Music Review: Sarah Vaughan & Woody Herman & His Orchestra-- On the Radio: The 1963 'Live' Guard Sessions

An accomplished keyboardist and singer whose first big break came when friends dared her to enter a contest at the Apollo Theatre, the endlessly versatile Sarah Vaughan who managed to tap into every style of jazz was posthumously described by Mel Torme as having "had the single best vocal instrument of any singer working in the popular field."

"One of the first singers to fully incorporate bop phrasing in her singing, and to have the vocal chops to pull it off on the level of a Parker and Gillespie," Sarah Vaughan was not only mentioned alongside Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday as an artist who belonged "in the very top echelon of female jazz singers," but even Ms. Ella Fitzgerald went as far as to dub the "Divine Sarah" the world's "greatest singing talent."

While in the '50s, Vaughan ventured into the world of pop and standard recording which drew some flack from jazz purists before she would move back into the arena of jazz in the late '60s, Vaughan had a long and distinctly successful career in a genre that found too many artists perishing before their time. Playing "to sell-out crowds," when she was well into her 60s, Vaughan's "multi-octave range, with its swooping highs and sensual lows, and the youthful suppleness of her voice shaded by a luscious timbre and executed with fierce control..." found her slipping easily into the character of whatever song she was singing whether it was in the brilliant interpretation of "Whatever Lola Wants" from the Broadway musical Sweet Charity or in earlier legendary recordings of "If You Could See Me Now" or "Sassy" made each and every one of her recordings sound wondrously unique.

In this new and extraordinarily rare release from Acrobat Music Group bowing onto shelves and online through major retailers like Amazon tomorrow, we're offered "something of a collector's item," as the press release notes with the joint CD featuring "two of the biggest names in jazz and big band music in the post-war era," who nonetheless had never "made a commercial recording together." With Vaughan performing alongside Woody Herman and His Orchestra, this album, weaving together tracks which aired in 1963 "as part of a long-running public service series," that was sponsored by the U.S. National Guard in the aptly named Guard Sessions, we're presented with an intriguing mixture of nineteen songs.

Consisting of both Vaughan performing along with the orchestra as well as others simply featuring Herman in tandem with what they dubbed themselves on a 1963 album "The Swingin'est Big Band Ever," including one memorable solo track which finds Herman accompanying himself, it's an audible jolt back into the past. While, as in some of the other "Premier Collection" releases from Acrobat, the vintage commercial heavy banter between the annoying radio hosts and the musicians does grow old-- especially in this album as it seems as though the host gets on both Vaughan and Herman's nerves once or twice-- the music is first rate.

With Vaughan tackling such tunes as "Day In, Day Out," which provides a mesmerizing showcase for her multi-octave range as she draws the notes out, moving up and down the register, she's at her best in the album when signing the standards amidst classy and slower arrangements as the far too upbeat and swing tempo used in "But Not For Me," manages to pull the melancholy and wistful beauty out of Gershwin's lyrics and likewise with "I Cried For You." Thus, some of Vaughan's highlights when her voice finds its ideal match musically were in the beautiful "The More I See You," "On Green Dolphin Street," and "I'll Be Seeing You," that plays completely to the strengths of the incomparable "Divine Sarah" but one of the true standouts on this disc is surprisingly when Herman's orchestra goes off on their unique riffs.

As Downbeat Magazine wrote in 1963 in a quote referenced in the album's liner notes, "the band does perfectly what is called for in each case-- playing with fiery frenzy, cooking gently, or creating a mood," and this is evidenced throughout some of the phenomenal arrangements on the disc including the sophisticated "Midnight Sun," to the percussion heavy toe-tapper "Muskrat Ramble," along with the tune that makes you want to burst out in song, "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." Midway through the album, they return again with the catchy "At the Woodchopper's Ball," and later power through a stirring interpretation of "Mo-Lasses," which, coupled with the rest of their albums make you want to go back and hunt down more from the group.

While it's of particular interest for fans of Sarah and a great recorded "portrait" of a time and place, ultimately there's a little too much forced conversation on this album when most of us are craving music and although worth a listen, Vaughan devotees will probably do best to listen to her more polished solo recordings.

Track Listing

1. Introduction, Go With The National Guard Jingle
2. S. Vaughan w/ Woody Herman-Day In, Day Out
3. Advert & Talk
4. Woody Herman & His Orchestra-Midnight Sun
5. S. Vaughan w/ Woody Herman-But Not For Me
6. Woody Herman & His Orchestra-Muskrat Ramble
7. Conversation & Introduction
8. W. Herman & Orch.-Don't Get Around Much Anymore
9. S. Vaughan w/ Woody Herman-The More I See
10. S. Vaughan w/ W. Herman-On Green Dolphin Street
11. Woody Herman & Orch.-At The Woodchopper's Ball
12. S. Vaughan w/ W. Herman-Just One Of Those Things
13. W. Herman & His Orch.-Don't Go With Strangers
14. S. Vaughan w/ W. Herman-I'll Be Seeing You
15. Woody Herman & His Orchestra-Four Brothers
16. Woody Herman & His Orchestra- Mo-Lasses
17. S. Vaughan w/ Woody Herman-I Cried For You
18. S. Vaughan w/ W. Herman-Poor Butterfly
19. Woody Herman & His Orchestra-The Preacher

Music Review: Rosemary Clooney-- On the Air

By “showing up day after day,”
Rosemary Clooney left a legacy
of remarkable recordings including this one.

As she sings in the eighteenth and final track — "I Get a Kick Out of You" -- in this remarkable collection from Acrobat Music, Rosemary Clooney opens with the lyrics, “My story is much too sad to be told.” Little did listeners tuning into these radio broadcasts realize that when it came to that particular phrase, she may as well have been referencing herself. And this is precisely because from her very first recording Rosemary Clooney possessed that innate gift that few singers have. Namely, she managed to find the heart of each unique song while interpreting the lyrics completely in the character of the piece.

While by now it’s become nearly a prerequisite for jazz musicians and vocalists to have dealt with enormous personal tragedy, as so many of the giants of that era are no longer with us, when you even glance at the shortest of summaries about the life of Ms. Rosemary Clooney: “Girl Singer” as she so dubbed herself in her 1999 autobiography (adding to her original 1977 memoir This for Remembrance), you realize that she overcame many, many more than her fair share.

Right from the start, Clooney survived an immensely difficult childhood of abandonment by both her dress-maker mother, who fled to California with Clooney’s brother to marry a sailor, and her alcoholic father, who took the household money and vanished one evening. Fortunately, Rosemary and her sister Betty first earned their big break and enough money to buy their own school lunches in their darkest hour winning “a spot on Cincinnati’s radio station WLW as singers” in 1945. After working alongside bandleader Tony Pastor for a few years, Betty returned to Cincinnati and later Rosemary ventured off to New York City at the tender age of 21. It was there that she ultimately became a recording artist with Columbia Records, striking her first big hit with the song she loathed, “Come-On-a My House.”

It was around this same time, in the early 1950s that Rosemary Clooney became a staple on popular “star-studded variety programs” crafted by radio executives to combat “the growing magnetism of television.” In this extraordinary reissue of some of these vintage recordings that were originally made for radio, we hear a Clooney whom Acrobat Music’s press notes reveal had begun “validating her position among the fine jazz-based vocalists in American music.” While she would later become far more famous for her versions of standards and novelty hits in the same vein as “Come-On-a My House,” including “Botch-a-Me” and “Mambo Italiano,” in this wonderfully diverse release of rare performances, we hear some of Rosemary’s earliest professional recordings as she was still finding her vocal style.

With a natural gift that’s evident right away in such classics as Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow’s “My Old Flame,” and George and Ira Gershwin’s “But Not For Me” from the show Girl Crazy, the wistful and melancholic Clooney gives way to a more polished vibe midway through. Soon she teases us with “If This Isn’t Love,” from Finian’s Rainbow and the Rodgers and Hart song you can float away on, “Manhattan." With that, she warms up with the first of a hat-trick followed up by a great delivery of “You Make Me Feel So Young” and an intriguing maternal sounding take on “All the Pretty Little Horses,” which was recorded years before she gave birth

to the first of five children with husband Jose Ferrer (whom she married and divorced twice).

Later, the album moves into some of her most unabashedly romantic tracks like “I’m Only Ambitious For You,” and the slightly shocking “Thrill Me,” which seems to foreshadow her marriage that took place in 1953. And ending this era of recordings with the sixteenth inclusion, “Too Much Conversation,” it marks a great progression from the sixteen first tracks to the bonus final two. The album ends with “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and “I Get a Kick Out of You” recorded in 1959 after years of experience as well as personal struggles and battles with addiction found Clooney’s voice sounding far more mature and worldly. In doing so, it was an awesome decision to break popular protocol of only including tracks from one specific and succinct time-period to illustrate the ways that Clooney had changed with more vocal mastery.

Yet the sheer gorgeous arrangements and exceptional nostalgic recording made with accompaniment from the Earl Shelton Orchestra in 1951/2 which as the press release stated, perfectly “captures Rosemary as her star is rising,” is a must-own for devotees of the singer whom the late great Frank Sinatra once called not only “a symbol of good modern American music” but one with that “great talent which exudes warmth and feeling in every song she sings.”

A remarkable woman, she found herself surviving an endless number of personal ups and downs as she stood just a few feet away from her close friend and Presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy when he was assassinated which led to a very public breakdown.

The 1970s found Clooney back on a personal and professional upswing when her good friend Bing Crosby included her in his 50th and final anniversary tour in 1976. While that same year marked her comeback, it also came sadly along with the death of her sister Betty from a brain aneurysm. Rosemary, who was always devoted to her immediate and extended family (including her nephew Mr. George Clooney who lived with his aunt during his own rise to fame) created the Betty Clooney Center in Long Beach, California which was a facility dedicated to “brain-injured young adults,” and one that was the “first of its kind in the U.S.”

The humble woman who said that her accolades were just “for showing up day after day,” later added to the Washington Post that as “the only instrument that’s got the words… I’ve got to be able to get that across,” and the proof is as simple as in listening to any one of her phenomenal recordings, none more so than in some of her earliest served up in this one-of-a-kind collection from Acrobat Music Inc. releasing on 10/21.

So while in the end she sang that her story was one that was far “too sad to be told,” perhaps her greatest testament not only with regard to her loyalty to family and friends was in inhabiting the characters of so many songs. And in the same token, by inviting us to share in her interpretations as she honored all kinds of individuals whose stories should be told including her own and honored us at the same time — both in celebration of her listeners and in “showing up day after day.”

Track List

1) “This Can’t Be Love”

2) “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me”

3) “My Old Flame”

4) “But Not For Me”

5) “Our Love Affair”

6) “If This Isn’t Love”

7) “Shine”

8) “Manhattan”

9) “You Make Me Feel So Young”

10) “All The Pretty Little Horses”

11) “As Long As I Live”

12) “I’ll Never Forget You”

13) “I’m Only Ambitious For You”

14) “Love And Nuts And Noodles”

15) “Thrill Me”

16) “Too Much Conversation”

17) “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”

18) “I Get A Kick Out of You”