Customer Reviews

The Fabulous Lena Horne: 22 Hits, 1936-1946, Including Stormy Weather

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
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Whoever wrote the review "A meak & mild Lena is an idiot! This is Lena when her voice was like silk, and she was a true "Swing singer" who was not only able to sing torchy ballads, blues, and torch songs, but was equally talented as a novelty singer on uptempo jazz numbers! Lena's style was elegant and acceptible to white audiences in an era of segregation. To me this is the most appealing stage of her career, where her voice just seems to carress you. However by 1954 she changed her style and became more harsh sounding and very sassy, sounding very influenced by Della Reese! Even now she sounds great, all periods of Lena's career are interesting, but this is her in the cream of her career! Buy it, I gaurentee you'll love it or I'll eat my hat(& it's a derby)!!!

Lena Horne was a great swing oriented singer in the 30's & 40's, though most famous today as an actress, Horn could swing like Ella and sing a ballad or toch song like Billie. Here she's features with amny big bands and small groups, this is a great place to start when exploring the great Lena Horne.

If you can't get into her pre 1950's singing you are a looser! This is Lena at her best sounding like a swing singer, she has the most appealing vocie on the planet and all of her pre 1945 music is essential and worth hearing!!!

First,let me state here how much I love these ASV releases - I think its a UK company that keeps old records still on market where others would not touch them anymore and no matter what you think about it,legal rights and all (probably expired in Europe so they can be released there) the point is that many of us can't get this music otherwise so its like visiting museum of old music and there are so many jewels forgotten and waiting to be discovered,not to mention joy of actually having this music at home and playing it.
Unfortunately I read about ASV going either out of business or something similar,so grab as much as you can because apparently this music is not commercial anymore and plastic new pop starlets make far more money for recording companies,which is really a tragedy because we are closing the doors to anything that happened before and focusing on bland pop instead keeping this tradition alive and offering customers something different.
I am the first one who would rather buy the whole collection of ASV music than even looking at today's pop charts.
OK now back to Lena Horne.
This CD brings generous overview of her early recordings from 1936-46 when it was clearly audible how much the lady changed her approach - she never had any particulary interesting voice when compared to some other jazz greats,but its only because tradition is so rich with outstanding vocalists - she was a lovely lady and great beauty who meant a lot to black US audience when there were not many other stars of her calibre and to be honest,she did achieved amazing longevity in the business (from Cotton Club to spectacular one-woman shows in 1980s).
Its all silk and satin sensuality and her ballads have period charm,nice "traditional pop" music rather than jazz and not bad in itself,big bands behind her while Horne croons 1940s ballads.
"Stormy weather" is of course the most famous song - she somehow managed to make it her own signature song but it was actually famous in previous decade as Ethel Wathers song - but burried in this generous compilation are actually few numbers recorded in 1941 with great Teddy Wilson and his small band - "Out of nowhere" and "Prisoner of love" - they are really in the same class as Wilson's famous sessions with Billie Holiday,truly timeless,the man was a genius and seems everythign he did had magical touch and spark of beauty.
As opposite to lush strings that usualy wrapped Horne on other recordings,on these sessions with Teddy Wilson she really sounds great and inspired - piano playing is georgeous - and if only she made more records like this,she would be remembered as great jazz artist more than for her looks.

The reviewer "Poor Farmer" knows nothing about music.
Lena Horne was never influenced by Della Reese. He looks to be about 17 years old and is stuffing the ballot box. Get the Porgy & Bess/Jamaica CD or the Waldorf/At the Sands CD over this one. This is boring, and there are much better band sing singers.