What a great start to the week! Yesterday the pubs opened and today an album by Rebecca Kilgore landed in the passage and, if that wasn't enough, the first track on the album was Dave Frishberg's Dear Bix - a song tailor-made for Kilgore's gentle, laid back voice and a favourite of mine ever since I heard Roly Veitch sing it at the old Side Café.
The rest of the material isn't bad either. A great selection of the known, the not so well known and, at least to me, the totally unknown. One that falls into the latter category is Talking to Myself About You. Composed by Axel Stordahl, Paul Weston and Irving Taylor with a verse composed and added by Becky herself. As far as I can see, it has only previously been recorded by Peggy Lee - from one great to another.
Another previously undiscovered gem is The Old Soft Shoe, not to be confused with the old music hall/vaudeville song, but a number composed by Raymond Brown and Tammy Burdette.
Run, Little Raindrop, Run, written by those Hollywood A-listers Mack Gordon and Harry Warren for Betty Grable's 1939 film Springtime in the Rockies, is a delightful piece of nonsense that, in Kilgore's hands, isn't nonsensical at all!
Duke Ellington and Wild Bill Davis collaborated on Azure-té/Azure. The words are by Don Wolf and were new to me. Rebecca turns them into a French jazz chanson without the nasal tones of Piaf or the need to sing in French - c'est magnifique!
You want the love song to end all love songs? Take a listen to That Sunday That Summer. Harry Allen chipped in with a number he called Like the Brightest Star. Nice cornet from Titterington. Surprised they didn't slot him in on Dear Bix. Incidentally, I thought I detected some rhythm guitar on Dear Bix, maybe that was the great lady herself?
I could wax eloquent forever on the voice, the songs, the piano, bass and cornet. In fact, I bet the coffee between numbers was the finest coffee ever tasted, that's how perfect this album is.
It's been a great year for singers so far but this even eclipses the pub openings. That was cool in the wrong sense - I'm still shivering! This was cool in the right sense - and the shivers running down my spine are totally different!
Volume 1 - can't wait for Volume 2!
Lance.
Available April 30 on the Heavywood label.
Dear Bix; Day in - Day Out; Somebody Just Like You; Run, Little Raindrop, Run; Azure-té/Azure; Talking to Myself About You; Old Soft Shoe; I Wanna Get Married; Like the Brightest Star; That Sunday That Summer; The Gentleman is a Dope; Because We're Kids; There's a Small Hotel.
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