Customer Reviews

Band Singer

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The most essential cd available is The Kitty Kallen Story. This would a good choice to get only if you're after the first cd. The Kitty Kallen Story not only spotlights some of her Jimmy Dorsey material but includes Little Things Mean a Lot, one of her best songs. Getting a cd without that song is like missing the scope that is Kitty.
This cd focuses on her 1939 and 1944 material. For the first time her work with Jack Teagarden is released. Frankly I wasn't too impressed by it. She sounds like an ordinary singer. Maybe it's Teagarden? Perhaps he was best without a vocalist. This can't be completely judged until someone releases a cd of Dolores O'Neill, the first singer he worked with. But then this was in 1939, maybe it was Kitty, perhaps she hadn't matured yet? Because in 1944, when she worked with Harry James, Kitty sounded completely different. A singer with a distinctive sweet voice of her own. There are swinging band numbers here like 11:60 P.M., sure some don't make sense but what do you expect out of 40's swing? There are also the slow songs for which Kitty was made for like Waiting for the Train to Come in.

Do me a favor, folks: Google "Kitty Kallen" and click on Images, then click on the top leftmost link. (If the wizards of Mountain View have changed things around it's a B&W glamour shot by James Kriegsmann and she has a flower in her hair.) Now look hard. Does that not remind you of somebody? Well I guess if you like this kind of music you might not know, but look again. Hint: Her first name sounds alike too. All right -- somebody. And thinking this makes me sick to my stomach. Kitty Kallen sang two number-ones -- and not just any number ones, but songs by Ellington and Styne and Cahn. Her lookalike sings discopop by a Dr. Gottwald. Only an incorrigible hack like Ann Powers would deny something has gone terribly wrong with American popular music in seven decades, and it's worse that probably no one but Will Friedwalds even bothers with this stuff. And bother with it we should.

Now on to the album: it features two entirely different approaches to big-band music. The first nine tracks are from a band Jack Teagarden formed after escaping Paul Whiteman's clutches and are largely forgettable. There was dross in those 1939 days too: one wonders why Glenn Miller bothered with "I Wanna Hat with Cherries" except to make Marion Hutton sound stupid. The next fourteen are by Harry James and demonstrate those who ignore him do so at their own peril. By the time the recording ban ended in late 1944 the big bands had grown up. The best of these are a kind of musical equivalent of film noir, with a brilliant street lamp shining down on a sinister, desolate alley. I've spoken in another review of people gassing of rock arteestes taking chances. Listen to the downer ending of "Baby, What You Do to Me". Why would anyone have done that when two big crowd-pleasing chords would have sufficed? Yet James did it, and it renders the song immovable from the heart.

As to the two number ones: They're noteworthy not just in themselves but in that we have alternates. The one for "It's Been a Long, Long Time" was unnecessary as Harry and the boys were pooped after six takes. But the other one, for "I'm Beginning to See the Light" -- it's interesting as it shows Harry made a few minor adjustments between this New York date and the Hollywood master (not all favorable) and as somebody tweaked the B-section lyric (favorable). Columbia may have rejected it because of a slight but discernible volume problem at the opening. Experiment as I have with Audacity and you'll know Harry should have taken this song five percent slower, just as Les Brown ended up recording "Sentimental Journey" too fast as it wouldn't fit in the juke box the right way. Regardless these are two towering monuments of song -- or at least they'll remain that way so long as people bother to listen to them, and love them.

As for Kitty Kallen -- well, her career lasted way too briefly, and as with Doris Day she sang too much of her best stuff with one big band. But if brevity is the soul of wit so must it be said that paucity may be the soul of pop music, and those last fourteen tracks contain its finest essence.

A shame that so many of these tracks appear have not weathered the ages all that well; that owes to their media (mostly soft acetate mastering discs) and their popularity. Sony Music's engineer assisted by flat-out botching the remaster of "Ya-Ta-Ta Ya-Ta-Ta (Talk Talk Talk)". One would think such shenanigans were long in the past.

These are the COLUMBIA recordings Kitty made with Jack Teagarden and Harry James, however, ONLY as a Band Singer. She made some more recordings with Harry James in 1952, that are quite good, but those songs are not included here. I'd rather hear them than the two "Alternate Takes" on this Cd. But those alternates are good, I guess, for filler material. Regarding other "Reviewers" comments please bear in mind that as a solo artist Kitty recorded for other record labels, and these labels are still competeing with each other today. That is why those songs are not on this disc, see? Nice to see the Teagarden records issued on CD, even though that band didn't do well commercially. When Kitty joined Harry James in 1944, she might have been the best band vocalist out there. Almost every song was a major hit, and her voice pretty much represented the Harry James "sound" during 1944-45.