Amazon.co.uk allows you to pay for your items in your local currency. Restrictions apply. Learn More. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
The songbooks were a tribute to the greatest popular American songwriters of all time. The originators of songs that will never be out of date. They are timeless.
However, while albums the Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Gershwin and Ellington albums are all heaped praise upon, one is alway overlooked, and that is the Johnny Mercer Song Book.
Perhaps the reason this album in particular is overlooked is because Johnny Mercer was not a prolific music writer. He did write melodies, but mainly he just wrote lyrics to tunes which had already been written.
I feel that this is an injustice to the brilliant songs which are included on this album. From the bright swing of the opening 'Too Marvelous for Words' to the gorgeous ballads such as 'Midnight sun' and 'Early Autumn' this is quite simply a classic album.
I do think this album has a slightly different feel to the other song books. It is certainly more jazzy and has more of an edge to the arrangments (written by Nelson Riddle). I also think that Ella's voice has a more melencholy sound during the ballads than her earlier recordings (this album, from 1964, was the last song book she recorded for Verve).
This is a superb album, Ella's voice sounds stunning, the songs are all classics (although some of them are not obvious choices). It is in a far less 'straight' style than her earlier songbooks, it includes lots of instrumentals and solo's for the musicians. If you would like to hear classic Ella, but don't want to go for the obvious choices, then I would definately recommend this album. A superb collection of songs sung in superb style.
Ella is in fine voice here and the accompaniments by Nelson Riddle are excellent. My main disappointment is that they were only able to put 12 tunes on the CD, as for the 1964 LP. By now (1997) the technology would have allowed for additional tracks but I guess in this instance they didn't record any extras.
Mercer was a prolific lyricist - and an occasional songsmith. Most of the tracks here are `standards' with one or two rarities like `Travellin' light' and `Single O'. Mercer, who died in 1976, wrote over 1000 lyrics for many different songwriters, and a few tunes (like `Dream', recorded here) himself. He was one of the three founders of Capitol Records and having their recording artists singing and playing his songs didn't do his songwriting career any harm either.
Mercer was born in the deep South and struck up a friendship with `Hoagy' Carmichael early on. Together they produced `Skylark', recorded here. Ella also records a few numbers that were originally big band numbers to which Mercer put words: Ralph Burns' `Early autumn' for Woody Herman; Sonny Burke and Lionel Hampton's 1947 tune `Midnight sun' to which Mercer added lyrics in 1954. Victor Scherzinger's `I remember you' , which was such a big if only short-lived hit for Frank Ifield is here; as is David Raksin's enchanting theme music for the thriller `Laura'.
Somewhat limited selection aside, this is an excellent CD and Nelson Riddle of course never fails to delight with the accompaniments.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
