The Warm Singing Style Of Jeri Southern: The Complete Roulette & Capitol Recordings 1957-1959 Edition

Description

3 CD SET 40-PAGE BOOKLET This 3-CD set contains all recordings by Jeri Southern that the Rouletteand Capitollabels released on albums and singles between 1957-1959. A total of 65 songs performed in Jeri's warm and inimitable singing style. As a bonus, the set also includes four tracks recorded by the singer during two of her appearances in the TV show Stars of Jazz. Sophisticated, witty, charming and always distinctive and arresting, Jeri Southern was a singer equally at home in an orchestral setting as she was in the intimacy of a small group. That she could also bring a rare sensitivity and considerable interpretive range to both settings is amply displayed in this collection, which includes the five albums and all the rare singles she recorded for Roulette and Capitol, as well as two dazzling TV performances. Both labels ensured only the best worked with her; arrangers like Sy Oliver on the first four tunes, and Lennie Hayton, who contributed the apt, lush backgrounds for the fine ballad interpretations of Coffee, Cigarettes and Memories , while on Southern Breeze , a warm and evocative Jeri responds to the solidly swinging settings provided by arranger and conductor Marty Paich and the pertinent contributions of such great West Coast jazzmen as Don Fagerquist, Bob Enevoldsen, Herb Geller, Georgie Auld, and Mel Lewis. Her art could also flourish in the intimacy of the small group. Both Meets Johnny Smith , with the great jazz guitarist, which was her last album for Roulette, and At The Crescendo , her last for Capitol, gave her the kind of context in which she first attracted attention. In a situation indelibly associated with her she delivers a series of virtually faultless performances. But it is perhaps her reaction to the utterly contrasting demands of Meets Cole Porter that reveals her range conclusively. Billy May supplied a series of witty scores, matched by Southern s joyous, exuberant readings of some of the most brilliantly sophisticated songs Porter ever wrote. In these stellar performances she showed an appreciation of the material that, like her art, remains undimmed by time.