Customer Reviews

Best of Mercury Years

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I grew up listening to many of my parents 78rpm records. One of my favorie singers was Georgia Gibbs. I loved her soaring voice and the way she was able to tackle any type of song - rock, country, ballad, ect. As opposed to many female vocalists of the 50's, Georgia Gibbs was versitile. For many years, I searched for more records by Georgia Gibbs - and this was not an easy task. I was able to find many of the songs on this album, however the condition of the records was usually not very good. This CD from Mercury Records is FANTASTIC! "Kiss Of Fire" is, without a doubt, a classic. Just as classic are "Tweedle Dee" and "Dance With Me Henry" - although there are many who feel that these two songs were stolen, Georgia Gibbs versions of these songs are perfect and, upon listening to them, it is hard to take anything away from the quality of her work. "I Love Paris" is sung perfectly, with little fanfare. You could listen to "I Want You To Be My Baby" a hundred times and not tire of it. "How Did He Look?" is full of longing - but again, not overdone. Just enough to make you feel a little lump in your throat. Georgia Gibbs is the most underrated female vocalist of the 1950's and I applaud Mercury for putting this collection together. If you are in the mood to listen to a truely talented artist, one whos voice knows few limits in terms of style and emotion, this CD is a perfect fit. I hope Mercury issues a Volume 2 and some of the other labels Ms. Gibbs has recorded for will take heed and reintroduce Her Nibs to a new generation.

Georgia Gibbs is one of the greatest (and least appreciated) vocalists from the big band and classic pop eras. Miss Gibbs has been much-maligned over the years by a certain group of ignorant "historians" who have little-to-no understanding of the workings of the record industry (as in the "review" by B.M. Peters below).

1) Up until the post-WWII years, the majority of music sales were for sheet music, not records. Records were viewed to a large extent by the music industry as a means of selling sheet music. In those days it was common for each record label to have a popular song recorded by one of their artists. It was not unusual for record charts from the 1940s to have as many as 5 or 6 hit versions of a single song simultaneously on the charts. Georgia Gibbs, who'd been singing professionally since the 1930s, was a part of this tradition.

2) The practice of "covering" hits (as described above) continued to a lessening degree into the 1970s. In the mid-1950s (which is when the controversy pertaining to Miss Gibbs' recordings occurred), it was still going full-force.

3) Like most recording artists at the time, Miss Gibbs was not in charge of selecting her material. The r&b songs in question were not her choice. She preferred ballads (which, in this writer's opinion, is where marvelous voice is best showcased).

4) The ridiculous attack on Miss Gibbs stems from a public campaign by LaVern Baker to discredit Gibbs (while promoting her own records). Baker's records are slow and draggy, and obviously inferior to Miss Gibbs' versions. These records were covered by many other artists as well (Teresa Brewer had a minor hit with TWEEDLE DEE) -- including several r&b artists, whose arrangements were even closer to Baker's than was Gibbs'.

5) Georgia Gibbs had the hit versions of the songs because she was the better singer.

6) Georgia Gibbs had topped the charts with KISS OF FIRE, long before TWEEDLE DEE came out, and certainly didn't need to ride on LaVern Baker's skirttails -- rather it was the other way around.

7) But to really experience the work of this great vocalist, one should listen to the many beautiful ballads on this album: KISS OF FIRE, WHILE YOU DANCED, DANCED, DANCED, HOW DID HE LOOK, AUTUMN LEAVES, I LOVE PARIS, etc.; as well as he wonderful, country-tinged SEVEN LONELY DAYS and her jazzy, swinging version HOME LOVIN' MAN.

While there is no comprehensive Georgia Gibbs collection, the Mercury Years is one of the best ones out there.

Other truly great G.G. songs include WHAT'LL I DO, I'LL BE SEEING YOU, THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY, HOW ABOUT ME, MELANCHOLY BABY, A LASTING THING, GOT HIM OFF MY HANDS, THE LONESOME ROAD, LET'S DO IT, OL MAN MOSE, THE THINGS WE DID LAST SUMMER, LIKE A SONG, SILENT LIPS, CHERRY PINK AND APPLE BLOSSOM WHITE, BAUBLES BANGLES AND BEADS, COME RAIN OR COME SHINE, IT HAD TO BE YOU, FOOL THAT I AM, I GOT IT BAD and WALKING THE FLOOR OVER YOU. Fortunately, most all are available on various cds by her.

This is a great album by a wonderful vocalist whose voice has kept me spellbound since I stumbled upon a couple of her old 78s when I was 12 years old. Back in those days (the mid-70s) it was impossible to find anything by her in record stores (I searched record stores in NJ, PA, DE and NY for 20 years without the least bit of luck). Thankfully, CDs have made a lot of previously inaccessible songs readily available.

As far as this album goes -- I love it to pieces. I'd only ever heard a couple of the tracks on it, so this was a brand new experience for me. Georgia Gibbs' voice is amazingly beautiful and thoroughly enthralling. She gets some deep, husky tones in on these that, literally, send shivers up my spine.

I've recently heard the original recordings of the notorious "cover" records (Dance With Me, Henry and Tweedle Dee) and Georgia's versions are by far the superior takes. There's no question as to why Georgia's versions were the ones that became the big hits.

My only regret with this album is that two of my favorite songs from the 78s I owned (also MERCURY) are missing: A Lasting Thing, and Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White. Here's hoping MERCURY brings out a Part II -- soon.

.... the fact is, Georgia Gibbs appealed to enough listeners to have 3 of her singles for Coral, 25 for Mercury, and one each RCA Victor and Roulette sell in the millions and therefore score decently on the Billboard charts, the one true measuring stick to determine a musical artist's commercial popularity. And isn't that what most - if not all - strove to achieve? Hit singles? That's what brought in the money and so that's what the record companies went for - those with commercial appeal. That, of course, won't wash with the elitist snobs, those sycophants who want to be seen to be "in the know" by dumping all over those who achieved a mass following, such as Gibbs, Teresa Brewer, Pat Boone, Barry Manilow, Tony Orlando, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, etc. etc.

Yes, Georgia "belted out" many of her tunes, but so what? So did Ethel Merman, recognized today as one of the best Broadway musical performers ever. That was her style, for the most part, and she had a devoted following that carried her well into the early years of the birth of R&R.

Born Fredda Gibbons on August 17, 1920 in Worcester, Mass., she first sang on radio in 1937/38 on The Lucky Strike Show, then later as a band singer with the Hudson-DeLange, Freddie Trumbauer, and Artie Shaw orchestras. Late in the 1940s she joined the Jimmy Durante-Garry Moore radio show, and it was during this period that Moore anointed her as "Her Nibbs, Miss Gibbs."

Her first solo hit single came in the spring of 1950 when her version of If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked A Cake reached # 5 with the backing of Max Kaminsky's Dixielanders for the Decca subsidiary, Coral Records. A few months later she was back on the charts, this time in a duet with Bob Crosby, whose orchestra backs (his brother Bing and son Gary had a competing disc out on Decca), taking Play A Simple Melody, from the Broadway musical "Watch Your Step," to # 25. In early 1951 she had her third and final hit for Coral when I Still Feel The Same About You, with topped out at # 18 under the bulky billing "Her Nibs" with Georgia Gibbs with Owen Bradley Sextet. None of these hits are here, but all can be found on the equally-excellent CD, The Complete Original Hits Of Georgia Gibbs (more on that release later).

After joining Mercury, and being linked on most of her releases with the Glenn Osser orchestra, she scored her first hit there in June when Tom's Tune rose to # 21, and from there through to 1957 she was never off the charts for very long, racking up 24 more hit singles for Mercury and adding LP and EP sales in the millions.

In this volume you get all but 5 of those hits, the missing ones being: Good Morning Mr. Echo (# 21 in July 1951); 24 Hours A Day (365 A Year) - the flip of Goodbye To Rome (Arrivederci Roma), and a # 74 in December 1955; Rock Right (# 36 in spring 1956); Tra La La (# 24 in December 1956); and Silent Lips (# 68 in March 1957). Three of the five are in the above-mentioned release.

The insert to this volume contains a complete discography of the contents, including label details and chart performances, fourpages of informative background notes written by Joseph F. Laredo, and another nice photo of the beautiful Miss Gibbs.

If you were a fan of Georgia back then you will be delighted with this release and its wonderful sound reproduction, which should be purchased in conjunction with the other volume mentioned to give you as complete a library of her hits as possible.

I bought this set to get clean versions of Georgia Gibbs whitebread rock 'n roll covers, having a serious (well, not-so-serious) interest in BAD music, and annoying to excruciating whitepeople maltshop "rock" music is right up there. My 3-star rating is due to the somewhat inferior or degraded nature of the first five tracks on the CD, especially #5, "So Madly In Love," which is distorted. The liner notes state, "Digitally Remastered from the original mono masters by Steven Fallone at PolyGram Studios." The first five tracks sound that they were mastered from disc, and "So Madly In Love" has the most issues, along the lines of the distortion inherent in Pat Boone's "At My Front Door (Crazy Little Mama)," both on CD and my black label 1956-ish Dot DLP 3012 album. Starting track #6, the balance of the 19 (of 25) tracks go way up in audio quality. Now about the she-and-Pat-Boone-robbed R&B artists theme going around....

If anyone might be hung in effigy for "blackening" white easy listening neutered pop music, at least on the then-industry standard of throwing songs up against the wall in case they might stick (sell), it might be Mitch Miller. Mitch expanded the definition of what was good enough for what I euphemistically call "whitepeople," meaning low-taste middle-of-the-road poor white trash that think themselves "middle class," but have forcibly vanilla taste that they wish to impose as "wholesome family entertainment" (UGH!) upon the world. Mitch's trolling through hillbilly songs and whitewashing "Cold Cold Heart" for Tony Bennett (check out most of Columbia's 1951-54 pop artists' hits) meant that the pop industry began using the two financial fringe genres, C&W and then Race music, as publishing demos. And we all know how that blew up in the major labels' faces starting in 1956. But there was a transition period, with mostly second and third tier white pop acts herded into the studios, which started more or less with the Chords/Crew Cuts duel with "Sh-Boom" in July, 1954, then the McGuire Sisters on Coral about the same time, and ushered in just about 12-15 months of quicky exploitation of R&B songs. The cover fad (fad) has antecedents with some rock tunes back to 1952, notably Bill Haley's "Rock the Joint" by Lola Ameche on Mercury 70023-X45 and "Crazy, Man, Crazy" by the Smarty-Airs on Mercury 70153-X45, as well as Frank Sinatra's last few Columbia singles, "The Castle Rock" (Sept. 1951!) and "Bim Bam Baby." Georgia Gibbs just happened to be a minor singles artist for (1955) Mercury and had, other than Pat Boone's whitebread rockers, the LOUSIEST luck to have the biggest success, such as it was on two dinky cover hit singles, back-to-back in early '55. For a more complete picture of the cover fad, which ended with the white pop labels more or less ceasing the use of R&B copyrights around April/May, 1956--the endpoint of this seems to be Boone's EXCRUCIATING non-Lp hit, "Long Tall Sally" on Dot 15457 and the Fontaine Sisters' "I'm In Love Again" on Dot 15462, both of which tanked relative to the original artists (Little Richards and Fats Domino), here's the predatory Coral Records releases during the period:

Coral Covers:
McGuire Sisters, "Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight" 61187 (Billboard debut 6/26/54)
Billy Williams, "Sh-Boom" 61212
Goofers, "Hearts of Stone" 61305
McGuire Sisters, "Sincerely" 61323 (Billboard chart debut 1/08/55)
Lancers, "Tweedle Dee" 61332
McGuire Sisters, "Hearts of Stone" 61335
Teresa Brewer, "Tweedle Dee" (flip was Georgia Gibbs later "Rock Love") 61366
Three Rays, "The Wallflower" 61370
Lancers, "Two Hearts, Two Kisses" 61382
Goofers, "Flip, Flop and Fly" 61383
--Note: Date on Coral 61467 Billboard debut 9/10/55
Johnny Long, "Maybellene" 61478
Kirbystone Quartet, "Honey Hush" 61538

And then the white exploitation rock-like songs start coming in that didn't originate on the R&B charts:
Alan Dale, "Rockin' the Cha-Cha" 61495
Dorothy Collins, "My Boy - Flat Top" 61510 (Billboard 11/12/55)
Lancers, "Alphabet Rock" 61527
Lancers, "Rock Around the Island" 61550 (uh, "Rock Around the Clock" meets Hawaii)
Don Cornell, "Teenage Meeting" 61584 (Alan Freed songwriting credit)
Eileen Barton, "Teenage Heart" 61585
Buddy Hackett, "Chinese Rock and Egg Roll" 61594
Buddy Merrill, "Rock & Roll Ruby" 61649
Alan Freed, "The Camel Rock" 61660
Goofers, "I'm Gonna Rock and Roll Until I Die" 61664
Dorothy Collins, "No Rock `N Roll Tonight"/"Rock and Roll Train" 61669
Dorothy Collins, "Cool It, Baby" 61711
Hoagy Carmichael, "I Walk the Line" 61717 (Johnny Cash with extra syrup???)
Lynn Taylor, "Rockroleville" 61726
Alan Freed, "Rock `N' Roll Boogie" 61729
Alan Dale, "Don't Knock the Rock" 61752
Dorothy Collins, "Baby Can Rock" 61753

Nah, Gibbs just got typecast. Like Boone, she just wants to Croon. Boone got his comeuppance when he/Dot Records held back his (first!) 45 version of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" on Dot 17045, which was recorded several weeks in front of Glen Campbell's career-establishing hit; effectively, Boone got Booned in '67.

I purchased this cd from Amazon because it was a very good bargin.Georgia Gibbs Best Year from Mercury,well the title explains it and more. I was only familiar with Tweeddle de Dee but the other songs on here are super. Georgia Gibbs has a nice arrangement of all her songs,there's something about these early artists that makes you want to listen to them to this day.Maybe these singers have something you don't have nowdays,something called talent.Take it from me I was a teenager in the 1960's I listened to Rock N' Roll,I heard the early music from 1950's on up also.To me music from 1950 to 1954 had some of the best talent.The songs on this CD are the original songs I give this CD a A++++++++.Thank You for reading my review, purchase this Cd and go with the Flow.

How can a "reviewer" like Scarlotti put down someone else while not reviewing
the CD but just offering a defense for this opportunistic and poor singer?
It would be nice to hear some of her music from the 1930s and 1940s to contrast the horrors on this CD.
She does not have versatility; she just blares out everything at the same loud level. She does not have subtlety. Why then is she "underappreciated?" With a career that lasted so long, why then is she remembered for her pathetic cover versions that turned R&B into white bread? Don't blame LaVern Baker as she didn't yield much influence in the world of music or media. Georgia Gibbs was
really bad.

Georiga Gibbs is opportunist thief.Some of her biggest records were exact, almost note for note covers of versions done by black singers of the 50's.Ruth Brown, LaVern baker, and Etta James were all victims of this woman.She covered their superior versions almost note for note, right after the originals started up the pop charts.Radio dj's were quik to make to room for Georgias versions because (in my opinion) she was white. Georgias versions not only out sold the originals 100 to 1 they in a sense stopped the originals from living up to their full potential as singles.I know many R&B artists could not stand her for this reason.Quite frankly I understand. She is not as good and could never have been as good as these pioneering women. If you want to hear more vibrant,soulful versions of many of the songs she covered look up the original versions by the original artists. ie. Dance with me Henry (aka Roll with me Henry, originally done by Queen of the Blues Etta James in 1955)
and Tweedle Dee (originally done by LaVern Baker in 1955)
They are superior vocally. Even though their versions were buried after Georgias flooded the markets, LaVern, Etta,and Ruth are, were and will always be more repected,revered, and looked up to. Remember there is only one original. The artists Georgia covered were pioneers, they did it from their souls.
Georgia exploited them.
Look up the originals.