Customer Reviews

Downhearted Blues

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I think seeing Alberta Hunter at the Cookery changed my perception of what REAL entertainers do in front of an audience. Not only was she the shimmying blues queen of the 20's, but she was also an international chanteuse and jazz singer without equal. Since Sony / Columbia is being so stingy about releasing on CD her great later recordings, this live performance is truly a Godsend. What a thrill to relive her artistry! During performance, Alberta would yell out to the musicians "Lay it on me!". Lay this one on yourself and relish one of the greatest cabaret performers of the 20th Century! This is hot stuff...

Alberta Hunter may actually have amazed the world with her return to the stages after 80 years old. I have attempt to buy whatever is available from her late years, including tapes, DVD's, LP's, CD's and the like.
Would you want to recieve and injection of motivation, happiness, deep sense of wisdom at full age? ... Please acquire all tapes available (there is only one DVD, which cannot be compared to the VHS's - those are much better)
One of greatest singer of our times, surely joining a handfull of others like Ella, Sarah, etc.
However, nobody I know could transmit - from 80 to 83 years old, so much kindness, beauty, wonderness and ectasy like Alberta. I am privileged to have seen her live, in Brazil, many years ago. And I will never forget!
A must have, together with anything recorded from 1980 to 1984.

If you like the blues you will love this collection. The live recording from the Cookery in New York is great. Hunter works the songs as well as the listeners with her abilities and sense of humor. This is a must have for the collector. "Two fisted hard working Rough and ready man" should be the anthem of every one looknig for a mate. I bought 3 copies and have given them to friends.

Born in 1895, and having been an early blues innovator in the 1920s, Alberta Hunter became a living link to the jazz-age, and stars like Bessie Smith, Paul Robeson and Ma Rainey. In the late `50s she started a second career as a nurse, and mostly retired from music, but by the mid-70s she'd been lured back to live performance. In 1981 she recorded this live set at a New York cabaret called The Cookery. At 85, Hunter was still sharp-as-a-tack; not sharp for an 85-year-old, just sharp. Her sassy stage patter, interactions with the band and audience, and vocalizing are filled with percussive energy, knowing phrasings and deep experience and wisdom. Singing with accompaniment from Gerald Cook (piano, arrangements) and Jimmy Lewis (bass), Hunter covers standards that she wrote (and as she noted, was still collecting royalties on) as well as a selection of standards from other authors of the great American songbook. This same set was issued by Varese Sarabande in 2001, and is now returned to domestic print by the Rockbeat label. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

If you read the four reviews of this CD release on Amazon you will see that they were posted between 2001 and 2006. (Amazon has an annoying habit of grouping ALL versions of a CD no matter when it was released).

The 2001 release (on the Varese Sarabande label) has been out of print for years. Former Rhino Records executives Arny Schorr and James Austin recently formed a new reissue label - Rock Beat Records - and reissued the album in remastered form with new - though fairly basic - liner notes by music journalist Bill Dahl. And it's great that it can now reach a new audience who can discover this amazing woman who began her recording career in 1921 on the black-owned Black Swan label, went on to record for Okeh, Paramount, Gennett and Victor, moved to Europe, came back to record for Decca, ARC and Bluebird and then "retired" to Broadway, played USO shows during WWII and - at age 62 - left show business to become a nurse! Her music career wasn't over because in 1977 - after she "retired" from hospital work, and was 83 years old - she started a New York cabaret career! This CD is a full 71-minute performance "Live at the Cookery", Barney Josephson's Greenwich Village Cabaret.

Hunter sings standard like "I Got Rhythm" (but not like anyone else!), "oldies" (from the 1930s) like "Old Fashioned Love" and an array of her early "naughty" blues songs ("You Can't Tell The Difference When it's Dark", has no four-letter words but are as erotic as anything that the current group of female rappers are recording today.).

Hunter chats with the audience as well as urging on the band. It's like you were in the room in 1981 when this recording was made.

Rock Beat is making albums like this one available again and I, for one, am thankful for that.

Discover Alberta for yourself. You won't be disappointed.

Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"

Was a bit disapointed with the CD. Was hoping it would include the original soundtrack songs from the movie Remember My Name. No such luck. I'll have to continue listening to my LP since this has never been released on CD. But, after getting over that, this is a good set of material. How could one ever go wrong with a Alberta Hunter CD?