The Songbirds Archives

Ketty Lester: Where Is Love?
RCA (BVCJ-35029), Japan, 1999

Reviewed by Ben Glenn II; Washington, DC

Rather than "Where is love," a better question might be, "Who is Ketty Lester?" Like so many other American interpeters of the Great American Songbook who recorded in the 1950s and the early 1960s, Lester is a largely forgotten songbird recently rediscovered in the current Japanese reissue craze. Even if the Japanese CD pressing of Lester’s 1965 RCA Victor album Where Is Love? doesn’t tell us who she is, it certainly begs the question as to why she isn’t better known.

Ketty Lester was born Revoyda Frierson – a wise change of name – on August 16, 1938 (some sources say 1934) in Hope, Arkansas. Little has been published about her early career, although she appears to have been adept at both singing and acting. By the early 1960s, Lester had toured Europe with Cab Calloway’s orchestra and earned positive notices for her work in an off-Broadway production of Cabin in the Sky. In 1962, Lester hit the big time when her single for Era Records, Love Letters, hit #2 on the R&B charts (#5 on the pop charts), resulting in appearances on teen-oriented TV shows such as Hullabaloo as well as a full-length album (also on Era) of the same name.

By 1964, Lester had signed with big-budget RCA Victor in an apparent effort to expand her career beyond R&B into the glitzier (and largely white) arena of chanteuse-singing-standards-with-full-orchestra. In an unusual move (and perhaps in response to the civil rights movement at the time), the "powers that were" at RCA viewed Lester’s soulful roots as a positive feature that set her apart from label-mates Dinah Shore, Ann-Margret, and even Lena Horne. In fact, Lester’s first RCA album stressed her R&B roots with its title, The Soul of Me.

Where Is Love?, Lester’s second album for RCA Victor, is a perfect example of her "standards sung slightly soulfully" style, a mixture of Dinah Washington’s bluesy laments and the elegant readings of Nancy Wilson, Lurlean Hunter, and Valerie Carr. With a number of well-known songs from theatrical shows such as Oliver!, My Fair Lady, and West Side Story, the record conveys the singer’s ongoing interest in the stage. In fact, like a good stage performance, Lester begins her album with a slow, thoughtful monologue and builds the intensity through emotional ups and downs into a zesty, climactic finish.

The album opens with the title track, as Frank Hunter’s string-laden orchestra delicately couches Lester in soft "pillows" of violins, violas, and cellos. For this important song, Lester sounds tentative – and at times almost breathless – in her attempt to communicate the song’s tender mood. In holding back to such an extent, Lester builds suspense for the listener, who knows that the dynamics she is capable of surely will come.

Track two begins with a fairly languid reading of Rodgers and Hart’s My Romance. However, toward the end of the song Lester begins to let loose when, during the phrase Wide awake / I can make / my most fanTAStic dreams come true, she punctuates the second syllable of fantastic with a thunderous, rip-roaring belter of a note, hinting at livelier moments ahead. After a lightly doo-wop inflected arrangement of That’s All, the album begins to sparkle with Wouldn’t It Be Loverly. Here, Lester swings the Lerner-Loewe favorite by playing with the familiar rhythms and injecting some well-placed soul-inflected notes, all against Hunter’s buoyant arrangement, which nearly out-Riddles Nelson Riddle.

In keeping with the album’s liner notes ("LOVE...in moments of laughter and tears"), Lester next changes the mood dramatically and takes us through two intimate ballads, Love Locked Out and Deep Purple, which are perfectly lovely if unmemorable – in other words, what amounts to rather standard performances of standards. The mood hits down-in-the-depths with Lover Man. To my mind, any singer who attempts Billie Holiday’s signature song has guts and, admirably, Lester holds her own.

The tone lightens a bit with Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael’s Skylark and by track nine, Lester is back in swinging form with a hard-driving version of The Sweetest Sounds. Nicely punctuated by a two-beat bongo characteristic of Pete Rugolo’s arrangements, the song ends with Lester hitting it out of the park with some strong, loud moments. My Foolish Heart is an ode to Nancy Wilson, while I Got Lost in his Arms is a somewhat odd pairing of Lester’s vocals – here displaying Dinah Washington’s influence – against Hunter’s early-Motownish charts.

But Lester saves the real gem for last. On I Feel Pretty, the singer blows the roof off with a sizzling, slightly South-of-the-Border arrangement that comes as a total surprise, especially after a lush reprise of Where Is Love? opens the song as a teaser. Even though Lester’s not in the best voice here, the song ends the album on an upbeat note, and the listener realizes that the singer has taken him on quite a musical and emotional journey since the beginning of Side One.

After Where Is Love, Lester was released from RCA; apparently, she wasn’t the chart-topper they’d hoped for. Two years later, she recorded the album When a Woman Loves a Man for the decidedly downscale Tower label. With a recording career that clearly was going nowhere, she turned to what she loved equally, if not more: acting. In the 1970s, she landed recurring roles on TV shows such as Days of Our Lives and Little House on the Prairie. But those days are long gone and, while she recorded a gospel album as recently as 1984, Lester is best remembered for her Love Letters single – and barely remembered at that. The reissue of Where Is Love? should introduce, and re-introduce, this talented and hardworking singer to new and appreciative audiences.

Tracks:

Where Is Love? (Bart)
My Romance (Rodgers, Hart)
That’s All (Brandt, Haymes)
Wouldn’t It Be Loverly (Lerner, Loewe)
Love Locked Out (Kester, Noble)
Deep Purple (DeRose, Parish)
Lover Man (Davis, Ramirez)
Skylark (Mercer, Carmichael)
The Sweetest Sounds (Rodgers)
My Foolish Heart (Washington)
I Got Lost in His Arms (Berlin)
I Feel Pretty (Bernstein, Sondheim)

Arranged and conducted by Frank Hunter.
Recorded in 1965.