Duets #1: A door marked "Nevermore" that wasn't there before (Patreon)

The first day is mostly jazz, swing, and R&B, shading into country and pop as it goes on. It’s full of terrific tracks - here are some of my favourites.

CARMEN MACRAE AND SAMMY DAVIS JR. - “You’re The Top”: There are Cole Porter songs scattered through the poll - this one (originally from Anything Goes) is clever, witty and a great two-hander. It’s also perfect for the swing era’s musical grammar of brass and percussive punctuation, since it’s not so much a song as a series of rhymed punchlines for Davis Jr, in particular, to roll his way through.

INEZ AND CHARLIE FOXX - “Mockingbird”: An early (in the poll) example of a very potent duet format - one partner (Charlie here) acts an anchor for the song, laying down the basic tune, while the other (here Inez) dances, swoops and generally lets rip around him. Picking a well-known nursery rhyme as the basic text is a genius move, it means the listener’s focus is entirely on the dance between the singers, not on the content.

OTIS REDDING AND CARLA THOMAS - “Tramp”: Of course, if you’ve got a rhythm section like the Stax house band, they can do the anchoring and both singers can spar, flirt, fight and have fun - the duet as an exhibition bout, full of jabs, parries and wounded cries.

BILL EVANS AND TONY BENNETT - “The Days Of Wine And Roses”: An unusual format which sits on the borderline of qualification - the instrumental/vocal duet. To read it as a duet you have to buy that Evans’ contributions go beyond accompaniment and into some kind of dialogue, and I think they do - Bennett is sentimental and somewhat lachrymose, Evans’ piano lines starker and more sobering.

WILLIAM BELL AND JUDY CLAY - “Private Number”: The reason I love “Private Number” is that it resolves its ‘narrative’ so quickly - she gives him the number pretty much at once and they spend the whole rest of the song celebrating the reunion in the most adorable manner.

BOBBIE GENTRY - “Reunion”: The country tracks on Day 1 floor me with their emotional maturity and their joy in formal play. “Reunion” - which is technically a duet, though the male singer is uncredited - goes the furthest out, a polyvocal dinner table narrative that’s as funny and human as it is startling and original.

JORGE BEN AND GILBERTO GIL - “Taj Mahal”: The day contains two 10 minute plus epics of improvised interplay - the Sonny Rollins Quartet’s “Tenor Madness”, and also this frenetic, whooping expansion of Ben’s catchy “Taj Mahal”. It’s repetitive, playful, altogether too much and also rather brilliant.