The Warm Singing Style Of Jeri Southern: The Complete Decca Years 1951-1957 Edition

How awesome to have ALL of Jeri's Decca releases in one GIANT box!This is a first class production from the quality to the HUGE booklet with all ofthe details and many RARE photos.I especially like the thumbnails and pictures/details of ALL of Jeri's albums and theircovers!I highly recommend this set for its extensive details and excellent sound!The price for this huge masterpiece is very reasonable also.

I'd like to add my voice to the others.Their reviews say it all.There's nothing I can add but to say it's about time.I'm glad to see this wonderful woman of song has her just due!!!!!As a kid in the 50's I enjoyed buying her records.This set is truly a tremendous tribute to her!!!!!

Great sound quality and hearing the music in chronological order is great. I'd forgotten how much I loved Jeri Southern! I wasn't so crazy about her later stuff, although I liked it, but this is the essential collection, as far as I'm concerned.Jeri Southern deserved this!

I don't really like reviewing something that others have already reviewed in some depth--but this is one of those times when I just have to say something. Where do I begin? Start with Southern's voice--a smoky, sultry, torchy, seductive, melancholy, wistful, innocent, delicate kind of voice. Jeri Southern (real name Genevieve Lillian Hering) just got up to the microphone and sang--plane and simple. She wasn't given to histrionics, no over-emotive shouting. Restraint is a good word to describe her approach to a song. There's a quiet, beautiful kind of impact to her singing. And the arrangements across these sides subtly supports her voice and phrasing almost perfectly. This is the kind of music that should be heard deep into the night when things are quiet and there's time to fully absorb Southern's voice and way with a lyric. Hopefully someone will come across this and the other reviews and discover a singer who deserves to be even more well known.This 5 CD set collects her work for the Decca label from the years 1951-1957. Besides collecting her albums this set also has over three dozen of Southern's singles, many (if not all) which have never been previously issued on CD until now. Are all the songs of equal merit and value? No. And fans (including myself) could go on and on about which tracks are better and which are of lesser listening value--to each his own on that score.The vast majority of tracks have Southern in front of an orchestra led by several different conductors. Also here are her trio sides which is another window into Southern's musical gifts as a piano player. Similar to her voice, the orchestral arrangements are subtle--backing her and filling in the spaces between words and phrases--which helps accentuate her voice. And the total effect is subtly attention-getting.Once you've heard Southern's voice, her way with a lyric, it's hard to forget it. There's a certain restraint in both her voice and in her singing, which calls attention to both the lyrics and her singing style. She sings seemingly effortlessly which somehow brings a certain power and "aliveness" to her best work. And it's in that effortless way of singing a song in her own way, with all the adjectives mentioned in the first paragraph in this review, that grabs a hold of your ears. As Miles Davis (among many others) said "Jeri has everything. She doesn't sing the ordinary overworked things." In Southern's voice and way with a song--it's all there--all the emotions in life that deal with love and life. A subtle killer of a collection.And I have to say something about the packaging, which compliments an artist of Southern's stature. The 40 page booklet is informative and interesting. Included are an essay on Southern and her music, recording details for each track, period photos of Southern and her album covers, plus other period graphics. The attention to detail in the packaging should be an example to other labels reissuing an artist's work. And the sound is clean yet retains that great period feel and warmth of the best vinyl albums of the era. All in all a deservingly fine presentation of Southern's music for the Decca label.

I first heard Jeri while in my sophomore year at college and she impressed me very much. Brings back many memories.

Wonderful cd set. Great songs.

Containing all the music that Jeri recorded for Decca between 1951 and 1957, this release came as an unexpected but most welcome surprise to me. I bought my first Jeri Southern CD in 2002, knowing nothing about her music at the time although it seemed that she was somebody I ought to like. I remember that the first time I played  Very Thought of You: Decca Recordings 1951-57 , which contained a sample selection of tracks that you'll now find within this boxed set, I was busy doing something else and started playing Jeri as background music. Silly me. By the second or third track, I had stopped whatever else I was doing so that I could listen in rapt attention. I collected several of Jeri's albums after that including some later music recorded after she left Decca, but I always felt that her Decca recordings were her best.Jeri was the original singer of When I fall in love, several years before Nat King Cole's cover, which was a huge UK hit. Jeri's own biggest hit was Fire down below, which was a top 30 in Britain and America. That song is a slightly faster song than most of Jeri's other music, but Jeri never did anything up-tempo. She was a pianist originally, and was not what one would call a naturally gifted singer, but she found a way to sing ballads that the public appreciated and that is what you hear on these and her later recordings.Apart from When I fall in love and Fire down below, you'll find Jeri's interpretations of many excellent songs here, notably That ole devil called love, The very thought of you, Ev'rytime we say goodbye, Mad about the boy, It's de-lovely, Scarlet ribbons, Smoke gets in your eyes, I remember you and Hold me, just to name a few.It appears that Jeri generally preferred to avoid recording the obvious songs, but of course some songs became more popular after (sometimes long after) Jeri recorded them. Some (like When I fall in love) sound here much as you would expect them to if you've heard the song by somebody else. Others (like Hold me, which was a UK hit for P J Proby in the sixties and Tina Charles in the seventies) sound like you'd expect Jeri to sing them if you've heard some of her music, but don't necessarily sound like famous versions of the song.Jeri knew what she was capable of doing with her voice, what she was not capable of doing with her voice, and selected songs that suited her. She did so superbly, and in her particular category, she was the best. This boxed set is a dream come true for me. As I think I have all her later music, it may be that I never have a reason to buy another Jeri Southern album or compilation. Pity that, but I'm very happy with this boxed set.

Containing all the music that Jeri recorded for Decca between 1951 and 1957, this release came as an unexpected but most welcome surprise to me. I bought my first Jeri Southern CD in 2002, knowing nothing about her music at the time although it seemed that she was somebody I ought to like. I remember that the first time I played  Very Thought of You: Decca Recordings 1951-57 , which contained a sample selection of tracks that you'll now find within this boxed set, I was busy doing something else and started playing Jeri as background music. Silly me. By the second or third track, I had stopped whatever else I was doing so that I could listen in rapt attention. I collected several of Jeri's albums after that including some later music recorded after she left Decca, but I always felt that her Decca recordings were her best.Jeri was the original singer of When I fall in love, several years before Nat King Cole's cover, which was a huge UK hit. Jeri's own biggest hit was Fire down below, which was a top 30 in Britain and America. That song is a slightly faster song than most of Jeri's other music, but Jeri never did anything up-tempo. She was a pianist originally, and was not what one would call a naturally gifted singer, but she found a way to sing ballads that the public appreciated and that is what you hear on these and her later recordings.Apart from When I fall in love and Fire down below, you'll find Jeri's interpretations of many excellent songs here, notably That ole devil called love, The very thought of you, Ev'rytime we say goodbye, Mad about the boy, It's de-lovely, Scarlet ribbons, Smoke gets in your eyes, I remember you and Hold me, just to name a few.It appears that Jeri generally preferred to avoid recording the obvious songs, but of course some songs became more popular after (sometimes long after) Jeri recorded them. Some (like When I fall in love) sound here much as you would expect them to if you've heard the song by somebody else. Others (like Hold me, which was a UK hit for P J Proby in the sixties and Tina Charles in the seventies) sound like you'd expect Jeri to sing them if you've heard some of her music, but don't necessarily sound like famous versions of the song.Jeri knew what she was capable of doing with her voice, what she was not capable of doing with her voice, and selected songs that suited her. She did so superbly, and in her particular category, she was the best. This boxed set is a dream come true for me. As I think I have all her later music, it may be that I never have a reason to buy another Jeri Southern album or compilation. Pity that, but I'm very happy with this boxed set. Very Thought of You: Decca Recordings 1951-57

I loved Jerry Southern when I was a young man . Very pure . very romantic .. very sexy Some lovely lyrics ;" Never Never will I Marry, Never never will I wed Born to wander solitarywide my world ,narrow my bed "