Reviewed by Jeff Austin (Providence, Rhode Island)

One of the sorrows (and furies) of this decade’s flood of jazz reissues on CD has been the haphazard, duplicative, and generally incoherent approach to the work of Mildred Bailey. During her relatively brief performing career, from 1929 to 1951, she recorded well in excess of 200 sides. While the quality of material occasionally wavered, Bailey’s insouciant swing and vibrant musicality did not. Yet from the time of her death to the present, dozens and dozens of superb Bailey performances have dwelt only within the grooves of 78s. Our luck and, very posthumously, hers, may be changing, as the French Classics series appears to be starting a "complete, chronological" series.

Meantime, the situation remains scattershot. The release, by the Spanish label, Definitive Records, of two new Bailey CDs could best be described as a "Good News/Old News" scenario. Of the two, Smoke Dreams is the breath of fresh air, which features 23 tracks recorded between 1935 and 1938 with husband Red Norvo, including a few tracks which haven’t appeared elsewhere. Considering the limitations of the source material (mainly from the Brunswick label, which was rarely noted for sound quality), the transfers are exceptionally good. The sonics rival, and often surpass the more comprehensive Hep Bailey/Norvo collections (see below). The second release, All of Me, is primarily comprised, alas, of material that has been re-issued many, many times in a variety of permutations since the dawn of LPs.

Bailey’s relationship with xylophonist (and later, vibraphonist) Norvo began in 1931, when he joined the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, of which she was a star attraction (and one of the first female singers featured with a dance band). They soon married. Bailey left Whiteman not long thereafter and built a thriving radio career. Norvo, meanwhile, had started his own band, which was teetering on collapse until Bailey came to the unit’s rescue as vocalist in 1935, spawning the press-agent moniker, "Mr. and Mrs. Rhythm." The musical synergy between the two is clearly evident on Smoke Dreams and continued long after their amicable divorce in 1939.

In the litany of woe comprised of unreissued Bailey recordings, a critical gap lies in the eight sides Bailey and Norvo made in a mind-to-late 1940s reunion on the Crown label; Bailey’s style had evolved since then, and Norvo was moving toward a more "modern" sound than that heard on their earlier pairings. Other than as 78s, these exist only on a Monmouth-Evergreen LP from the early 1970s.

The Red Norvo Orchestra with Mildred Bailey had an unmistakable sound, with Bailey’s feather-light vocals paralleled by the delicacy and grace of Norvo’s xylophone, all couched in light, ever-swinging arrangements by the likes of Eddie Sauter. The title track, Smoke Dreams, epitomizes what made Bailey/Norvo different than anyone else. Legend very credibly has it that, subsequent to Sauter’s being the object of a Bailey rage, he fashioned for her an arrangement that would be any other singer’s worst nightmare, riddled with ear-bending dissonance that might have permanently traumatized most other lady band singers. Undaunted, Bailey sails serenely through the din – and one is left wondering what other band (save, perhaps, for Stan Kenton ten years later) might have attempted a chart so avant-garde.

Every track’s a winner on Smoke Dreams – but it’s worth singling out the rarely-heard Frank Loesser-Matty Malneck I Go For That (not available on other issues), Ted Koehler and Jimmy McHugh’s Picture Me Without You, recently revived by Bobby Short, and the giddy, gleeful A Tisket, A Tasket, originally unissued, that gives its originator a serious run for her little yellow basket.

The second release, All of Me, certainly breaks no new ground, but, on its own terms, is well done and worth the price. Sixteen of the twenty-two tracks represent the complete issued results of four recording sessions for the Majestic label held in 1946 and 1947. It’s marvelous material, but has been issued time and again, in various permutations, since the advent of long playing records and CD. (For completists, look for Savoy LP SJL1151, which includes everything on this CD, plus studio breakdowns and alternate takes.) The remaining six tracks were recorded for V-Discs in 1943 and 1944. They feature, respectively, four duets with Teddy Wilson, and two small group numbers led by Norvo. The V-Disc material has been issued elsewhere in more comprehensive form.

All of Me displays a very different Bailey than heard on her 1930s recordings. By the mid 1940s, she was experiencing the health problems (diabetes, heart, liver, kidney) that would lead to her early death. The Musicians’ Union recording ban of the mid-1940s didn’t help her career, and the musical and social landscapes of the country were changing. While three of the sixteen tracks are reasonably light-hearted (the quasi-calypso novelty, All That Glitters Is Not Gold, the Arlen-Mercer It’s a Woman’s Prerogative from St. Louis Woman, and Phil Moore’s Don’t Worry ‘Bout Strangers), the rest are strikingly melancholy. Just as the other disc reviewed here sparkles with Bailey’s wit and sense of fun, the Majestic sides seem weighted with sadness. But they’re lovely recordings, and the ballads in particular are intimately sung and deeply felt.

A strange historical footnote: on virtually every reissue of the Majestic material since the 1950s, songwriting credits for You Started Something are mistakenly granted to Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney. Such mistakes were much less common then (as opposed to the present, when one can find The Man I Love credited to Cole Porter), but the mistake is all the more odd considering the song was in fact written by Bailey’s brother, Al Rinker, and Brill Building fixture Floyd Huddleston!

There is, in fact, a great deal of misinformation floating around about Bailey. Much of this is due to John Hammond. Hammond produced many of Bailey’s earlier sides, as well as the Majestic material contained on All Of Me. In his notes for the highly problematic 3-LP Columbia set of 1962, Mildred Bailey: Her Greatest Performances Hammond asserts that, "Mildred was resentful that she was not a commercial success, and there was always a battle between us over the kind of accompaniment she should have on records.

This idea has been recycled time and again in biographical material about Bailey. Not only is it probably untrue, it casts her in a slightly pathetic light. Hammond’s remark is particularly strange when one considers that commercial success in terms of hit records had infinitely less to do with accompaniment than with material. Any singer wanting to hit it big on the jukeboxes would not have recorded such a wealth of unusual songs by Willard Robison. (She once exclaimed to Alec Wilder, that other panderer to commercial success, "Alec! Willard’s God, but you can be Jesus!")

More importantly, documentary evidence exists in interviews about Bailey with Bing Crosby, Johnny Mercer (both of whom knew a great deal about commercialism) and her brother Al, that Bailey resolutely would not compromise on material, and simply wasn’t interested in doing what it took to make herself a commercial entity. According to Crosby, she frankly didn’t want to work all that hard.

Unfortunately, for those who try to understand a singer’s work in the context of her life, reliable biographical information on Bailey is slender. Little is known, for example, about her first marriage, from which she retained the name Bailey (although it is believed that her husband trafficked in bootlegging and/or operated a brothel), and virtually nothing of the second, to someone named Stafford. One is struck, however, to imagine a woman of that era working on her third marriage at the age of 24! It is rumored that a serious biography is underway, but one would fear that the trail of recollection has grown cold.

Deceased now for nearly half a century, Bailey’s work retains a stunning freshness and vitality. One can only imagine what corners her career might have turned had she lived to see the changed jazz world of the ‘50s: the chance to stretch out with inspired small-group settings a la Billie Holiday, or make classic full-orchestra recordings like Lee Wiley. Despite her appearance, it’s not hard to imagine Bailey, free from the constricted, rigidly scripted confines of network radio, unleashing her wild humor with Jack Paar or Steve Allen.

Mildred Bailey was one a kind in every respect. Her singing – straightforward, swinging, and with superb diction – is of its time, but remains fresh and sparkling. Any listener who doesn’t already own the material on All of Me is encouraged to pick it up; Smoke Dreams is a must-have for any Bailey fan.

Smoke Dreams
1. When Day Is Done (DeSylva, Katcher)
2. A Porter’s Love Song to a Chambermaid (Razaf, Johnson)
3. Picture Me Without You (McHugh, Koehler)
4. It All Begins and Ends with You (Froeba, Palmer)
5. Now That Summer Has Gone (Simons)
6. It’s Love I’m After (Pollack, Mitchell)
7. Peter Piper (Whiting, Mercer)
8. A Thousand Dreams of You (Alter, Webster)
9. Slumming on Park Avenue (Berlin)
10. I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (Berlin)
11. Smoke Dreams (Freed, Brown)
12. Everybody’s Wrong but Me (Cahn, Chaplin)
13. Posin’ (Cahn, Chaplin)
14. The Morning After (Dorsey, Jaffe, Boland)
15. Bob White (Mercer, Hanighen)
16. Always and Always (Wright, Forrest, Ward)
17. Don’t Be That Way (Goodman, Sampson, Parrish)
18. I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart (Nemo, Mills, Ellington)
19. A Tisket, A Tasket (Fitzgerald, Alexander)
20. I Go for That (Loesser, Malneck)
21. I Cried for You (Freed, Arnheim, Lyman)
22. You’re the Moment In My Life (Nemo)

All of Me
1. All That Glitters Is Not Gold (Aherman, Cornett, Cuhn)
2. In Love in Vain (Kern, Robin)
3. It’s a Woman’s Prerogative (Arlen, Mercer)
4. Penthouse Serenade (Jason, Burton)
5. I’ll Close My Eyes (Reid, Kaye)
6. Me and The Blues (Warren, Koehler)
7. At Sundown (Donaldson)
8. Lover Come Back to Me (Romberg, Hammerstein)
9. All of Me (Simons, Marks)
10. Almost Like Being In Love (Lerner, Loewe)
11. Heather on the Hill (Lerner, Loewe)
12. Gone on That Guy (Sauter)
13. You Started Something (Rinker, Huddleston)
14. Born to Be Blue (Wells, Tormé)
15. Can’t We Be Friends (Warburg, Swift)
16. Don’t Worry ‘Bout Strangers (Moore)
17. Rockin’ Chair (Carmichael)
18. Sunday, Monday or Always (Burke, Van Heusen)
19. Scrap Your Fat (Burke)
20. More Than You Know (Youmans, Rose, Eliscu)
21. Someday Sweetheart (Spikes)
22. Hold On (Johnson)

Definitive Records