Julie London At Home Around Midnight (1960 2018)

In 1960, pop vocalist Julie London was really cranking out albums for the successful label Liberty Records. The success of her 1955 hit "Cry Me a River" put Liberty into overdrive and London responded by making some of the strongest records of her career. Her ability to interpret a song was at its strongest in the late '50s and early '60s, as is evidenced on the shimmering Around Midnight. While some of her best recordings were front of small jazz combos, Around Midnight proves that London was just as effective in front of larger orchestras and bands. The drowsy "Black Coffee" and lazy "Lush Life" typify the late-night feel of the album, leading right into "The Wee Small Hours of the Morning."

There are singers who let it fly from deep within and pour out red-faced bellows complete with bulging eyes and pulsating neck cords. They rip it up with big bands and belt it out until the sun comes up, then follow with swashbuckling encores that bring down the house with slaps-on-the-back and flamenco table top dances.
Then there’s Julie. No gala musical fanfare or big-sound glitter. No jokes, no jugglers, no soft-shoe. Just a blues guitar, a well-placed bass, a drummer’s light brush… and Julie. The combo provides a mere musical skeleton, a framework that serves only to complement the singer; it doesn’t try to compete. The combination is distinctively blues… and distinctively Julie. Julie is a mysterious, sultry woman with a moist-eyed singing style and real feeling for loneliness…

In 1959, sultry vocalist Julie London was really coming into her own as a singer. Her worldwide hit "Cry Me a River" was four years behind her, and while she would never attain that level of fame as a recording artist for the rest of her career, her ability to interpret a song was at its strongest in the late '50s and early '60s. Liberty Records' Julie…At Home finds the vocalist comfortably in front of a small jazz combo highlighted by vibraphonist Emil Richards and guitarist Al Viola. The sessions seem relaxed and casual, often with the lyrics slyly slipping from London's lips, at once sophisticated and sensual. The remarkable thing about Julie…At Home is that it was in fact recorded in her own living room, which proved to be the ideal surroundings for these warm and romantic standards.

Sophisticated Lady (1962). "Sophisticated" is the right word to describe Julie London's cool vocal approach; it can be shoved into the background, but if you listen closely there's a lot of turmoil going on under its seemingly calm surface. Similar to Chet Baker's unruffled way with a lyric, London's self-described "thimble full of a voice" ends up describing how pain hasn't quite iced over all her emotions rather than proving how unfeeling she is. Also like Baker, so many of her best recordings are steeped in the style and mood of laid-back West Coast jazz. Sophisticated Lady is one of a string of records London cut in the early '60s with less of a jazz feel than most of her sessions from the '50s, but it's still a worthy album. If it's not exactly an essential session, it is a good one, and the backing orchestra is to blame for the album's shortcomings - not the vocalist…

Julie London wasn't really a jazz singer, but she possessed a definite jazz feeling and many of her finest albums (such as Julie Is Her Name and Julie…At Home) feature small-group jazz backings. About the Blues was aimed at the 1950s pop market, but it may just be her best orchestral session. Since downbeat torch songs were London's specialty, the album features an excellent selection of nocturnal but classy blues songs that play to her subtle strengths instead of against them. Likewise, Russ Garcia's clever arrangements bleed jazz touches and short solos over the solitary strings and big-band charts. Like June Christy, London usually included a couple of new songs in with a selection of standards, and her husband, Bobby Troup, wrote two excellent numbers for the album. One of them, the emotionally devastating "Meaning of the Blues," is the album's highlight, and was turned into a jazz standard after Miles Davis recorded it the same year for Miles Ahead.

3 CD Set of Classic tracks by the Original artists. Featuring; "Sophisticated Lady", "Cry Me a River", "Boy on a Dolphin", "Round Midnight", "Love for Sale", "Blue Moon", "Mad About the Boy", "Let There Be Love", "Our Day Will Come", "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", "I've Got a Crush on You (digitally remastered)", "Love Letters" & many more…

The Very Best of Julie London offers an extensive overview of London's recording career with 50 selections she cut for Liberty Records between 1955 and 1969. The tracks are not newly remastered for the most part, but are taken from EMI's series of import two-fers and the domestic reissues Ron Furmanek and Bob Norberg produced in the early '90s. London was an album artist, not a singles artist - she had only one hit single in her long career - but she was a consistent favorite with adult contemporary and vocal jazz audiences and recorded over 20 LPs. Her albums often sustained a certain mood or assembled songs around a theme, but The Very Best of Julie London chops up her albums and rearranges the songs in no particular order - the repertoire and sequencing seem almost random…