The Songbirds Archives

Vic Damone - Johnny Hartman -
Frankie Laine - Little Jimmy Scott

Vic Damone
Reviewed by David Torresen; Washington, DC

Fans of classic pop/jazz American vocalists are eternally indebted to England – talk about a sad irony. While the apparently indifferent keepers of the Columbia, Capitol, Decca and RCA vaults here in the States roundly ignore many great or near-great mid-century singers – offering only the occasional, unimaginative, redundant "best of" compilation – the English arms of Sony, EMI and MCA have, in recent years, issued a staggering, sublime array of twofers (two original albums on one CD) showcasing many superb vocalists, from Lee to Day to London to Shore to Southern to Wilson to Vaughan to Stafford to Whiting, among the women; from Crosby to Cole to Bennett to Armstrong to Darin to Jones to Davis to Martin among the men.

Add the handsome, supple-voiced Vic Damone – possessor of "the best pipes in the business," quoting Frank Sinatra – to the above list. Between the dawn of the 12-inch, long-playing, pop-vocal album in the mid-1950s and the devastating (for crooners, at least) onset of Beatlemania in 1964, Damone released a full dozen original albums, six for Columbia and six for Capitol. Since 1995, the Brit divisions of Sony and EMI have reissued ten of these twelve albums on five discs, the most recent being the Capitol albums The Lively Ones and Strange Enchantment (EMI-21095, UK, 1999).

These two, seemingly incongruous 1962 albums have only one thing in common: arranger and conductor Billy May, a frequent Sinatra collaborator who also worked with many songbirds of distinction, Peggy Lee and Keely Smith to name just two. The Lively Ones, borrowing its title from Damone’s then-airing musical variety series (one of television’s most jazz-friendly ventures, from all reports, with Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee among its many participants), is primarily a collection of song titles with women’s names (Marie, Diane, Laura, Charmaine, Ruby, Nina Never Knew, etc.). The concept falls flat after several tracks, namely because few of these songs are up to the Great American Songbook standard. The main exception here is Parish and Roemheld’s ballad, Ruby, a short tale of futile infatuation with a thrilling, dangerous, devouring lover. Damone has since revisited this dark song with even greater depth and nuance, both on record (his 1997 CD The Greatest Love Songs of the Century) and in recent concert performances… and for good reason.

Based on the generic, tropical album cover and the first 20 seconds of Strange Enchantment – the soaring strings, the ominous plucking of the bass guitar, and an apparent cracking of the whip – the listener might expect an exotic Les Baxter-esque excursion into "tiki" territory. Indeed, the album is Pacific Island-themed, as evidenced by titles like The Hawaiian Wedding Song, Humming Waters, Beyond the Reef, The Moon of Manakoora and Bali H’ai. Despite the Polynesian theme and the often kitschy material, Damone, ever the balladeer, is well showcased here by a collection of lushly-arranged ballads, most notably Shangri-La and a familiar, ultra-dramatic tune that he recorded for Mercury a full decade prior, Ebb Tide. Call it The Less-Than-Great American Songbook, but you can’t fault Damone’s or May’s rich interpretations.

Commendable though this disc may be, I’d recommend the four earlier Damone twofers over the Damone-Meets-May collection. My favorite by far is the twofer pairing the Columbia albums Closer Than a Kiss and This Game of Love (Sony 487190, UK, 1997), both plentiful in Great American Songbook material, namely Rodgers, Berlin, Ellington, Waller, Styne, Van Heusen, Schwartz, Duke and Wilder. Hopefully, EMI will soon complete its twofer mission and reissue Damone’s greatest Capitol albums, The Liveliest, a live recording from his 1963 Basin Street East engagement; and On the Street Where You Live, a 1964 album saluting some great Broadway tunes of the previous decade.

Johnny Hartman
Reviewed by Bill Reed; Los Angeles

Composer Alec Wilder’s National Public Radio radio series, American Popular Song (1976-1980) was a watershed in the history of the Great American Songbook. Although the posthumous sequel, Alec Wilder Revisited, only lasted for the 1983 season, it too was memorable for the wide variety of singers and songwriters it spotlighted. During the 48-episode run of both programs, Wilder and co-host/house pianist Loonis McGlohon presented a who’s who of jazz, cabaret and pop singing, including Barbara Lea, David Allyn, Teddi King, Mabel Mercer, Jackie Cain and on and on, most mouthwateringly. But of the several dozen performers accorded this forum to wax and warble, none was more welcome than the now widely-acclaimed Johnny Hartman. The two Hartman episodes, minus the dispensable between-song chatter, are now available from that other Great American Songbook watershed, Audiophile Records, on a single disc entitled Thank You for Everything (ACD-165, US, 1999).

The accompaniment by the McGlohon trio is unobtrusive, and the fidelity is surprisingly higher than the liner notes would lead one to believe. There are several theories as to why the singer arguably considered our finest purveyor of ballads (and no mean swinger to boot) never quite made it as a mainstream artist, and most of them have to do with racism: "I’d like to use you, Johnny, but you’ll never make it. Your voice is too classy for a Negro." To give the devil his due, the devil was right. Even Hartman’s classic 1963 album with John Coltrane failed to jump-start his career, and Hartman continued turning to Japan, Australia and Europe for a livelihood.

In a classic case of bad timing, Hartman died in 1983 at age 60. It is a tragedy of near classical proportions that if he’d hung around a while longer, the Chicago native could have capitalized on the personal attention that accompanied the massive success of the soundtrack for The Bridges of Madison County. The 1995 Clint Eastwood film contained four Hartman cuts and ignited a long-overdue fascination with him here in his homeland.

Interestingly, one title, Ellington’s Warm Valley, is performed here twice, once with the familiar Bob Russell lyrics, and again, with – to my knowledge – a never before heard set of lyrics by singer-songwriter Larry Carr. Only four songs have appeared before on any of Hartman’s albums: Lush Life, While We’re Young, Miss Otis Regrets, and I’m Glad There is You. Hartman recorded the latter for the Bethlehem label two decades prior, and the difference between the two versions is minimal. Both are shot through with Hartman’s usual, no-liberties-taken, none-needed approach to the Great American Songbook.

Most of the numbers here are ones you would have guessed the singer would have gotten around to recording long before the occasion of the Wilder radio shows: What Is This Thing Called Love?, Easy to Love, Ev’rytime We Say Goodbye, and I’ve Got You Under My Skin. But these and twelve others are making their Hartman debut here. It is a measure of how under-recorded an artist Hartman was that he notched only seventeen albums and a clutch of singles during 36 years as a recording artist. On Thank You for Everything, it sounds as if he’d been waiting nearly all his life to record these sixteen new songs. And, of course, he had.

Frankie Laine
Reviewed by Earl L. Dachslager; The Woodlands, Texas

Regarding Columbia/Legacy’s just-out reissue of Frankie Laine’s much-admired, near-legendary Jazz Spectacular album with Buck Clayton and His Orchestra (CK 65507, US, 1999), one can only say: It's about time. Why it took so long, who knows? But here it is, and lovers of jazz – vocal and instrumental alike – will surely be grateful for its at-long-last arrival.

This is not the first time this great collection has been reissued, however. The original album was recorded in October, 1955 and released in January, 1956 on a Columbia 12-inch LP. Twenty years later it was reissued by Columbia, again on vinyl, with the original cover photo and with a new, back-cover blurb by Clayton. Then in 1997 it was partly reissued on CD on an Italian import as part of a series called The Entertainers. This release, which also included eight tracks from an album Laine had recorded with Michel Legrand, excised two of the original ten tracks: Baby, Baby All the Time and My Old Flame.

On the occasion of the 1975 Columbia reissue, Clayton wrote: "Last year in Leeds, England, I talked with Frankie Laine, and we are in complete agreement that this is one album that we both consider to be one of the best vocal-jazz records," To that, this reviewer can only say amen.

For those fans of American vocal jazz who know Frankie Laine only as the purveyor of pop slop, this disc will come as a major surprise, if not a major shock. Laine started out in the late 1930s as a jazz devotee, a fan of Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday, Nat Cole, and, of course, Clayton. But by the 1950s, under the tutelage of Columbia’s Mitch Miller, Laine was solidly set as the traditional crooner, more often shouter, of such commercial confection as Mule Train, That Lucky Old Sun, Midnight Gambler, and Jezebel. For this recording, originally proposed by Clayton, Laine returned, with complete conviction and with obvious joy, not to say abandon, to his jazz roots.

The result is nothing short of – well, let's say it – spectacular. The accompanying players include, besides Clayton, Hilton Jefferson, Kai Winding, J. J. Johnson, Urbie Green, Dickie Wells, Lawrence Brown, Jo Jones, Sir Charles Thompson, Budd Johnson, Milt Hinton, Al Sears and Clifton Best – clearly an all-star lineup. Because all the tracks are so uniformly excellent, it's difficult to choose a favorite or "best," although if pressed, I would opt for You Can Depend on Me and Roses of Picardy. Still, in this case, as the Bard famously said, comparisons are odorous.

Although recorded in a studio, the sessions have the sound and feel of live, almost spontaneous, performances. Clayton's arrangements were merely sketches, and apart from the intros and codas, Laine was free to improvise as he liked, including, on a couple of tunes, verbal asides to the musicians.

This reissue includes all of the original ten tracks plus one bonus track, You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To, an instrumental featuring Clayton, Winding and Johnson. It also includes the original liner notes written by producer Irving Townsend, plus a recap, by Charles Granata, of Laine's career and of the making of this recording. In the new liner notes, Laine, now 85, is quoted as saying: "When I got the acetate of the original album back in 1955, I was in heaven! I've loved it since, and I am thrilled that Columbia is reissuing it." So are we, Frankie, so are we.

Little Jimmy Scott
Reviewed by Ivan Santiago; New York City

"Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" is the tongue-in-cheek title of a current hit by country-pop singer Shania Twain. Little Jimmy Scott could well cover the song, provided that he is allowed to modify the title to "Man! I Sound Like a Woman!" This master of the R&B and jazz ballad possesses a singularly high-pitched voice and a delivery that has confounded many a listener – "Is that Ruth Brown?," asked an unwitting friend of mine. The oddity in sound is actually the result of Kallmann's Syndrome, a hereditary hormonal condition that also accounts for his height (4'11"). No masculine functions were affected by this hormonal deficiency, however, as testified by his many years of marriage and by a hugely successful early life as lothario, brawler and pistol-packing papa (the gun allegedly carried to discourage any propositions from members of the same sex, among other reasons).

Yet an androgynous sound is the least of Scott’s vocal marvels. At his very best, Scott seems to exist in a state of eternal torture. His is a mysterious pain destined to remain unmitigated, a boundless passion never, ever to be reciprocated. Underlying the mystique are a number of techniques and strategies, most notably the indefinitely stretched syllables, the high-pitched outcries, and the excruciatingly slow tempos, all topped with soulful musicality. He also prefers to sing in a husky tone that – while still reminiscent of the female voice – lends itself better to the tempos that he favors.

The 74-year-old Scott is not at his best on the three or four CDs he has recorded over the past decade. Though his soulfulness is for the most part still intact, the vocal instrument, understandably, fails to measure up, intermittently quavering and faltering after more than 50 years of use.

Scott is at his very best on Bravo Profiles a Jazz Master: Little Jimmy Scott (R2-75698, US, 1999), a CD released by Rhino in conjunction with the Bravo TV network on the occasion of a televised documentary about him. This disc is actually a reissue (with two additional tracks) of an earlier CD, entitled Lost and Found (circa 1993). All tracks originated in two albums – one titled The Source, the other one never released – recorded by Scott for Atlantic around 1970.

One excellent track after another, these Atlantic recordings are Scott’s most compelling interpretations – along with his earlier efforts for the Tangerine and Savoy labels. The heartbreaking intensity of Scott’s The Folks Who Live on the Hill makes his version one of the very best, close in its power to Peggy Lee’s very different interpretation. Arranged by Scott himself, Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child becomes a spiritual in every sense of the word, with an a cappella beginning, melancholy music, pained pauses, sudden outcries, and an overall atmosphere of defeat. Other tracks (Stordahl’s Day by Day, Sinatra’s This Love of Mine, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s I Have Dreamed) are as hair-rising in intensity, if not more.

This year’s second Scott release is Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool (GRD-669, US, 1999), part of GRP’s recently issued batch that included compilations for Jeri Southern, Mark Murphy, and Ella Fitzgerald. It contains the balladeer’s complete recordings on Decca and its affiliates: his four debut vocals on Decca (1950), all with Lionel Hampton’s Orchestra, and the 11 songs that he later cut for Coral in 1952. Despite the second- and third-rate material nowhere on par with the Rhino collection, Scott manages to produce a few above-average performances, certainly better ones than in recent years. Perhaps he drew inspiration from these sessions’ many lyrics with sentiments and words such as "cry," "blues," "fool" "solitude" or "please," all appropriate to the repertoire of a virtuoso of the lament.

On the Hampton tracks, vibes and organs combine to produce an alternatively ethereal and funereal sound that suits him well – so well that the title song placed in the Top 10 R&B jukebox charts. The Coral sessions open with an unsuccessful Wheel of Fortune, one of many competing versions when the song first came out. Of the remaining tracks, The Bluest Blues is a most pleasant surprise, chiefly because Scott manages to succeed at an up-tempo – a rare happening for this balladeer.

Little Jimmy Scott: romantic agony personified in an androgynous voice. So intense a singer that he is best appreciated at high volume, yet in small dosages. A wise word to impressionable teenagers, on the verge of falling in love: For the sake of your (senti)mental health, adult supervision when listening is advised.

...and don't forget Crooner Corner from our last issue:
Bobby Darin, Mark Murphy, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Jack Jones.