This is a Recording

For a few years I was haunted by a song I could not identify. On the infrequent occasions I listened to the radio during my time in Rome, whichever station it was I'd settled upon as the least objectionable might play a jazzy-sounding number in which a deep male voice sang in Italian, but with some words of English in the chorus: "It's wonderful... good luck my baby...I dream of you... chips, chips". It was the kind of song where it seemed likelier that these were the chips one might be given in a casino, and not any potato-based foodstuff. I grew to love the song, but each of the half dozen or so times I heard it I never caught the artist or track-title being announced. I resigned myself to its remaining a mystery. But then I heard a snippet of it again a few years later in Amsterdam, issuing from a hotel-room TV as the soundtrack to an ad. On returning from that trip back to the UK, I resolved to see if the internet might be able to solve the puzzle for me. This w...

Travelin' Light is the fourth and last album jazz singer and pianist Shirley Horn recorded in the '60s, before taking time away from the limelight to devote to family life. Thereafter she performed only occasionally in and around her home city of Washington D.C., until the first stirrings of a career revival in the late '70s. Her early records had been well-reviewed and earned admiration from her peers (no less a figure than Miles Davis singled out her debut LP Embers and Ashes in some rare public praise), but they had sold poorly. I first heard of her via YouTube, having searched for versions of a song I'd taken a shine to called ' You're Blasé '. At length I got around to tracking down a copy of the album it had appeared on, i.e. this one. Specifically I bought a mid-'90s French-made CD re-issue. While not terribly rare, it's uncommon enough that it took me a while before I found an affordable copy. I think I ended up paying something in the ...

Ella Swings Brighly With Nelson is one of half a dozen records on my shelves issued by the "World Record Club", a mail-order label set up in the UK in the mid-'50s. The records themselves (mostly) sound good, but the sleeve designs depart from the original ones in ways that don't improve them. The Verve issues of this album feature a photograph of Ms Fitzgerald & Mr Riddle, wheras here we have a rather muddily impressionistic drawing/painting of the singer. By 1961, as Alun Morgan's sleevenotes state, both Ella and Nelson were widely renowned and much in demand. They had already worked together on The George and Ira Gershwin Song Book in '59. This record is one of a pair arising from sessions in '61 that were released the following year, the other being Ella Swings Gently With Nelson . It's an album that isn't perhaps either headliner's finest work, but it's still a very good one, and makes for enjoyable listening. The sorrowful lyric...

The Exciting Joe Williams is among the best of several big band jazz records I've acquired in recent months. It's one of those LPs which just sounds fantastic from the moment the needle hits it, despite getting off to what is, to my mind, a slightly shaky start, thanks to an inadvisably upbeat, jazz-hands waving version of 'Ol' Man River'. The second song, 'This is the Life', however, is much more like it, and puts things on a surer footing that's then maintained throughout. On 'This is the Life', among other numbers, Williams' smooth and strong baritone sounds somewhat Sinatra-like, and his delivery has a similarly (and justifiably) confident swagger about it. Frank may have had the edge when interpreting a slow ballad, but on uptempo numbers, Joe was at least as good.  Other favourites of mine on the record are 'Come In Out Of The Rain', 'Gypsy In My Soul', and, especially 'Last Love, Last Kiss, Goodbye'. The last-n...

Encouraged by how much I enjoyed his album The Big Band Sound Of Henry Mancini (aka Combo! ), I bought a few more Mancini LPs, always very cheaply, finding some of them less to my liking, but others that I thought were delightful. My favourite among them must be this soundtrack to the 1963 movie Charade , which, as the cover states, starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The opening ' Charade (Main Title)' begins with insistent woodblock, joined by other percussion until the memorable theme kicks in. The Parisian setting of the film is reflected by musical Gallicisms such as the third track 'Bateau Mouche'. The coolly jazzy 'Mégève' is a highlight. 'Bye Bye Charlie' is a mournful cue for string quartet, By sharp contrast, it's followed by the sound of a mechanical 'orchestrion' or something resembling one, in 'The Happy Carousel'. The variety of sounds and styles is balanced by a judicious use of reprised timbres & musical motive...

'Midnight at the Oasis' was very often on the radio when I was five years old, and occasionally thereafter. I wasn't especially fond of it as a young child, though it has since grown on me. For a long time I wouldn't have been able to link that song with Maria Muldaur's name, and it was probably only within the last 5-10 years that the connection was established in my mind, a connection that chimed when I saw a copy of Waitress in a Donut Shop on sale locally last summer, I was happy to wager a few pounds on it (and another few on Barry White's Can't Get Enough ) in the hope I might like them. It proved a small risk well worth taking. Barry White, of course, is a genius, and Waitress in a Donut Shop, while not the sort of album that tends to feature on "Best Of" lists, is excellent entertainment, beautifully made. Having a supporting cast of such notable artistes as Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner, Linda Ronstadt, Spooner Oldham, Paul Butterfield, Klaus V...

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 breakth...

The Best of Peggy Lee , but without 'Fever', her most famous song? This alone might incline one to scepticism about this 1981 compilation, but the packaging doesn't help either. The design is rudimentary, the sleevenotes perfunctory and uncredited, with the pictures on the inner sleeve of other titles from the "MCA Special Price Nostalgia Series" resembling bad photocopies. Fortunately, though, the mastering & pressing are quite adequate and the music itself is marvellous. The record opens in atypical style with the hot-blooded melodrama of 'Lover', where Lee's full-on vocal delivery overlays a boldly percussive arrangement. Elsewhere the singer's voice is oftener more of a croon, and the emotional temperature is cooler (though the version here of Cole Porter's 'Just One Of Those Things' has something of that same energy). Track 2, 'Apples, Peaches And Cherries', is a twee number partly played for laughs; track 3 'Love M...

There was no way I could have missed Aretha Frankin growing up. Not only were her classic songs still often on the radio, there were also (from a lower drawer, perhaps) her '80s tracks & the very popular collaborations with Annie Lennox and George Michael. Not to mention the references & tributes to her work from soul enthusiasts of all stripes, from Scritti Politti to The Blues Brothers. Even so, it wasn't until after her death that it very belatedly dawned on me exactly what a powerhouse & a glorious talent she'd been. Meanwhile I'd formed an appreciation for an older generation of singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington: so when I learned, not much more than a year ago, that Aretha had recorded a tribute to Dinah, I was keen to hear it, and ordered a used CD copy of Unforgettable from an ebay seller. It's a wonderful record. First released in '64, a few years before her move to Atlantic records allowed her to fully hit h...

Movin' With Nancy is described, on the back of the sleevem as having been "from the Television Special". Wikipedia provides more background: " Movin' with Nancy was a television special featuring Nancy Sinatra in a series of musical vignettes featuring herself and other artists [...] originally broadcast on [...] December 11, 1967". Moreover, it was "unlike most musical programs of its time, with the numbers lip-synced outdoors on locations instead of the usual stage-bound production filmed before a live audience." Nancy's guests include Lee Hazlewood, Dean Martin and "a very close relative", i.e. Frank Sinatra, though he's not named anywhere on the sleeve or labels. Five of the twelve tracks are Hazlewood compositions, and he joins the star on two duets: 'Some Velvet Morning' and 'Jackson'. Nancy & Dean duet on 'Things'. We're not treated to 'Somethin' Stupid' - Frank instead sings ...

Richard Hawley's Coles Corner was the first album I bought after my return to the UK from Sweden in 2009. I became very fond of it, and, not long after, also bought what was then his new release -  Truelove's Gutter . Both were on CD: I didn't have a good vinyl set-up at that time and my record-player wasn't getting much use. Those two records have remained my favourites of his ever since. Truelove's Gutter is a set of evocative nocturnes, much of it quiet and sparse. The opening 'When The Dawn Breaks' is an exercise in restrained, subdued melancholy. 'Open Up Your Door' begins in a similarly quiet mode, but the music subsequently swells as a glorious '60s-style string arrangement kicks in. It's one of the album's highlights for me, along with the poignant 'Don't Get Hung Up in Your Soul'. The songs are all Hawley's own; his guitar work is beautiful; his voice expressive. He co-produced the album too, so is partly-respon...

Valve Bone Woe was touted as Chrissie Hynde's jazz album when it was released in 2019, but jazz is only one of its ingredients. There are are some jazz classics (Mingus's 'Meditation on a Pair of Wirecutters' and Coltrane's 'Naima') on which Hynde takes a back-seat, letting the big band behind her take it away; and there are selections from the Great American Songbook like 'I Get Along Without You Very Well' and 'Hello Young Lovers'; but there are also '60s songs such as Brian Wilson's 'Caroline, No' and Nick Drake's 'River Man'. It's located then, somewhere near the junction of jazz, mid-century pop and easy listening. Hynde's voice isn't as strong as most of the old-school jazz-singers', and some of the songs show up its limitations (her take on 'Wild is the Wind', for example), but it's fluid and characterful and generally it sounds great. The excellent arrangements and production a...

The consensus seems to be that Dinah Washington's mid-'50s records for the EmArcy label are better than the later ones she recorded for Roulette Records. Drinking Again , recorded in 1962 - the year before her untimely death - demonstrates that not all of the latter were without their merits. It's an album themed around "the melacholy air of unrequited love" as the sleeve-notes put it, ploughing a similar furrow to Sinatra's downbeat collections like In The Wee Small Hours and Only the Lonely . My copy of the album is a '60s UK mono pressing which, regrettably, isn't in the best of shape. The musicians aren't credited - only the arranger and conductor Don Costa gets a mention. He and his un-named band do an excellent job variously laying on silky strings, astringent brass & mellow blues as the mood dictates. The bluesy numbers 'I Don't Know You Any More' and 'Baby Won't You Please Come Home' are highlights of the record...

My wife's musical tastes and mine didn't overlap too much, but she had a love of the '40s and '50s crooners, which, when we met, was music I'd just begun to appreciate too. In her case, it was a taste she'd inherited from her father, who, born in the mid-'20s, had grown up listening to those singers. His particular favourite artist in that vein, and, by extension, hers, was Nat 'King' Cole. She recalled fondly how he'd sing Cole's 'Mona Lisa' (and Frankie Laine's 'That Lucky Old Sun') to her as a lullabies when she was very young. We jointly acquired CD compilations of the bests of Cole, Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee & others. At our wedding we danced to Tony Bennett's version of 'The Way You Look Tonight'. Those tunes were a large part of the soundtrack to our marriage. When her father died, 'Mona Lisa' was played at his funeral, and to hear it became more bittersweet. When my wi...

I own not one but two '80s-vintage Julie London 'best-of' compilation LPs. For me, the other one ( The Best Of The Liberty Years ) has the edge as regards song-selection; whereas this one has the better-designed cover. Luckily, the two intersect only slightly, with just a pair of songs in common: 'Cry Me a River'; and 'Daddy', the latter written by Bobby Troup (also responsible for '(Get Your Kicks) on Route 66' and 'The Girl Can't Help It'), who was London's second husband. The Best of Julie was apparently first issued in 1961: its re-issue date isn't given, but the sleevenotes mention that Mari Wilson's cover of 'Cry Me a River' sparked a resurgence of interest in London's music, so '83 seems a reasonable guess. London's voice wasn't the strongest of instruments, often deployed in a huskily conspiratorial near-whisper, but she could certainly hold a tune, and had a knack for persuasively deliverin...

This deluxe production has excellence right through it: Sinatra near his peak; Basie and his band; Quincy Jones conducting & arranging. The recording quality is first-rate too, and puts the listener right in the room that "has that peculiar air about it that only successful clubs have: a combination of cigarette smoke, overheated air, smouldering dust, Lysol Clorox cleaned linen, even the silverware smells different from home silverware" to quote Stan Cornyn's notes in the gatefold. As well as instantly-recognisable songs like 'Come Fly With Me' and 'It Was a Very Good Year', there are also a few brief, but thrilling Basie instrumentals, and a pair of Sinatra's monologues - one longer ('The Tea Break'); one shorter ('A Few Last Words'). Collectively these do heighten the sense of a single evening's entertainment, but would it have been any less of a record had the monologues been omitted? Nat 'King' Cole's At The San...

"Marian Montgomery sings happy, upbeat, swingin' love songs that proclaim Lovin' is Livin' and Livin' is Lovin:" so begin the sleevenotes to this 1964 album, the singer's third and last for Capitol Records. How much say, if any, she would have had in selecting this repertoire I don't know, but she acquits herself well in it, even if there are other singers with a surer touch on simperingly salacious numbers like 'Teach Me Tonight' and 'Do It Again'. On songs like 'I Wanna Be Loved' and the closing track 'Love is an Old Maid's Dream' she seems surer-footed. Her voice is beautifully rich contralto with a husky timbre. The arrangements are nicely varied - some are blues-flavoured and others latin-inflected, but the prevailing theme is of swinging big-band jazz. Here and there perhaps it wouldn't have hurt for the tempo to have been a little less brisk. It's not an outstanding album, but a very enjoyable one when...

London-born pianist George Shearing and his quintet recorded a number of albums in collaboration with guest vocalists on which accompaniments were mixed with instrumentals. Among these was The Swingin's Mutual (1961) where the featured singer was Nancy Wilson, at that point a rising star with two albums under her belt. Shearing and his band (piano, vibes, guitar, bass & drums) had a restrained and elegant sound, with Wilson's voice exuding a cool sophistication that complemented it very well. Often heard as an instumental, 'On Green Dolphin Street' is sung here, with its lacklustre lyrics (which hardly matter, given the quality of its melody) delivered beautifully. Shearing's own 'Lullaby of Birdland', meanwhile, is among the instrumental numbers. Wilson's next album was a similar collaboration, this time with Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley and his quintet, which, to my taste, has the edge on this one, if only by the narrowest of margins ...

Sassy Sings is a 1966 compilation LP collecting tracks by the great Sarah Vaughan recorded in 1946 and '47. Given those dates, it's not surprising that the sound quality isn't the best. 'September Song', which in all likelihood would have sounded exquisite to those lucky few present at the time, presents those of us in posterity with a need to make allowances for something that sounds like it was taped in a subway tunnel. The closing track - 'The One I Love (Belongs To Somebody Else)' - gives one the impression that the microphones were in a room across the hall from the one where the musicians were playing. The recording quality of some of the other tracks isn't so bad, but the fidelity is never high. Moreover, my copy of the record is hardly in pristine condition, and the pops & crackles from it don't help matters. Despite all that, some of the tremendous amount of light & warmth in these performances does still frequently shine through. V...