Customer Reviews

Love Me Or Leave Me: From The Sound Track (1955 Film)

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This is the first time the soundtrack to this film had been released in true full stereo, and what a difference it makes. Doris sounds better than ever, and these are some of the best vocal performances she ever recorded. Some of the selections are slightly different than the original LP in length, but not general content. Plus, the medley lead-in to "Ten Cents a Dance" is included. As a bonus we have the "single" version of "I'll Never Stop Loving You" and two production tracks. This is a must have disc for fans of Doris and great classic musicals.

The soundtrack to the hugely popular 1955 bio-film, "Love Me or Leave Me" starring Doris Day and James Cagney may well contain Doris Day's best vocalizing of the 1950's. The album placed at or near the top of the charts for many months and deserved that lofty position.
After 7 years as the reigning musical star at Warner Brothers, Doris Day left that studio and went to MGM where she was the first actress to receive billing over Cagney in a couple of decades. Her performance as 20's/30's singer Ruth Etting received critical acclaim and her voice never sounded better as she sang well over a dozen songs in this powerful, no holds barred biopic. It was almost as though her release from Warners enabled her to find new vocal expression.
The CD of the film has been masterfully worked to capture the richness of the soundtrack. Percy Faith's orchestrations recall the 20's/30's era without resorting to the old, sometimes tinny sound that might have distracted todays' listeners.
Most of the songs featured are numbers gleamed from the era in which the film takes place. They are a diverse bag and manage to sound fresh and new thanks to the arrangements and renditions.
Several new songs were written for the film including the Oscar-nominated "I'll Never Stop Loving You", which was a chart hit for Miss Day in 1955.
Ultimately what makes this CD work so well are the pure, passionate, and unforgettable vocal work of Doris Day.
Those who relegate Miss Day to the realm of her hit recordings in the vein of "Whatever Will Be, Will Be", "A Guy is a Guy" or "Everybody Loves a Lover" will receive a revelation when they listen to this CD. Miss Day easily proves herself to be a consummate singer whose clear, genuine, heartfelt and stylish voice can instantly transport the listener to the story she is telling through her music.
"It All Depends on You" which Miss Day sings, accompanied by only a piano, is a poignant moment that will stir within any lover of fine music a reservoir of emotion and admiration for the artist.
From the title tune through "You Made Me Love You", "Mean to Me", a classic "Ten Cents a Dance" and the show-stopping "Shakin The Blues Away", Day shows she has few equals when it comes to capturing the essence of what the composer and lyricist surely had in mind when they penned their work.
"Love Me or Leave Me" must surely rank as one of the finest soundtracks from a 1950's film and after listening to it you're certain to climb on the bandwagon by singing it's praises. It's a must have for any collector of classic film scores.

Doris Day found the role of a lifetime in the legendary torch singer Ruth Etting. Etting's biographical life as told in LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME is, in my opinion, Doris Day's finest hour on screen. Likewise, the soundtrack album is a must-own for all true Doris Day fans.

LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME recounts the early life and career of Ruth Etting, who was dominated by her lover and manager Marty 'The Gimp' Snyder (played by James Cagney in the movie). The film also featured fine work from Cameron Mitchell (CAROUSEL).

Percy Faith's recreation of the brassy orchestras of the 1920's and 30's is right on the money, and Day fits the period perfectly. Standout numbers include her all-out rendition of "Shakin' the Blues Away", as well as the delightful corn of "Sam the Old Accordian Man". Day also sings such Etting standards as "My Blue Heaven", "You Made Me Love You" and "Ten Cents a Dance". Day's rendition of the title song is indeed haunting, summing up the stormy and violent relationship between Ruth and Marty.

This reissue features all-new remastering in true stereo, as well as demo recordings and a previously-unreleased version of "Ten Cents a Dance".

Songs from her finest picture ever. The selections and performance are some of the finest in motion picture musicals. To hear Day sing SHAKING THE BLUES is surely worth the disc alone. The closing of the disc with LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME is one of the most poignant of any concept album. This album also spent 3 months in the #1 spot in 1955. This cd will make you a fan of Ms. Day.

What a perfect combination, we've got ol' Dodo singing Ruthie's biggest hits and most well known favorites. Day sounds relaxed on such numbers as Love Me or Leave Me, and Ten Cents A Dance, and she sounds fine'n'groovey on Shakin' The Blues Away and Sam The Accordian Man. This could be called "Doris Day Sings Ruth Etting", and it is a classic, and may be one of day's classiest efforts. If you think Day did nothing jazzworthy since leaving Les Brown, think again, and pick thsi cd up, and then go find the cd's where dodo sings with the Page Cavanaugh Trio, and get the Young Man With A Horn cd, where ol' dodo sings with the Harry James trio! Sizzlin' stuff, by an underrated pop and jazz singer(YES!!! I said JAZZ SINGER!!!, accept it!).

What can you say about Doris Day that hasn't been said by millions of her fans for years. Doris Day is unequivocally the best gal pop singer of the twentieth as well as the early twenty first centuries. She is really without peer in all the most important entertainment categories: A singularly beautiful voice, perfect pitch, a delivery honed with the big bands for years and the ability to project her whole personality and emotion in each vocal performance. Secondly, a gorgeous face and body that was second to none and thirdly an acting ability that ranged from comedic to the most dramatic. No one that I can recall had that much going for them in all of show business. On top of all that Doris was and is a genuinely great person.

In LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME Doris exhibits her great natural acting skills working along side Hollywood legends like Jimmy Cagney, Cameron Mitchell and a host of veteran character actors. Musically, she transcends the popularity and vocal abilities of the film's subject, Ruth Etting. Her renditions of NEVER LOOK BACK, MEAN TO ME, LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, TEN CENTS A DANCE, YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU, and ILL NEVER STOP LOVING YOU, among others, are some of the best she has ever recorded. To hear the purity and richness of her voice, with only a piano accompaniment, in a day and age where the so called current pop stars sing off key, have little or no voice, no power and no sense of individual style and are electronically altered to make them saleable, is one of the true joys of a jaded audiophile. My favorite Doris Day single is her 1948 recording of IT'S MAGIC. That recording still ranks as one of the very best pop vocals of all time and the passage of those 56 years since its' #1 status has only enhanced its' artistry. I most enthusiastically recommend this album and the film and hope it gets into DVD form very soon. I will close with this comment: If I had a teen age daughter who had illustions of a vocal career I would see to it that she had as many of Doris' albums to study as I could provide her to hear what real singing was all about.

This soundtrack is probably one of the best showcases for Doris Day's singing capability. It showed the range of song types of which she was capable. It is also a great display of music to accompany the movie in which she played a talented singer who got involved with a gangster who knew a good thing when he saw it. Instead of displaying a true love for Ruth Etting, he possessed her and destroyed her career, (causing her pain and sadness because she definitely had great talent) thereby setting the mood for the wide variances of songs Doris Day performed as part of the movie, based on Ruth Etting's life.

I've loved this particular album for years. It's just got a lot of romantic 30's songs like "I'll Never Stop Loving You" and "Love Me or Leave Me", but also a really fun song, like "Shakin' the Blues Away". They are all melodic, and Doris' voice fits like a glove with Percy Faith.

This is a great album, one of Doris Day's greatest in my mind.

The music for this movie was designed, I think, to show Doris Day at her best. Other collections of her vocals, such as Complete Recordings with Les Brown, fail to showcase Ms. Day's remarkable range, and also fail to show her contrasting styles. In the movie, Ms. Day's character, Ruth Etting, is hardly happy and the mournful tunes Ms. Day sings do justice to Ruth's sad life. But, wonder of wonders, when Ms. Day sings "At Sundown," the kind of perky, peppy tune everyone associates with her, she delivers the song so effortlessly and beautifully that you wish Ruth had never lived an unhappy moment.

"love me or leave me" is i think doris day's best movie performance as actress and singer. the score is full of wonderful songs by composers irving berlin, gus kahn, walter donaldson and sammy cahn. i also very much liked percy faith's orchestrations. he really captured the sound of the 1920s and 1930s. i had this soundtrack on vinyl and i have it now on cd and the movie on vhs. mgm: when is the dvd coming out?

For once,I have to agree with a previous reviewer Aaron that Day sound much more like Etting's rival Annette Hanshaw.After reading excellent Will Friewald's book "Jazz singers",where (between other things) he writtes about greatest stars of 1920's,I decided to check Ruth Etting and was pleasantly surprised - so off I went to hear her songs in 1950's production:even better,I almost forgott what a good singer Doris Day was.Yes,Day doesnt look/sound like Etting at all and as I read,it was her intention NOT to listen old records by Ruth Etting as she did not wanted to be influenced by them - she performed songs with a different perspective,and gave them fresh approach instead of being merely copy of older woman.Nothing from ususal Doris Day cutteness here,this is pure Broadway belting (another departure from Etting's sweet but basically squeaky voice) and she even managed to sound sexy along the way. Note: a bit over-produced Zigfield Follies number "Shaking The Blues Away" has a VERY cleaned-up lyrics so instead of "do like darkies do" here it sounds like "do like voodoo's do".As for the movie,some 20 years after I saw it,I still remember my schock to see Doris Day as a ambitious and calculated night club singer,instead of goody two shoes as she was always presented in the movies up to that point.