New Pop Records

A Pair of Blue Eyes (Shirley Harmer; M-G-M). With a voice warm and sweet enough to make any passable tune sound good. Songstress Harmer turns this little mood piece (from the film Song 0' My Heart) into a real holiday.

Bud Shank & Three Trombones (Pacific Jazz LP). Further adventures of West Coast jazzmen in their new instrumental colors. This one features plush sounds that should please even the cats who do not quite dig Saxophonist Shank. Titles: Valve in Head, Cool Fool, Wailing Vessel.

Jazz For People Who Hate Jazz (Victor LP). A perfectly respectable collection except for its repellent title and patronizing program notes. Includes vintage performances by Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Bunny Berigan, Count Basic, et al.

Ko Ko Mo (CrewCuts; Mercury). Explosive, riffing treatment of what is apparently a grand passion. Eminently suitable for barroom backgrounds.

Malaguena (Caterina Valente; Decca). A combination of German Weltschmerz and Latin languor that is not so odd as it seems. Songstress Valente was -- born in Paris of an Italian father and a French mother, and lives in Germany. She sings Ernesto Lecuona's famous Cuban ditty in German with an elegant background of ghostly strings, muted brasses and castanets, and the result is stunning. Bestseller bound.

Open Up Your Heart (Cowboy Church Sunday School; Decca). "Smilers never lose and frowners never win," is the moral of this spellbinder, and a splendid group of really mean-sounding little boys gives it the ride it so richly deserves.

Rock Love (Fontane Sisters; Dot). An easy jump from the Fontanes' popular Hearts of Stone, but less comprehensible. Rock love is something a body has in the heart, like a steamship's giant gyrostabilizer, to keep from floundering on temptation or drifting with the storm.

The Song from Desiree (Anna Maria Alberghetti; Mercury). Italy's young coloratura is quaveringly miscast as a pop singer in this pseudo-Empire waltz, sounds at home only when vocalizing in the higher reaches.

Miss Teddi King (Storyville LP). A new jazz singer is news, and this news is good. Songstress King has a smoky-sounding voice that conveys much of jazz music's indescribable wistfulness, the birthright of Billie Holiday. Ella Fitzgerald & Co. Among her eight tunes: I Saw Stars, Love Is Here to Stay.

Thigamajig (Mel Powell Trio; Vanguard LP). Another in Vanguard's fine jazz series. Powell's piano and the trumpet-playing of Boston's Ruby Braff have a bright fresh effect, both in the oldies, like You're My Thrill, and in the fanciful modernities of Powell's own Bouquet.

Yvette Guilbert (Angel LP). Paris' grand old (1865-1944) Chanteuse Guilbert rasps a few of her naughty ditties in pre-LP French. Titles: Le Fiacre, Partie Carree, L'Eloge des Vieux.

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