High Standards

Weslia Whitfield | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 10, 1998)
• Original Release Date: October 13, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: HighNote Records
• ASIN: B00000C2J7
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #283,432 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Three parts musicality, one part pure personality..., January 28, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: High Standards (Audio CD)

The first time I saw Weslia was by accident: in 1995 at the Algonquin's famed Oak Room in New York, where she hooked me on cabaret for life. Since that time, she brought a Sinatrafest at Carnegie Hall to a halt... (in a large company of famous cabaret and popular types, SHE stopped the show!) A pure, unpretentious voice that bespeaks scotch'n soda and wisdom borne of life. She can sleaze her way through a show tune with the best of 'em, and you're risking third degree burns letting her near a torch song. (Off her "LIVE" disc, she cut a version of "Too Good to be True" that includes a simple, major arpeggio that is the purest and most plaintive sound I've ever heard from a female voice.) Off this disc, "My Favorite Things" is probably the best known, but you'll find a few gems on the way there that are much more than semi-precious. Worth having in your collection for two reasons: (1) it's great; and (2) Weslia is the only "other woman" my wife'll let me be in love with.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this cd because I do, November 29, 2003

By 

Matthew Dunaway (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: High Standards (Audio CD)

This cd is great because it is, I'm not talking riddles, because I'm not. I love this cd, because I do. Wesla Whitfield is a great singer, because she is. Mike Grinsell is her pianist/arranger because he's talanted, Wesla is a singer because she turns mere lyrics into lyrical bueuties... You will love this cd, because your classy... smart... and witty... I love this cd for all these reasons, and simply because I do... Wesla covers all the great standards, and sings thier veres too(WHAT A TREAT!!!). Thank God, and Praine the Lord for Wesla Whitfield, we ALL love her and her musical talents, GOD gave her. A must buy cd.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Standard of Reference, January 31, 2004

By 

Samuel Chell (Kenosha,, WI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: High Standards (Audio CD)

It's doubtful that any of Wesla's albums lives up to her own consistently high standards better than this one. Not only is she a paragon of good taste when it comes to selecting tunes but her pellucid, direct approach to melody and lyrics makes her interpretations of the American Songbook definitive and exemplary--suitable points of departure, in fact, for any young musician who may be unfamiliar with this classic material.

Take Cole Porter's "Everything I Love," for example. As personal, delicately harmonized, and ingeniously worded as it is, musicians often injure its uniqueness through overly fast or slow tempos or overly earnest or "flip" readings of the lyrics. Wesla hits it just right, not just with the tempo but the note of romantic parody on the word "everything" followed by a contrasting, utterly sincere declamation of the words "my haven in heaven above." If the performance falls just short of perfection, it's due to the fracturing of the moment caused by the arrangement--a key change followed by an instrumental solo and then, just when Wesla brings back the magic, a disappointing triple tag ending. Not that the support is sub-par. It's just that a vocal performance of this caliber tends to raise one's expectations of everything else on the date.