The success of the musical revue Smokey Joe's Café, which ran on Broadway between 1995 and 2000, and the book musical Mamma Mia!, which opened on Broadway in 2001 and was still running in the fall of 2005, led to a string of so-called jukebox musicals in which pop music catalogs of various performers were recycled in a theatrical context. Many of ...
Returning to the large ensemble sound of her 2005 success, Christmas Songs, pianist/vocalist Diana Krall delivers a superb performance on 2006's From This Moment On. Although having received a largely positive critical response for her creative departure into original singer/songwriter jazz material on 2004's The Girl in the Other Room, here ...
Cabaret icon Bette Midler reunites with her old piano partner Barry Manilow for the first time in over 30 years to toast one of their mutual idols on Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook. Clooney was one of the top jazz/pop vocalists of the '50s whose clear, bright tone, impeccable melodicism, and smiling, girl-next-door image came together to make ...
On her first full-length Christmas album, pianist/vocalist Diana Krall delivers a smoky, sophisticated, and slightly melancholy album perfectly suited to accompany egg nog cocktails and romantic afterglow holiday affairs. Although there isn't anything unexpected on Christmas Songs -- Irving Berlin's "Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep" is as ...
Featuring ballads from the '50s and '60s, Only You finds vocalist/pianist Harry Connick, Jr. further developing his contemporary crooner aesthetic. Having begun his career covering popular songs from the '20s through the '40s, it's surprising that Connick never before explored tunes from the baby boomer era. In some ways, it's almost as if he ...
Why it took vocalist Madeleine Peyroux eight years to follow up her acclaimed Dreamland album is anybody's guess. The explanation from her website bio claims, "I could have kept running with it, but I took a breather." Really it hardly matters, since there have been plenty of capable singers to fill that void. Produced by Larry Klein, Careless ...
George Gershwin: The Ultimate Collection is a nice double-disc set that collects definitive performances of Gershwin standards from Rhapsody in Blue to Funny Face. It's a wildly eclectic collection, containing cuts from Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Audrey Hepburn, Sarah Vaughan, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and the Boston Pops ...
Contrasts, whether ironic or not, were continually at the heart of Cole Porter's timeless songs, as befits a man who greeted the world as the very definition of a sophisticated New Yorker, but was actually born in Peru, IN. Porter's careful studies of people in love are filled with obsessive characters who express hope but are frightfully ...
Patrizio Buanne is veritably obsessed with the sound and style of the 1950s and '60s. As a child, he won an Elvis impersonation competition when he dressed as the young version of the King, and he grew up listening almost solely to Italian or Italian-inspired music from that same time period. And now, with his debut album, The Italian, he is able ...
At once crisply assertive and lovingly sensual, vocalist Jane Monheit is the jazz equivalent of the young and charming grade school teacher you secretly nurtured a crush on. A sophisticated bombshell of a performer with a voice that is, like her appearance, voluptuous and flawlessly pretty, Monheit has garnered well-earned comparisons to such ...
Released as a celebration of Doris Day's three decades with Columbia Records, Golden Girl: Columbia Recordings 1944-1966 is a definitive portrait of Day at the peak of her career. Over the course of two discs and 48 songs, all of her big hits -- including "Sentimental Journey" and "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)" -- are featured, along ...
The chief drawbacks to this album lie in its title and its marketing, not its contents. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Universal Music, repository of the largest catalog of vintage music in the world, embarked on several reissue programs with different price points aimed at different consumers. There was the 20th Century Masters/The ...
Though there are only 12 tracks on this collection, the selections are impeccable: two standards by Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington each, plus individual tracks by Lena Horne, Nina Simone, Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn. ~ Keith Farley, All Music Guide
If ideas move forward on the shoulders of giants, and that is certainly true in the world of American pop music, then Stephen Foster's shoulders are the ones at the bottom of the heap, because he is the first truly American songwriter. Drawing both from the transplanted song traditions of the European émigrés and the rhythmic sophistication of ...
Brentwood's America's Favorite Patriotic Songs collects 11 choral and orchestral renditions of America's most celebratory songs, including "The Star Spangled Banner," "God Bless America," "America the Beautiful," and "My Country 'Tis of Thee." On a couple of songs, such as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Armed Forces Medley: The Official ...
This double-disc set is one of the more bountiful compilations gleaned from Mitch Miller's voluminous Columbia Records catalog. Unfortunately, the contents of 50 All-American Favorites (2004) have been confined to the years 1958 to 1962, during which time Miller's unconventional performance style was on its final descent. Mitch Miller & the Gang ...
Trav'lin' Light, Queen Latifah's follow-up to her first collection of pop standards, The Dana Owens Album (2004), is, if anything, even better than that Grammy-nominated set. Contemporary performers often get into trouble when they take on music of the pre-rock era, but this one, who is by now so far removed from her origins that she probably ...
Simply a grand and eloquent performance put together by Verve records highlighting the best years of Ella Fitzgerald -- that sassy, charming legendary singer in jazz. The Best of the Songbooks features a captivating lineup of some of jazz's greatest composers and arrangers. It is here that Fitzgerald records and sings songs of Cole Porter, Richard ...
A major change of direction for Natalie Cole, Unforgettable found the singer abandoning the type of R&B/pop she'd been recording since 1975 in favor of jazz-influenced pre-rock pop along the lines of Nat King Cole's music. It was a surprising risk that paid off handsomely -- both commercially and artistically. Naysayers who thought that so radical ...
Despite its deliberately provocative title, RCA Victor's The Only Broadway CD You'll Ever Need really claims only to "give an overview of what 'Broadway' music is about," according to compiler Bill Rosenfield. What it really does is survey the last 50 years of theater music from the point of view of the most popular songs from the genre available ...
By now, the merchandising program is always in place when PBS sponsors another documentary series, whether one of Ken Burns' historical efforts or the films grouped under the heading The Blues in 2003, organized by Martin Scorsese: among other keepsakes, there is the coffee-table companion book, the DVD set, and, for the musical programs, the CD ...
George Gershwin made 130 piano rolls between 1916-1927; 28 were recorded and released in 1998 on two Nonesuch CDs. This particular release has quite a few obscure Gershwin songs, including his very first tune, "When You Want 'Em, You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em." Certainly such tunes as "Novelette in Fourths," "So Am I," ...
At first glance, a CD of jazz tracks handpicked by comedian/actor Billy Crystal may seem an odd bird. However, given that Crystal's uncle, Commodore Records founder Milt Gabler, produced most of the cuts included here, it actually makes more sense than many similar-themed albums with tracks picked by musicians. Thanks to the family connection, ...
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