Songs for Swingin’ Music Lovers
An opinionated guide to 57 excellent albums
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jazz critic-historian Will Friedwald has spent much of his career writing sharp, irreverent and insightful essays on the vocal side of the music. His reputation rests on four books. “Jazz Singing” examined the work of vocalists, both renowned and obscure, in detail; “Stardust Melodies” was an indepth look at a dozen pop standards. “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers,” a detailed reference work primarily covered jazz vocalists, plus Hank Williams and Elvis Presley. “Sinatra! The Song Is You,” traced the singer’s recorded history from the 1930s to the 1990s. It was inevitable Mr. Friedwald would at some point examine specific albums up close.
In his new book, “The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums,” Mr. Friedwald takes on 57 albums by icons (Sinatra, Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, Blossom Dearie, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme) and the obscure (Marilyn Maye, Matt Dennis, Barb Jungr). He adds a few surprises (an album by Doris Day and Robert Goulet and another by the late 1960s eccentricTiny Tim).
Having written liner notes to several hundred recordings, mostly jazz reissues (disclosure: I have done the same in the country field), Mr. Friedwald acknowledges the seeming end of detailed liner notes in an era of digital downloads. His essays here, each running thousands of words, are essentially extended notes that offer unprecedented insight into each track and arrangement. Discussing accompanists and recording dates add even greater context, topped by his own well-informed and occasionally irreverent conclusions about each recordingand the music within.
Mr. Friedwald identifies Bing Crosby’s Dixieland album “Bing With a Beat” as “the album … where Crosby sounds like he’s singing for the sheer joy of it, with a degree of warmth and emotional involvement that exceeds everything else he recorded in his long and incredibly prolific career.” Analyzing the immortal John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman album, he dismisses the ballad “Autumn Serenade” as “a comparatively trivial piece of business,” adding a caveat that “Hartman’s and Coltrane’s throwaways are better than most artists’ A-list items.”
He lavishes thousands of words on “The Astaire Story,” a multidisc 1952 effort featuring the legendary dancer/singer with a hell-for-leather combo of jazz luminaries, declaring it his finest vocal recording. Summarizing an album by husband-wife pop duo Steve Lawrence and Edye Gorme, Sinatra favorites and fixtures on pre-Jay Leno “Tonight” shows, Mr. Friedwald lauds “the amazing sophistication and depth of their interpretations, the songs they sung,even the arrangements ....”
Praising Sinatra’s ballad masterpiece “In the Wee Small Hours,” the author correctly notes his albums generally alternated jazzy swing and ballads, but cites this collection as “the one case where one of his comparatively slow tempo projects is also inarguably a jazz album.” He equates Anita O’Day’s warp-speed “Tea for Two” on her album “Sings the Winners” with a horse race, declaring, “She races through the words and music like Secretariat or Man O’War, maintaining total coherence and control even at a breakneckpace.”
It’s interesting the book appears as compact discs fade from the scene and vinyl LPs (long-playing records) are having a strong, simultaneous resurgence. Older albums can be found at vintage vinyl stores such as Jerry’s Records in Squirrel Hill, with old and new music available in new, expensive pressings at a new generation of record stores. These opinionated yet factual essays make a worthy companion to that revival. Exploring the artistry, heart and complexity of an earlier generation of pre-rock vocalists, Mr. Friedwald makes a compelling casewhy they still matter.