buy these eight songs on four heavy, perishable, 10-inch, shellac 78rpm discs packaged together in a binder to resemble a book. It was a format known in the trade as an album.
It sold like crazy, for this was the period when ‘Swoonatra’ was cresting his huge first wave of popularity. At the beginning of the decade, the skinny ‘kid’ from Hoboken, New Jersey had made a phenomenal impact upon leaving the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra to go solo. A well-orchestrated publicity campaign attracted pop’s first posse of screaming school-age girls. By the time of these recordings he’d crossed into the affections of adults too and made inroads into a creditable film career with the hit movie Anchors Aweigh. Not surprisingly, when Columbia began releasing 10-inch microgroove long-playing records in early 1949, this was the first pop item to appear in the new format. The collection found Francis Albert Sinatra – aged 30 when these songs were sung – in a romantic mode, interpreting eight standards with the aid of his long-term arranger and conductor, Axel Stordahl, a string quartet, a rhythm section and the oboe of Mitch Miller. They were songs that Sinatra loved, in simple settings – like chamber music – that allowed the singer’s innate tenderness with a lyric to shine (a ploy that Frank would revisit over the years, in particular on the 1956 Close To You sessions with The Hollywood String Quartet). It added up to what is, in effect, the first concept album by a pop performer, a collection of songs about a helpless heart. No matter if a lyric suggested that a girl cared for him, Frank remained the little boy lost, requiring someone to watch over him, not standing a ghost of a chance with the one he cared for most, and reflecting, by means of a few foolish things, on a past attachment gone wrong, the perpetual victim of unrequited love.
Sinatra would record most of these songs again in the ’50s, when he made his reputation as ‘Voice Of The Century’ and when his instrument had the timbre of a wise cello, a little more worldly, but no less susceptible to hopeless affairs of the heart. But here, still a creamy viola, he delivered performances that were simply the state of the post-Crosby pop singing art; passionate but gentle, sexy but vulnerable. Little wonder that an entire generation of adoring females experienced the simultaneous – and no doubt conflicting – arousal of their carnal and mothering instincts.
Peggy Lee
Black Coffee
Who would have thought Norma Deloris Egstrom would have had a voice like this?
Record label: Decca
Produced: Cy Godfrey
Recorded: New York City; April 30, May 1 and 4, 1953
Released: 1953
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Peggy Lee (v); Pete Condoli (t); Jimmy Rowles (p); Max Wayne (b); Ed Shaughnessy (d)
Track listing: Black Coffee; I’ve Got You Under My Skin; Easy Living; My Heart Belongs To Daddy (S); A Woman Alone With The Blues; I Didn’t Know What Time It Was; When The World Was Young; Love Me Or Leave Me
Running time: 20.35
Current CD: Verve 9863193 reissue of the 1956 12-inch edition with additional tracks: It Ain’t Necessarily So; Gee, Baby Ain’t I Good To You?; You’re My Thrill, There’s A Small Hotel
Further listening: The Man I Love, a bundle of string-laden ballads, recorded with an orchestra conducted by Frank Sinatra and containing a superlative The Folks That Live On The Hill.
Further reading: The Life And Music of Miss Peggy Lee (Peter Richmond, 2006); Miss Peggy Lee (1992), an autobiography that fills many gaps without being entirely satisfactory; www.peggylee.com
Download: Not currently legally available
Undoubtedly among the finest female singers to grace the world of popular music, Peggy Lee was vocally equipped to sing blues, jazz, Broadway standards or even cornball material, though she generally steered clear of the latter. She was also an accomplished songwriter; she fashioned the soundtrack for The Lady And The Tramp and picked up an Oscar nomination for her acting ability. All this and beauty too.
It was a long road to her debut album. Born Norma Deloris Egstrom, she began as a teenage singer in 1936 with the Jack Wardlow Band, then joined Will Osborne (1940–41) before becoming part of vocal group The Four Of Us. Heard by King of Swing Benny Goodman, she became vocalist with his highly rated outfit, cutting her first records within days of taking the job and notching her first hit that same year with a cover of Duke Ellington’s I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good. After several other hits with the Goodman outfit, she married the band’s guitarist, Dave Barbour, whose own band featured on many of her initial solo recordings. Signed first to Capitol and then to Decca, Peg notched over 30 hit singles of varying quality (one was titled Bum, Bum, I Wonder Who I Am) between 1945 and 1953, when the opportunity arose to cut her first long-player.
It was released in ten-inch form with a mere eight tracks (four other songs, recorded at a Los Angeles session in April 1956 were added when the record eventually appeared as a 12-inch). But with those original eight tracks the singer established herself in the very top echelon, alongside Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Though there was no outlet for her R&B talents, later manifest on such singles as The Comeback, Black Coffee allowed Peg the opportunity to swing effortlessly and phrase with dangerous abandon on such songs as I’ve Got You Under My Skin, faultlessly conjure a four-in-the-morning mood on the torchy title track, or interpret Johnny Mercer’s superb lyric to When The World Was Young in such a manner that, to date, no one has yet managed to extract from it so much emotion or bestow it with such fragility.
Julie London
Julie Is Her Name
Intimate and sensual torch song motherlode.
Record label: Liberty
Produced: Bobby Troup
Recorded: 1955
Released: December 1955
Chart peaks: None (UK) 2 (US)
Personnel: Julie London (v); Barney Kessel (g); Ray Leatherwood (b)
Track Listing: Cry Me A River; I Should Care; I’m In The Mood For Love; I’m Glad There Is You; Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man; I Love You; Say It Isn’t So; It Never Entered My Mind; Easy Street;’ S Wonderful; No Moon At All; Laura; Gone With The Wind
Running time: 31.11
Current CD: Hallmark 706452 adds: Lonely Girl; Fools Rush In; Moments Like This; I Lost My Sugar In Salt Lake City; It’s The Talk Of The Town; What’ll I Do; When Your Lover Has Gone; Don’t Take Your Love From Me; Where Or When; All Alone; Mean To Me; How Deep Is The Ocean; Remember
Further listening:
