Nina Simone was only 25 years old in 1958 when she entered Beltone Studios in midtown Manhattan for a one-day recording session for her debut album, Little Girl Blue,on Bethlehem Records. The 14 songs she recorded that day reveal just how well developed Simone’s sound — her powerhouse vocals, her classically-trained piano-playing, her inventive, genre-blind arrangements, and her dynamic personality — already was. Bethlehem, a small and financially faltering jazz label, picked 11 tracks for Little Girl Blue. This unheralded debut yielded Simone’s biggest hit, a cover of the Gershwins’ “Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy),” as well as her last one, “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” which charted in 1987 after being used in a TV commercial.
Come on folks, this is ELLA FITZGERALD we're talking about. Ella from her early years, recording for Decca Records. Oh the songs on this collection! Oh the memories! Every single song is fabulous and if you like music, you need to own this collection. Not just Jazz, not just Swing, not just Pop - but all Ella, all GREAT. Highly recommended.
Bennett, whose recorded legacy has been gathered in a 76-disc boxed set titled The Compete Collection, has been doing that for over 60 years: saving our souls with the greatest songs ever written. The Complete box is an absolute necessity, first because it contains several previously unreleased albums, like On the Glory Road and From This Moment On, a live concert taped in Las Vegas that collectors have been salivating over since 1964.
Sarah Vaughan was one of the illustrious coterie of female vocalists who spanned the genres of jazz, big band music and sophisticated pop during the post-war era to provide some of the finest music of their times, not only interpreting the Great American Songbook and putting their own individual stamp on it, but continuing to perform top class new material through the musical upheavals of subsequent decades.
Of all the early rock & rollers, Fats Domino was the easiest to take for granted, since he made it all seem so easy. Even when it rocked hard, his music was so relaxed, so friendly that it sounded effortless and natural, which was part of the reason that his classic recordings for Imperial in the '50s were so consistently enjoyable. All the hits, many of their flips sides, and most of his album cuts were flat-out fun – maybe not as revolutionary as work by Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and the Everly Brothers, but his body of work for Imperial not only stands proudly next to theirs, but is just as influential. This much is clear after years of hindsight, but in the late '60s he was as passé as any of his peers, even if there were legions of new rockers, from the Beatles to Randy Newman, who were raised on his music.