Singers
The great success of the iTunes/iPod combination has introduced the trauma of genre anxiety into the mix of musical appreciation. There seem to be more sub-genres of dance music, for instance, that you can shake a rhythm stick at and trying to design the correct taxonomy for one’s collection of tunes is a task not to be entered into lightly. I don’t bother with genres much (preferring to keep it to ‘stuff I like’) but I have been known to use the classification ‘singers’ as a means of identifying those artists known primarily for their interpretations of songs written by others.
Here are some records, all obtained under the rules of The Great Vinyl Experiment, by three of my favourite singers.
This is Sinatra! was the first long playing collection of Francis Albert’s singles and ‘b’ sides featuring arrangements by the great Nelson Riddle. A splendid laminated sleeve, heavyweight vinyl and twelve great songs make this a fabulous addition to the collection. The inclusion of advice on the inner sleeve that “This record must be played only on equipment having a turntable revolving at 33 1/3 rpm constant speed.” is the final element of its perfection.
One for my baby by Billie Holiday is a budget label reissue, with some extra tracks, of her Songs For Distingué Lovers album from January 1957. This was a particularly pleasing find since Distingué Lovers was one of the first CDs that I bought and it’s great to have it on vinyl. Also this has been the bargain of The Experiment so far as I paid only 25p for it.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook is one of my favourite records ever and was the first in her splendid series of Songbooks.
In magnificent mono, this double album features brilliant song after brilliant song and, to these ears, is Ella at her absolute best.
Incidentally, for those of you of a digital persuasion, The Cole Porter Songbook is now in the public domain and can be had, as part of a 3CD set with the almost equally brilliant Rodgers and Hart Songbook, for less than four pounds. At that price there is no excuse for there not to be a copy in every home in the land. In fact, the Government should hand them out free to schoolchildren. The world would be a much better place for it.
A fine bunch of records then from, more or less, 1956 and a reminder of those pre-Beatle times when there was a strict division of labour. Writers wrote, arrangers arranged and singers sang.
Elsewhere in the 1956 forest something else entirely was happening…
