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Ella Mae was in a niche not as commercial as Big Band Pop sound. She did upscale vocal Boogie and she did it better then most. This Cd is fun to listen to and you can't help but enjoy her style. This has become one of my favorite 1940s Cd.
This entry in the CAPITOL COLLECTORS SERIES* is one of those records that defeat criticism.
Morse, a good, versatile singer, was more likely than not (in a recording career that lasted only about a decade and a half**) to be heard singing novelties and other evanescent material. A few tracks here show her to be an able interpreter of what have become part of the American popular-standard repertoire: 'The Thrill Is Gone', 'No Love, No Nothin'', and 'Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive' are afforded fine performances by Morse. Then there are songs that, while not classics, seem to have become semi-perennials, such as the amusing 'Cow Cow Boogie' and 'Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet'. In fact, all of the selections from the forties (fifteen of twenty-one tracks), weightless or not, benefit from having been recorded under the auspices of Capitol Records, which tended to give the same TLC to trivia and light-hearted, light-headed fare as to the best that more 'serious' popular music had to offer, as witness any number of efforts by Nat Cole, Johnny Mercer, and Betty Hutton.
The Morse of the later forties and early fifties has been cited as a progenitor of rhythm-and-blues and rock-'n'-roll, much as Louis Jordan has. Maybe that's true. There's a great deal of country in some of Morse’s later records, too. There's nothing that can be done to salvage tripe like 'Tennessee Saturday Night' and 'Oakie Boogie' except to sing the hell out of them, which Morse does.
Her musicality is matched by her enthusiasm and professionalism, and for me the upshot is a compilation in which recordings that would, taken at face value, be regarded as dispensable are scarcely less good than the 'good’ ones. There's not a bad record in the bunch. How ever much I wish Ms. Morse had seen fit more often to sing the songs of the most enduring American composers I’m grateful for what we have. This is a terrifically entertaining album. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ *This album is identical in content to THE VERY BEST OF ELLA MAE MORSE, issued by Collectables. I understand that Collectables has been known to use inferior sources from which to master their compact discs. While I can’t speak to the audio quality of that CD, I can tell you that this Capitol album has been very well remastered from the original session lacquers and tapes and that its booklet is well-illustrated and contains an informative essay by Joseph F. Laredo. **For those who must have more Morse there is a 5-CD set, BARRELHOUSE, BOOGIE, AND THE BLUES, that contains all of her 130+ commercial recordings from 1942-1957. It was issued by a German company, Bear Family Records, in 1997, it was expensive, and it is probably out-of-print.
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