reading: www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/baccarach/387/Bio.htm (fan site)
Download: iTunes
‘The girl with the come-hither voice,’ said Bill Balance in his sleevenotes – never mind that she was a married woman with two children. Her voice, a husky instrument that lingered on syllables like honey oozing off a spoon, was the sexiest entreaty American music could offer in 1955. Elvis may have been knocking on the door, but the torch singers of the ’50s – Holiday, Lee, Vaughan, Fitzgerald – still held American men spellbound, and the statuesque Miss London – already with a modest movie career behind her – came to represent the genre.
She had already done plenty of work as a nightclub singer, encouraged by her pianist husband Bobby Troup, but Liberty was the only label interested in taking a chance on recording her. Troup insisted that she be recorded in the same setting as her live act – no orchestra, not even a piano, and just the bare strings of guitar and acoustic bass in support. Every song a ballad and nothing uptempo. Kessel (who also played on some of The Coasters’ records from the same period) offers trim accompaniments that introduce just a lick of jazz, but nothing to disturb the besotted listener. The mood had to be ‘round midnight’, and even though there are 13 songs on the record, it barely exceeds half an hour in length. Troup’s instincts were right. Released as a single, Cry Me A River was a major hit, and suddenly everyone knew that her name was Julie. The other songs are similarly lonesome, but here and there Julie flirts with a sort of blues feel, particularly on Easy Street. There is a little vibrato at the end of each line, just enough to make a strong man’s legs go weak, and when she disappears with Gone With The Wind, it’s as if someone has opened a window and she has just drifted off, a copper-haired phantom. Julie made many more albums for Liberty, and many of them were gorgeous, but this one still says it all.
The Four Freshmen
Four Freshmen And Five Trombones
Best album by vocal group that influenced The Beach Boys.
Record label: Capitol
Produced: Dave Cavanagh and Pete Rugolo
Recorded: Capitol Studios, Hollywood; 1955
Released: February 1956
Chart peaks: 6 (UK) 6 (US)
Personnel: Ross Barbour, Bob Flanigan, Ken Errair, Don Barbour (v); Frank Rosolino, Harry Betts Jr, Milt Bernhardt, Tommy Pederson, George Roberts (tb); Claude Williamson (p); Barney Kessel (g); Shelly Manne (d); Joe Mondragon (b)
Track listing: Angel Eyes; Love Is Just Around The Corner; Mamselle; Speak Low; The Last Time I Saw Paris; Somebody Loves Me; You Stepped Out Of A Dream; I Remember You; Love; Love Is Here To Stay; You Made Me Love You; Guilty
Running time: 31.62
Current CD: Collectors Choice CCM0172 adds: Four Freshmen And Five Trumpets album
Further listening: Tune in to The Hi-Lo’s Cherries And Other Delights (1994), a compilation of their radio appearances, to hear another exceptional array of harmonies and a sound that still resonates throughout contemporary vocal groups such as Take 6.
Further reading: American Singing Groups (Jay Warner, 1992); www.4freshmen.com
Download: Not currently legally available; selected back catalogue on iTunes and emusic
A four-piece vocal (and instrumental) group whose innovative harmonies completely changed the way such outfits sounded. Without them, there’d most likely have been no Beach Boys, no Jan And Dean. It could be argued that The Hi-Los were an even more inventive vocal group than the Freshmen, technically superior and, thanks to Clark Burrough’s stratospheric flights of fancy, totally astounding to all raised on the traditional big-band harmony group sounds produced by artists like The Pied Pipers (with Tommy Dorsey) or Glenn Miller’s Modernaires. But the Freshmen were warmer, somehow more human, able to reach a commercial market (something The Hi-Los were unable to do) without relinquishing their intricate way of doing things.
Voted Best Jazz Vocal Group of 1953, having earlier been dropped (and then reinstated) by Capitol – who initially failed to see the quartet’s potential – they released their debut album Voices In Modern the following year. But it was with Four Freshmen And Five Trombones that the breakthrough came. The format was hardly earth-shattering – just harmony interpretations of standards by such songwriters as Kern and Weill and lyricists who included Johnny Mercer, Ogden Nash and Oscar Hammerstein II, performed against a backdrop supplied by a team of Hollywood’s top trombonists plus an equally stellar rhythm section. But the songs were sometimes delivered in surprising tempi, the traditionally romantic You Stepped Out Of A Dream virtually bursting out of its groove, Weill’s Speak Low acquiring a Latin patina. And somehow, the album appealed to both those who tuned into the progressive jazz sounds of Stan Kenton and Woody Herman, and the family man who’d just cottoned onto hi-fi and wanted something spectacular but easy-on-the-ear.
When Brian Wilson heard the Freshmen, he became obsessed by their harmonies and contemporary arrangements. Claimed brother Carl: ‘Months at a time, days on end, he’d listen to Four Freshmen records.’ Later, the Beach Boys would even turn in an exact copy of the Freshmen’s Graduation Day. No-one disputes that Pet Sounds started here.
Ella Fitzgerald
Sings The Cole Porter Songbook
The great American voice meets the great American composer.
Record label: Verve
Produced: Norman Granz
Recorded: Los Angeles; February–March; February 7–9; March 27, 1956
Released: Spring 1956
Chart peaks: None (UK) 15 (US)
Personnel: Ella Fitzgerald (v) with Buddy Bregman’s Orchestra
Track Listing: All Through The Night; Anything Goes; Miss Otis Regrets; Too Darn Hot; In The Still Of The Night; I Get A Kick Out Of You; Do I Love You; Always True To You Darling In My Fashion; Let’s Do It; Just One Of Those Things; Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye; Begin The Beguine; Get Out Of Town; I Am In Love; From This Moment On; I Love Paris; You Do Something To Me; Ridin’ High; Easy To Love; It’s All Right With Me; Why Can’t You Behave; What Is This Thing Called Love; You’re The Top; Love For Sale; It’s Delovely; Night And Day; Ace In The Hole; So In Love; I’ve Got You Under My Skin; I Concentrate On You; Don’t Fence Me In
Running time: 118.27
Current CD: Verve 5372572 features 35 songs from the sessions over 2 discs
Further listening: The following Songbooks are also indispensable: Sings The Rodgers And Hart Songbook (1956); Duke Ellington Songbook (1957); Irving Berlin Songbook (1958); Gershwin Songbook (1959)
Further
