Something Cool - 2429

Amazon.com First making her reputation as vocalist with Stan Kenton's orchestra, June Christy was the ideal vocalist for the high-art ambitions of the progressive jazz movement. Her diction was impeccable, her phrasing often inspired, and as this reissue of her classic Something Cool--augmented by another 12 tracks recorded between 1953 and 1955--so ably demonstrates, her technique was extraordinary, allowing her to navigate the most abstract melody with accurate pitch and rhythmic confidence. That's no small feat, for the orchestrations that Pete Rugolo fashioned for these recordings are often harmonically dense, with layered chords, sudden interpolations, and odd metric shifts. Few of the songs could be called standards. Many have melodies that are hardly hummable. Some, like Rugolo's own "Look out up There," seem bop inspired, but Christy not only sings them, she makes them her own, balancing execution with a subtly nuanced, expressive dimension. The results are often dramatic, detached, and highly memorable, whether the song is well known--"This Time the Dream's on Me," "Midnight Sun"--or as obscure as "Kicks" or the previously unreleased, anonymously penned "Love Doesn't Live Here Anymore." This is an intriguing view of a gifted singer and a window on a remarkable and overlooked repertoire. --Stuart Broomer Product description This is the first release of Something Cool on CD from 1991 with 24 tracks. It includes two songs not from the original recording session. Originally released on the Capitol label as a 10" LP (1954, mono) and a 12" LP (1955, mono), Something Cool was rerecorded in stereo with a slightly different personnel and released again under the same title in 1960. It was later re released on CD in 1991 with the songs of the 1955 mono LP plus 13 additional tracks. ............In 2001, another CD reissue combined the 11 songs of the original 12" LP with the same 11 songs as reissued in stereo in 1960 but leaving out all songs that did not originally appear on LP under the title Something Cool.
ASIN: B000002UXS
VSKU: GGV.B000002UXS.LN
Condition: Like New
Author/Artist:Christy, June
Binding: Audio cd