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Crazy He Calls Me

After I'd accumulated a couple of dozen excellent LPs by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Nat 'King' Cole and Frank Sinatra, it occurred to me to wonder who else had been signing in similar styles in the '50s and '60s whose names were less well-remembered. I went looking on-line and thereby found my way to singers I ought to have heard of, like Nancy Wilson, and to more obscure performers such as Ethel Ennis and Dakota Staton.

Staton was blessed with a clear & bright voice capable of near-operatic power. She comes across as an ebullient performer. Her diction was excellent, even if, to my taste, she was sometimes prone to over-enunciate and over-act a lyric. I suspect that, given the opportunity, she could have shone in musical theatre. Crazy He Calls Me is one of no fewer than three LPs Capitol Records released under her name in 1959. Unlike the others it's a compilation of newly-recorded tracks and of material pre-dating her '57 breakthrough hit 'The Late Late Show'. Some of the numbers are taken from from her very first recording sessions in '54 and '55.

In that earlier material, her singing is marked by the influence of Ruth Brown and of Ruth Jones (aka Dinah Washington). My favourite track on the album 'Can't Live Without Him Any More' is one of those, a number Staton belts out with infectious relish, very ably backed by Howard Biggs and his band. Her take on 'No Moon At All', on the other hand (one of the tracks newly-recorded for the LP), is a model of cool restraint & exquisite phrasing. Not everything else on it is as good, but the odds-and-ends mixture makes for a pleasingly varied listening experience.

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