New Pop Records

Earl "Fatha" Mines Solo (Fantasy LP), the first solo album in years by one of the granddaddies of the modern jazz piano. The selections--My Monday Date, Deep Forest, R. R. Blues--span much of the "Fatha's" career, starting with the late '20s, when he was jamming with Louis Armstrong in Chicago. The left hand is as bouncy and ebullient as ever; the famous "trumpet" right hand still shimmies over the keys and chops out the big, gaudy chords that have been the envy of a generation of jazz pianists.

After Glow (Carmen McRae; Decca LP). Songstress McRae gives a torchy, slickly phrased reading to such old standbys as Nice Work If You Can Get It and My Funny Valentine, and less familiar numbers, e.g., Guess Who I Saw Today? The voice is too anemic for the big, strutting talk, but just right for the languorous, blues-flavored chitchat of a girl who has been there before.

Satchmo:The Musical Autobiography of Louis Armstrong (Decca, 4 LPs). This lushly packaged, $20 salute to the most influential jazz soloist of them all traces his long career from the shouting, heavily riffed style he learned from Joe Oliver in his Chicago days (Dipper Mouth Blues, High Society) to the high, singing lyricism of the late '20s and early '30s, admirably illustrated in one of his own alltime favorites: On the Sunny Side of the Street. Most of the numbers, recorded at the end of 1956, are replays of records Louis cut between '23 and '34, some of them amplified by the famous, gravelly Armstrong voice. The album is marred by a hackneyed script, read by Satchmo, but it should give latter-day jazz fans, who know him only as the aging vaudevillian, an idea of what the shouting was about.

Tammy (Debbie Reynolds; Coral). "The old booty owl hooty-hoots to the dove," hoots Cinemactress Reynolds in this ballad about a teen-ager who finds love in the bayou. Mrs. Eddie Fisher's record is a fast-moving bestseller, but as slushy as those bayous in October.

Songs for a Smoke-Filled Room (Elsa Lanchester; Hifirecords LP). A fey, offbeat collection of songs both sprightly and shivery by the apricot-haired English comedienne, with tongue-in-jowl introductions by husband Charles Laughton. The selections range from Fiji Fanny, a raucous burlesque of the songs the trade calls "grass-skirt numbers," to a haunted, spine-crawling ditty titled If You Peek in My Gazebo, which tells the tale of a mad New England spinster who sits each evening in a summerhouse on the hill secretly watching the lusty young village bucks stroll by.

First Place (J. J. Johnson; Columbia LP). The current ruling jazz trombonist struts some of his limber-lined, impeccably phrased stuff on a fine solo album. The selections include revamped oldies such as It's Only a Paper Moon, a haunting blues number called Harvey's House, and a scattering of pleasant Johnson originals.

Mr. Lee (The Bobbettes; Atlantic). A bestseller all about a suave-moving gent named Lee who is the cynosure of roving female eyes: "One, two, three Look at Mr. Lee Three, four, five Look at him jive!" Sung with a frenetic enthusiasm that suggests an itchy beater flailing the bush for quail.

This Is the Night (Bobby Brookes; RCA Victor LP). A free-swinging, relaxed first workout for one of the more promising and versatile voices in the current fledgling pop stable. Singer Brookes bounces suavely through Give Me All of You, attacks More than Ever with a voice haunted by old, unforgotten loves.

Chez Patachou (Columbia LP). The sod-and-sunshine girl from France belts out a few sinewy numbers about love and things on the good, peasant earth. In one nontypical, eggheady fancy, Songstress Patachou serenades a charmer from outer space: "A white disk that flies over the city/ A very small, shy man with big, limpid eyes and a candid face has come forth/ If small, shy men regularly fall from nowhere in strangely oval engines, we won't be so lonely when we go to heaven."

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