Slim Gaillard

"What A Wonderful World Of Jazz Singing" one would like to exclaim about the content of this gathering of 21 top jazz singers and their recordings made between 1946 and 1962. A musical spectrum spreads out that comes across as dazzling and multi-layered as these singing personalities, who come from all sources of the infamous American melting pot and have driven their roots deep into all ingredients of American popular music: into the blues of the Mississippi and the metropolises, the swing of the Jazz Age and the black ghettos and the New York ballrooms, the effervescent bebop and the cool jazz of the Californian West Coast…

Filling in a gap in Frank Sinatra's history, Legacy's 2015 box A Voice on Air collects over 100 radio broadcasts recorded between 1935 and 1955. This is the first collection to chronicle this era – over 90 of its 100 tracks are previously unreleased – and it's pulled from a variety of sources, including the Sinatra estate's vaults, the Library of Congress, and the Paley Center for Media, each strand assisting in sterling re-creations of original broadcasts from Frank's bobbysocks days, World War II, and the nascent saloon singer of the '50s. Sinatra wound up singing some of these songs in the studio but not necessarily in these arrangements, a wrinkle that would be tantalizing enough but a good portion of A Voice on Air is devoted to songs he only sang on the air.

The leader of one of the most popular combos in jazz during the Fifties and early Sixties, the blind George Shearing (b. 1919) was reputed for his mastery at the piano,which led him to perform alongside Oscar Pettiford, Peggy Lee, Wes Montgomery, Mel Tormé or Jim Hall to mention a few. Besides gathering different clips and soundies featuring the great George Shearing and his combo, this video includes additional numbers showcasing what we could term Fifties Swingers: Mel Tormé, the Slam Stewart Trio, Slim Gaillard, the Bobcats, and others. In all, a splendid compilation.