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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
FOUR QUEENS SING TIMELESS FIVE STAR CLASSICS !!, January 31, 2006
Five Tremendous Stars!! Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, and Sarah Vaughan!! Four of the best singers "there ever was" sing truly classic songs from early in their careers. This sampler 'freeze-frames' the careers of these tremendous singers at a crucial time when they were the rage of the jazz world, in a jazz constellation that included many other fabulous singers like Anita O'Day and Carmen McRae.
From the Ella Fitzgerald sessions with Teddy Wilson's orchestra in 1936 to Sarah Vaughan fronting George Treadwell's All Stars with Miles Davis, Benny Green, Tony Scott, and guitarist Mundell Lowe on piano of all things in 1950, these classic pieces are dated in sound and arrangement, BUT not in performance. These are truly timeless classics that can be enjoyed over and over by the 21st Century music fan. Indeed, any jazz singer of today would give anything to be able to duplicate these stellar performances.
In between the Fitzgerald and Vaughan "bookend" sessions, we find the inimitable Billie Holiday with her very own orchestra in the late 1930's, including Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Sweets Edison, and Jo Jones, and Lena Horne with another version of the Teddy Wilson Orchestra from 1936 featuring Emmet Berry and Jimmy Hamilton. Ms Horne only gets two tracks ("Prisoner of Love" and "Out of Nowhere"), but she uses them to telling effect as a jazz vocalist who would later become best known as a pop singer who never forgot her jazz roots. Ms Fitzgerald likewise gets two tracks within which to weave her vocal magic and she does just that with sizzling, memorable renditions of "My Melancholy Baby" and "All of My Life".
I usually pick out "Pieces De Resistance", the best of the best, from each CD, but this is an impossible task with this compendium. Indeed each singer could have performed each other's songs with equal aplomb. Each performance is a diamond of music, in and of itself, by each of these legendary vocalists who were honing their craft 'on the fly', as it were, in their early years. From Billie Holiday's "The Man I Love" to Sarah Vaughan's "East of the Sun (And West of the Moon)", this is an essential CD for the serious jazz collector who wants a "quick, but deep" sample of the magnificence of these "Queens" in their youth. Highly Recommended! Five HUGE Stars!!
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 Billie, Ella, Lena, Sarah B0000029FJ
Various Artists
Sony
Billie, Ella, Lena, Sarah
Music
FOUR QUEENS SING TIMELESS FIVE STAR CLASSICS !!
Five Tremendous Stars!! Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, and Sarah Vaughan!! Four of the best singers "there ever was" sing truly classic songs from early in their careers. This sampler 'freeze-frames' the careers of these tremendous singers at a crucial time when they were the rage of the jazz world, in a jazz constellation that included many other fabulous singers like Anita O'Day and Carmen McRae.
From the Ella Fitzgerald sessions with Teddy Wilson's orchestra in 1936 to Sarah Vaughan fronting George Treadwell's All Stars with Miles Davis, Benny Green, Tony Scott, and guitarist Mundell Lowe on piano of all things in 1950, these classic pieces are dated in sound and arrangement, BUT not in performance. These are truly timeless classics that can be enjoyed over and over by the 21st Century music fan. Indeed, any jazz singer of today would give anything to be able to duplicate these stellar performances.
In between the Fitzgerald and Vaughan "bookend" sessions, we find the inimitable Billie Holiday with her very own orchestra in the late 1930's, including Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Sweets Edison, and Jo Jones, and Lena Horne with another version of the Teddy Wilson Orchestra from 1936 featuring Emmet Berry and Jimmy Hamilton. Ms Horne only gets two tracks ("Prisoner of Love" and "Out of Nowhere"), but she uses them to telling effect as a jazz vocalist who would later become best known as a pop singer who never forgot her jazz roots. Ms Fitzgerald likewise gets two tracks within which to weave her vocal magic and she does just that with sizzling, memorable renditions of "My Melancholy Baby" and "All of My Life".
I usually pick out "Pieces De Resistance", the best of the best, from each CD, but this is an impossible task with this compendium. Indeed each singer could have performed each other's songs with equal aplomb. Each performance is a diamond of music, in and of itself, by each of these legendary vocalists who were honing their craft 'on the fly', as it were, in their early years. From Billie Holiday's "The Man I Love" to Sarah Vaughan's "East of the Sun (And West of the Moon)", this is an essential CD for the serious jazz collector who wants a "quick, but deep" sample of the magnificence of these "Queens" in their youth. Highly Recommended! Five HUGE Stars!!
RBSProds "rbsprods"
January 31, 2006
- Overall: 5
- Overall: 5
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Location: Deep in the heart of Texas
New Reviewer Rank: 163
Classic Reviewer Rank: 497
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