkin paused but found no interest. The musicians all seemed to agree with Arkin's next assessment about the tune. "It had that first-take magic on it," the longtime Somis resident concluded, looking satisfied.

As it turned out, first-take magic inspired much of Schuur’s newest record, "Midnight," which lands in record stores on Tuesday. Arkin and Manilow hope that translates into record sales for the veteran jazz singer. But for Arkin, the recording underscores a rare but welcome respite from his "day gig."

The successful 53-year-old guitarist-composer mostly works in relative obscurity, writing soundtracks for network television and producing feature numbers for movies (Arkin produced the music for "I Say a Little Prayer for You" in "My Best Friend's Wedding" and Jim Carrey's Cuba Pete number in "The Mask.") But that has always been the means to an end - playing and composing jazz. For "Midnight," Arkin and Manilow crafted a suite of songs for Schuur that hark back to the "Great American Songbook" days, an era when names like Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter and George Gershwin dominated singers' tune lists.

"These are all new songs written to sound like old songs," Arkin said during a pause in the recording session. Think 1956, a smoky nightclub, and the late Rosemary Clooney crooning a sultry ballad while backed by trumpeter Chet Baker and his band.

If ambience counts for anything, Arkin and Manilow chose one of the recording industry's hallowed halls for the session:

Studio A at Capitol Records. No less than Frank Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole and Dean Martin -- all practitioners of the "Songbook" repertoire -- had recorded there.

"I'm sure the spirits were dancing when we were working in there," Schuur said in a June interview.

"Midnight" nails this genre dead on. The tunes - seven co-written by Arkin and Manilow - range from sultry ("Meet Me, Midnight") to noirish ("Good-bye My Love"), resurrecting the vocal work of such late jazz divas as Dinah Washington, Carmen McRae, Peggy Lee and even Judy Garland - all influences on the 49-year-old Schuur. "For me, it's like a gift from the gods to be able to write songs that are harmonically rich (where) I'm not held back by the conventions of pop music," said Arkin, who played guitar on four tracks. "And Diane is a singer of amazing musicianship. She's got perfect pitch. She can hear the paint peeling off the walls."

An Early Start

Arkin fell in love with jazz shortly after picking up a guitar as a 9-year-old in West Los Angeles. Before he graduated from Hamilton High School, heck, before he could drive, Arkin was playing professionally.

"I played in a casual band where the trumpet player would drive me to gigs," said Arkin, a tall, bespectacled man, often given to wearing blue jeans and baseball caps. "I was kind of like the kid guitar player-singer, but I had a chance on some of the casuals to play with guys who were really good jazz musicians."

Arkin attended college as a music major for a little more than three years, then bailed on school to study arranging the orchestration privately.

In 1981, after five years of gigging around L.A. and teaching guitar at the University of Southern California, Arkin struck out on his own in the competitive world of arranging and producing.

Since then he's composed soundtracks for "Melrose Place," "Burke's Law," "Pink Panther" Cartoons, "Titans" and several Jane Fonda workout tapes. He's also loaned his producing, composing and arranging skills to Trisha Yearwood, Stanley Clarke, Nancy Wilson, Patti Austin and Broadway legend John Raitt (father of Bonnie). Arkin and Manilow hooked up when the pop superstar was searching for material for his 1987 "techno jazz" recording "Swing Street." Manilow had sought advice from the late jazz critic Leonard Feather, who recommended his daughter, a jazz singer, for more input. Lorraine Feather had co-written a song with Arkin, called "Big Fun." She played the song for Manilow, who flipped over the tune, added it to the record and eventually brought Arkin in as co-producer. Along with several other prominent jazz artists, Schuur sang on the record. Over the years, Arkin and Manilow continued to collaborate as a production-songwriting team.

Schuur Thing

Fast forward to 2000, when Schuur signed with Concord Records, the independent label that began in the San Francisco Bay Area, spawned a jazz festival and recently relocated to Beverly Hills. Schuur hadn't seen Manilow or Arkin for years.

Then Manilow signed with Concord a year later, "and the people of Concord asked him, 'Hey. Who would you like to work with?’" Schuur said by phone from her Mission Viejo home. "He said, 'I'd like to work with Diane Schuur.' And it worked out just perfectly."

Thinking of Manilow - he who writes the songs like "Mandy" and "Copacabana" - in the jazz arena may surprise some fans and even vex some aficionados. But over the years, Manilow has quietly assembled sturdy jazz credentials producing several albums for himself, Nancy Wilson, Dionne Warwick and Bette Midler.

Manilow started listening to jazz at age 12 in his native Brooklyn when his stepfather bought him a transistor radio. That turned into late nights soaking up the "Songbook" oeuvre and showing up "bleary-eyed to school the next morning because I was hooked on Symphony Sid," Manilow said, referring to the legendary radio host.

As for popular music, doo-wop was all the rage then but held no interest for Manilow, who gravitated more to the cool sounds of baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and trumpeter Miles Davis. Manilow said he followed a career path in pop music because entertainment producer-mogul CliveDavis persuaded him to."But that is not where my heart lies," Manilow said in a phone interview. "After I had 10 years of enormous success in that (pop) world, I was still empty and trying to find the music that really spoke to me, and it was always either jazz or Broadway musicals."

That was 1984, when Manilow recorded his first jazz record, "2:00 A.M. Paradise Café."

'So humble'

Manilow praised Arkin, calling him "the most musical person I've ever met."

"Eddie is so humble," said Manilow, 56. "He's not one of those guys like (producer) David Foster, who wants his name out front and make sure it's in the contract and all. So I'm his cheerleader. I just make sure he's out there, because I believe in him." Arkin and Manilow attribute the chemistry to a natural division of talent. “Manilow comes up with the "big-picture" scenarios,” Arkin said. “For example, with Schuur's record, Manilow brainstormed the concept of a 1950s-oriented jazz with a nightclub feel,” Arkin said.

"He sees things from a performer's perspective that will pull in the audience and make a cohesive project rather than just do a willy-nilly project,” Arkin said.

Both men share songwriting chores, but arranging duties fall to Arkin. "Just like other good relationships, it's a good match that way," he said. "To me the sum is greater than the parts."

The two men plan more projects ahead but, for now, won't divulge specifics. Arkin, meanwhile, continues to work for Tinseltown.

His most recent effort, which took him to Australia late last year, is a production number for the new version of "Peter Pan," now in trailers and due in movie theaters this fall.

"But gigs like that," Arkin said with a smile, "are what allow me to do what I want without starving to death."