The Boswell Sisters Collection

Boswell Sisters (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 26, 2008)
• Label: CreateSpace
• ASIN: B001MBTRDC
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,273 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Wha'dja Do To Me

2. When I Take My Sugar To Tea

3. Roll On Mississippi, Roll On

4. Shout Sister, Shout

5. Sing A Little Jingle

6. I Found A Million Dollar Baby

7. It's The Girl

8. It's You

9. Making Faces At The Man In The moon

10. I Can't Write The Words

11. Shine On Harvest Moon

12. Heebie Jeebies

13. Rivar, Stay 'Way From My Door

14. An Evening InCaroline

15. Nothing Is Sweeter Than you

16. I Thank You, Mr. Moon

17. Was That A Human Thing To Do

18. Put That Sun Back In The Sky

19. Stop The Sun, Stop The Moon

20. Everybody Loves my Baby

See all 24 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Boswells: combining pop music with art, June 25, 2009

By 

madamemusico "madamemusico" (Cincinnati, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boswell Sisters Collection (Audio CD)

The differences between the Boswell Sisters and the Andrews Sisters were much more than the fact that the first group sang jazz while the second sang jazz-styled pop. Because Connie Boswell had polio and could neither stand nor walk, the Boswells were a physically static act. They wowed vaudeville audiences with their singing but were never headliners. Even when they first came to radio in 1930, CBS president William S. Paley asked them, "Don't you girls do anything but sing?" Well, of course they did in one respect, Martha could play very good piano, both jazz and classical, and her "piano stylings" filled many a radio hour when the trio wasn't singing.

But there was no getting around the fact that the Boswells were visually uninteresting, which is why they only made a few short films and appeared in only two features (Big Broadcast of 1932 and Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round). The Andrews Sisters, on the other hand, could dance and jitterbug in a slightly hokey, clumsy way, but at least it was movement that held an audience's visual interest. As a result, they were film favorites rather than occasional guests. In addition Bing Crosby, who recorded only one song with the Boswell Sisters (Lawd, You Made the Night Too Long) because he was uncomfortable with their tempo- and key-changing antics, made nearly two dozen discs with the Andrews, including Christmas songs that have become timeless classics and some big hits like Ac-Cent-Chu-Ate the Positive.

The Boswells recorded roughly a dozen songs that became pop classics but also a lot of ephemera. (Connie later said, "We thought we were invincible, we could do anything. Well, in a sense we were right, we could sing them, but they were really garbage.") The Andrews, with their eyes fixed firmly on widespread popularity and mass marketing, stuck to songs that had a guaranteed niche--polkas, boogie woogie, and Caribbean tunes--all adapted to their aggressive, almost "pushy" style. In some ways, of course, they were wonderful: consistently swinging and in tune, their voices always open and pure, their blend flawless. They didn't become pop music legends because of their looks. There's nothing "wrong" with the Andrews Sisters except that their jazz content is minimal and generally uninteresting. As pop singers, there has been no sister act since that was better than they were.

If your musical sights are set on consistency, both of delivery and a style rooted in Dixieland jazz but of only one emotional color and little variation (the lone exception being Bobby Hackett's marvelous cornet solo in "Bei Mir Bist du Schoen"), the Andrews Sisters are for you. If you have a more curious and discursive musical mind, however, you'll "graduate" to the Boswell Sisters sooner rather than later. There are video clips of both acts on You Tube if you'd like to compare and contrast. The Boswells aren't hard to take except for the very dated eye rolling which appears to have been their one concession to showmanship. The Andrews shake their shoulders and dance in a style that's kind of scary, but they sound wonderful. One thing I've noticed is that the Boswells' blend, though tight and thoroughly rehearsed, seems to sound like Connie with reverb. When the Andrews sang, they sounded like one voice with three colors, almost as if they were one singer, triple-tracked. That's not easy to do. That takes a LOT of work, not only on blend but on matching timbres, and in this respect the Andrews had a more locked-in sound. But that's just the point. "Locked-in" leads to sameness, which is consistent and familiar but also invariable. The Boswells' fluid sound was more malleable and conducive to greater variance of rhythm and color. The choice is yours.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pioneer spirit, August 4, 2009

By 

Matthew Watters (Vietnam) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boswell Sisters Collection (Audio CD)

While the Andrews Sisters took the Boswell formula of tight harmonies and polished it to a high pop sheen, the more interesting influence the Boswell Sisters had may have been on great jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Anita O'Day. The Boswells were pioneers in scat singing and in playing with melody and time within a tune. You can listen to what they do with a number like the tempo-shifting "It's the Girl" and, with Connee Boswell taking the lead and her sisters following, there's clearly a lot of room for improvisation. In other words, it's real jazz. Eddie Condon entitled his autobiography We Called It Music, and, like Mildred Bailey, the Boswells are taking the pop music of the day, applying a highly developed sensitivity to African-American music, and inventing something like modern jazz of the hard-swinging variety later epitomised by Ella and Anita. The Boswells are backed mostly by a small combo featuring the Dorsey brothers (clarinet, trombone) and a prominent role for the distinctively sweet-and-sour violin of Joe Venuti. The Boswell Sisters' music swings like mad and, divorced of any concerns for jazz history, is, in its own right, joyful, funny, toe-tapping stuff, its appeal almost impossible to ignore, some 80 years later.