When we see lists of the great jazz and pop vocal albums, often the same titles are featured over and over again: Songs for Swinging Lovers, Ella Fitzgerald sings the Cole Porter Song Book, Judy [Garland] at Carnegie Hall, and so on. However, there are many similar albums which, though just as good, are undervalued or neglected gems. This post shines a light on ten of them.
Julie London: With Body and Soul
Julie London is best remembered today for her 1950s and early 1960s albums featuring a small jazz combo and sultry album covers. However, there is much more to her catalogue than just Julie is Her Name and similar albums. With Body and Soul, released in 1967, is one of her best later albums, with Julie returning to her early vocal sound, but now adding a little more edge and grit to it. Here she tackles the likes of C. C. Rider, You’re No Good, and produces the sexiest version of Alexander’s Ragtime Band you are ever likely to hear!
Frank Sinatra: Point of No Return
By 1961, when this disc was recorded, Sinatra had already made several albums for his own label, Reprise, but still had one more to make under his contract for Capitol. For the occasion, he chose to reunite with arranger Alex Stordahl for an album of ballads centred around the theme of looking back, memories, and long lost loves. The album was made quickly – in just two sessions – and has a reputation of being tossed out by Sinatra with little care and attention, but the results betray none of this. This beautiful disc contains some of his best singing of the period, with definitive versions of When the World Was Young, I’ll See You Again, and Memories of You.
Ella Fitzgerald: Whisper Not
There is no doubt that the Songbook series was hugely important in Ella Fitzgerald’s career, and even milestones in the history of jazz recordings, but there is an argument to be made that they are actually not among her very best albums. The early entries, arranged by Buddy Bregman, suffer from rather square and by-the-book charts, while Ella and the band sometimes sound under-rehearsed. Ella’s best studio work at Verve was outside of the Songbook series, in albums such as Ella Swings Lightly, Clap Hands Here Comes Charlie, and Whisper Not. Whisper Not benefits from great charts by the wonderful Marty Paich, and Ella is in superlative form, singing everything from Sweet Georgia Brown through to Old MacDonald – both of which would remain in her live repertoire for two decades. There’s even the chance to hear Ella in humourous form as she recounts her liaison with a magazine salesman in I Said No.
Bobby Darin: Winners
From 1958 through to 1966, Bobby Darin made a wonderful series of albums featuring songs from the Great American Songbook, but only Winners was a jazz album. Featuring a combo led by Bobby Scott, Bobby swings his way through the likes of Anything Goes and They All Laughed, and demonstrated just how much his ballad singing had improved with his renditions of Easy Living and What a Difference a Day Makes. Bill Bailey and Minnie the Moocher were also recorded at the same sessions, but were released on singles rather than the album. Several other tracks were recorded, but remain unreleased.
Jo Stafford: Jo + Jazz
Jo Stafford seems to be unfairly neglected these days, but her recordings are ripe for rediscovery. Her best album was this wonderful disc of standards, arranged by Johnny Mandel. With a band featuring such jazz stars as Johnny Hodges, Russ Freeman, and Ben Webster, Jo is at her most relaxed, and turns in stunning performances of Midnight Sun, Just Squeeze Me, and The Folks Who Live on the Hill. Everything about the record is remarkable – including that sultry cover picture.
Judy Garland: Alone
It’s fair to say that, despite the legendary Judy at Carnegie Hall album, Capitol and Judy Garland perhaps didn’t make the most of their pairing, with too few albums being made, and not finding a formula that was both an artistic and commercial success. However, the best of her studio albums is undoubtedly Alone, an album of torch songs arranged by Gordon Jenkins. There was a risk here that Garland and Jenkins might wallow in the gloom of it all, but, despite the songs chosen, this isn’t a suicide album in the way that Sinatra’s Only the Lonely is, for example. Garland would improve upon this rendition of By Myself when she recorded it again a few years later for her final movie, but the rest of the songs here are stunning, most notably the two written by Jenkins himself: Blue Prelude and Happy New Year.
Sammy Davis Jr Sings and Laurindo Almeida Plays
It would only be a couple of years after this beautiful disc that Sammy Davis Jr would move away from singing standards and into his funky/groovy phase with mixed results. In many respects, Davis is one of the most undervalued singers, often incorrectly accused of mimicking Frank Sinatra – despite the fact that the two of them sound nothing alike. On this disc, he does something that Sinatra never did – an entire album of just voice and guitar (Davis had already made album like this, Mood to Be Wooed, nearly a decade earlier). This contains some of the best singing you are ever likely to hear, most notably on the opening Here’s That Rainy Day, Where Is Love, and Two Different Worlds.
Mel Torme: Torme: A New Album (aka: The London Sessions).
This 1977 album was Mel Torme’s first studio album since the late 1960s, and contained eight relatively lengthy tracks. Torme is in stunning form here, putting in beautiful performances of Stevie Wonder’s All in Love is Fair, Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind (which here sounds like it was written for Torme), and a wonderfully conceived medley of When the World Was Young and Yesterday When I Was Young. Torme was blessed with a voice that never seemed to age as he grew older, and this 1977 LP was the beginning of a whole new much more jazz-oriented phase of his career that lasted until his death in 1999.
Della Reese: Black is Beautiful
Della Reese’s popularity never did manage to cross the Atlantic to the UK, meaning much of her work is unknown here. Black is Beautiful, released in 1970 on the Embassy label, is a brilliant album in which she turns her attention to cover versions of then-recent songs. There are fine versions of Cycles (recorded previously by Sinatra) and If Everybody in the World Loved Everybody in the World, but the album is included in this list mostly because of the glorious lengthy cover of Games People Play and her stunning, and moving, version of With Pen in Hand. Della always gave her all, and With Pen in Hand is one of the most moving performances I have yet come across.
Johnnie Ray: The Big Beat
Johnnie Ray has a very unfair reputation these days. Many dismiss his work as over-emotional or even filled with “fake” emotion, but he was a fine song stylist, and The Big Beat (and, later, On the Trail) show him at his very best. Here he performs a series of blues and/or blues-influenced numbers, including Lotus Blossom, Everyday I Have the Blues, Trouble in Mind, and Pretty-Eyed Baby. The arrangements are by Ray Conniff and Ray Ellis. Ray’s star started to fall as early as the 1960s, although his popularity remained high in the UK and on mainland Europe, but he never managed to recreate the wonders of his best work from the 1950s.
Shane Brown is the author of Reconsider Baby: Elvis Presley – A Listener’s Guide and Directions. Bobby Darin: A Listener’s Guide.
Beyond Boundaries 