One of the biggest criticisms that Elvis has faced over the years from his own fans is that he rarely changed the repertoire in his live shows during the final decade of his life.  In many respects, it’s an unfair criticism – the songs in his shows changed considerably between 1969 and 1975, but not ..read more

On this day in 1967, Elvis’s second gospel album, How Great Thou Art, was released, and would result in Elvis’s first Grammy win. The following analysis of the album is taken from “Reconsider Baby. Elvis Presley: A Listener’s Guide,” available on all Amazon sites in kindle, paperback and hardback formats. * In hindsight, it seems strange that it took nearly six years for a follow-up to the His Hand in Mine album to be recorded, especially during a period when Elvis had lost his way with regards to material intended for the pop charts.   However, it made sense that Elvis’s retur ..read more

For mainstream jazz artists, and for jazz and pop vocalists from Sinatra to Julie London, the mid-1960s and early 1970s were a period of turmoil.  Artists like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzy Gillespie had spent the last decade making the most of the wonders of the long-playing record, allowing them to record tracks that didn’t have to fit on one side of a three-minute 78rpm record, and, even more importantly, to make album-length musical statements.  Their popularity had soared, their music had matured, and labels such as Verve, Prestige, Riv ..read more

Last week around this time, I uploaded a blog post highlighting ten jazz and pop vocal albums that generally fly under the radar.  Some people said some nice things about it, and so I thought I would add a second volume, this time featuring a dozen albums. Here goes: Ethel Ennis: Change of Scenery I confess that my knowledge of Ethel Ennis just a couple of months ago was zero, but I now realise what I have been missing.  Change of Scenery was the first of two albums she recorded for Capitol, and, listening to it, one has to wonder how and why she didn’t have a more high pr ..read more

When we see lists of the great jazz and pop vocal albums, often the same titles are featured over and over again: Songs for Swinging Lovers, Ella Fitzgerald sings the Cole Porter Song Book, Judy [Garland] at Carnegie Hall, and so on. However, there are many similar albums which, though just as good, are undervalued or neglected gems. This post shines a light on ten of them. Julie London: With Body and Soul Julie London is best remembered today for her 1950s and early 1960s albums featuring a small jazz combo and sultry album covers. However, there is much more to her catalogue than just Julie ..read more

The recent film biopic, imaginatively titled Elvis, dwells for some time on the making of the 1968 TV special, even if much of what the film depicts is actually fiction rather than fact. The following extract from Reconsider Baby: A Listener’s Guide examines the recordings made for the show, as well as how it was critically received at the time of its first broadcast. The book is available on all Amazon sites as well as selected other online outlets. * There are already a number of good accounts of how the TV show morphed from one where he was to sing twenty festive numbers to one where ..read more

I don’t write many blog posts these days, but I thought that this deserves one. When I was around sixteen or so, Neil Sedaka appeared on TV (The Des O’Connor Show, I think), promoting a new album of his greatest hits (Timeless), and his new single, The Miracle Song, which became rather popular here in the UK. A little later in the year, a concert recorded in Birmingham was shown on TV, too, and that was enough to get me hooked. I was lucky enough to see Sedaka twice at the Royal Albert Hall, in 2012 and 2017, both of them great shows that got the audience both laughing and crying. Sedaka refe ..read more

Doris Day, who passed away this weekend, had the rather unusual position of being one of the most beloved, and yet underrated, acting and singing stars of the Twentieth Century. She is remembered first and foremost by many as the lead in the fluffy romantic comedies of the late 1950s and early 1960s that paired her with Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, and James Garner.  But those films were just the tip of the iceberg of her achievements.  Well-made and well-performed though they are, they give little indication of what a great actress Doris Day really could be when she was given material ..read more

During a career of seventeen years, cut short at the age of thirty-seven, Bobby Darin did it all. He recorded well over five-hundred songs ranging from jazz and swing through to folk, rock ‘n’ roll, and virtually everything in between; was a composer of dozens of songs and film scores; played piano, guitar, harmonica, drums, and the vibraphone; was a record producer; made over two-hundred television appearances; was an Oscar-nominated actor; hosted his own variety show; and was hailed as one of the greatest live performers of his time. Bobby Darin: Directions covers all of these facets o ..read more

As someone who has written a book about the music of Bobby Darin, what was especially nice about the recent release of the Frank Sinatra: Standing Room Only 3CD set a few weeks back was to hear Sinatra in 1966 recommending that his audience takes time out to go and see Bobby while they were in Vegas.  The comments were, for this listener at least, unexpected, but put to bed once and for all the fake-feud between Darin and Sinatra that the media seemingly made up around 1960 and have continued to talk of as fact ever since.  It should also be added that, in a 1975 newspaper interview ..read more