Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 9

Record label: Liberty

Produced: Bobby Troup

Recorded: 1955

Released: December 1955

Chart peaks: None (UK) 2 (US)

Personnel: Julie London (v); Barney Kessel (g); Ray Leatherwood (b)

Track Listing: Cry Me A River; I Should Care; I’m In The Mood For Love; I’m Glad There Is You; Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man; I Love You; Say It Isn’t So; It Never Entered My Mind; Easy Street;’ S Wonderful; No Moon At All; Laura; Gone With The Wind

Running time: 31.11

Current CD: Hallmark 706452 adds: Lonely Girl; Fools Rush In; Moments Like This; I Lost My Sugar In Salt Lake City; It’s The Talk Of The Town; What’ll I Do; When Your Lover Has Gone; Don’t Take Your Love From Me; Where Or When; All Alone; Mean To Me; How Deep Is The Ocean; Remember

Further listening: Julie Is Her Name Vol 2 (1956)

Further reading: www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/baccarach/387/Bio.htm (fan site)

Download: iTunes

‘The girl with the come-hither voice,’ said Bill Balance in his sleevenotes – never mind that she was a married woman with two children. Her voice, a husky instrument that lingered on syllables like honey oozing off a spoon, was the sexiest entreaty American music could offer in 1955. Elvis may have been knocking on the door, but the torch singers of the ’50s – Holiday, Lee, Vaughan, Fitzgerald – still held American men spellbound, and the statuesque Miss London – already with a modest movie career behind her – came to represent the genre.

She had already done plenty of work as a nightclub singer, encouraged by her pianist husband Bobby Troup, but Liberty was the only label interested in taking a chance on recording her. Troup insisted that she be recorded in the same setting as her live act – no orchestra, not even a piano, and just the bare strings of guitar and acoustic bass in support. Every song a ballad and nothing uptempo. Kessel (who also played on some of The Coasters’ records from the same period) offers trim accompaniments that introduce just a lick of jazz, but nothing to disturb the besotted listener. The mood had to be ‘round midnight’, and even though there are 13 songs on the record, it barely exceeds half an hour in length. Troup’s instincts were right. Released as a single, Cry Me A River was a major hit, and suddenly everyone knew that her name was Julie. The other songs are similarly lonesome, but here and there Julie flirts with a sort of blues feel, particularly on Easy Street. There is a little vibrato at the end of each line, just enough to make a strong man’s legs go weak, and when she disappears with Gone With The Wind, it’s as if someone has opened a window and she has just drifted off, a copper-haired phantom. Julie made many more albums for Liberty, and many of them were gorgeous, but this one still says it all.