ROSEMARY CLOONEY
 RCA 100 Years
of Music 07863 68001-2
Crotchet
- You Took Advantage of Me
- Give me the Simple Life
- It Could Happen to You
- By Myself
- Fancy Meeting you Here (with Bing Crosby)
- Too Marvellous for Words
- I Only have Eyes for You (with Perez Prado)
- April in Paris
- I Get Along Without You Very Well
- Something's Gotta Give
- It Happened in Monterey (with Bing Crosby)
- Magic is the Moonlight
- Anytime
- This Old House
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Rosemary Clooney is a great American institution, revered as much today as one of the great interpreters of the classic American SongBook, as she was as a Pop star in the early fifties. She has always had very good musical taste, but the record producers of the time just wanted to use her to make hit records regardless. In 1968 she withdrew from the profession after a nervous breakdown, but happily she returned ten years later and continued her career. This time however she sang the songs that she liked, for that matter she still does!
The record has some great contrasts; the tracks were recorded between 1958 and 1962. Some of them sound dated in particular the tracks with Bob Thompson's arrangements, which have too much hand clapping and vocal chorus effects. The star tracks are without a doubt the Nelson Riddle session's tracks 1,4,8 & 9; they sound just as fresh as if they were recorded yesterday.
Rosemary Clooney is not a jazz singer, but she has a great jazz feel about her work, excellent timing and diction and a voice that is easily recognisable.
The choice of songs is good and overall it is a worthy record of her work of the time, avoiding as it does the Pop gimmick songs.
Don Mather
Don Mather is a Saxophone Player and Bandleader
based in Coventry
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