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…
This release presents the complete original album Whatever Julie Wants (1961) by the amazing Julie London. It features a wonderful array of popular songs conducted and arranged by Felix Slatkin.
The LP is complemented here by singer's complete thematic allbum, About The Blues (1957), in which she devotes her sensuous voice to a variety of blues and blues-inspired tunes. This second LP was conducted and arranged by the well-known Russell Garsia. To round out this CD, we have also added four extra Julie London performances from the latter album's sessions, which were originally issued by the Liberty label as singles.
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…
1958's London By Night is a typically high-class, high quality Julie London album. The standards and original tunes on the disc are strung together in such a way that they form a narrative of a lovelorn woman finding true love, getting dumped, and wandering around sadly until finding romantic redemption in the final song. London specialized in downbeat numbers and even the positive love songs are languid and moody, so they jibe well with the wrist-slashers that make up the majority of the album. Many of London's albums feature a song or two by her husband, Bobby Troup. London By Night is no exception and it features two Troup originals: the opening track, "Well, Sir," and "Just the Way I Am," which closes with the emotionally naked line "What a fool I was to dream that someday you could love me just the way I am"…
Pop standards vocalist/actress Julie London was definitely at a transitional phase in her career when she cut Yummy, Yummy, Yummy (1969) - the final entry in her decade-and-a-half long relationship with Liberty Records. Modern listeners will revel in the obvious kitsch factor of a middle-aged, old-school female who is crooning rock & roll. Rightly so, as the two musical universes rarely collided with a lucrative outcome. However, just below the genre-bending veneer lie interesting interpretations of concurrently well-known selections with the occasional sleeper gem thrown in. The lush and admittedly antiquated orchestration doesn't mask London's smoky and smouldering pipes, and some scores definitely work better than others…