This week’s theme. Various jazz vocals on vinyl. Artists include Chet Baker, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Quincy Jones, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Ben Webster, Helen Humes, Carmen McRae, Duke Ellington, Annie Ross, Gerry Mulligan, Billie Holiday, Rosemary Clooney, Maxine Sullivan, Cannonball Adderley, Helen Merrill, Clifford Brown.
This week’s podcast: Various jazz vocals, including Ray Charles and Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Oscar Brown Jr., Abbey Lincoln, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, Anita O’Day, Rosemary Clooney and Scott Hamilton, Chet Baker, and more.
This week’s theme: Rosemary Clooney, Scott Hamilton, Concord Jazz
Catching up on some email. Here’s the story of a fun score from a new reader:
“Hi, I am fairly new to jazz vinyl collecting and listening. I have been drawn to the 50’s and 60’s jazz and LOVE your site. Unfortunately so much of this vintage jazz is way out of my budget. I have been buying when and what I can afford. Wanted to share this: This past weekend I was in a vintage shop with my wife and wasn’t sure I would find anything. In the back was a small box with some records. I start flipping through them like I always do when I find records in vintage/antique shops. I run across a Donald Byrd – Royal Flush BLP 4101 original pressing. The vinyl itself is VG in appearance, plays somewhere between VG and VG+ and the cover is VG+. The price on the album was $10. I was elated and couldn’t get the money out of my wallet fast enough! Hope I didn’t bore you. Thanks for your site and keep the posts coming as it is helpful in my jazz education!” Read more
Let’s move off jazz vinyl for a day. I’ve been listening to a recent Mosaic release: The Rosemary Clooney CBS Radio Recordings 1955-61. This is a five-CD set of 104 songs recorded by Clooney for three CBS radio shows produced by Bing Crosby. Why have I been listening to these CDs when I could have used the same time to place original Blue Notes or Prestiges on my beautiful refurbished Lynn Sondek turntable? Two reasons:
One: I happen to be a huge fan of Rosemary Cooney—not her work in the 1950s when she was a pop icon, but the series of albums she made for Concord Jazz starting in 1977 and ending with her death in 2002. These, in fact, are some of my favorite vocal records in my collection, particularly Everything’s Coming Up Rosie, Here’s to My Lady, Rosie Sings Bing, For the Duration, and Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Irving Berlin. I like them all, to be honest. It helps that on these albums she is typically accompanied by top-flight jazz artists such as Scott Hamilton, Warren Vache, Nat Pierce, John Oddo, Chuck Israels and many others too numerous to name. But it’s not the accompaniment that knocks me out. It’s the singer. The simple, clear, moving and heartfelt presentations of the songs, each one sung as if the singer had lived and experienced them deeply—and had also experienced quite a bit of life along the way. Which, of course, was exactly the case with Rosemary Clooney.
