By The Fireside
Dancing On The Ceiling
Everything's In Rhythm With My Heart
Gangway
Got To Dance My Way To Heaven
Head Over Heels In Love
I Can Wiggle My Ears
I Nearly Let Love Go Slipping Through My Fingers
I'll Stay With You
It's Love Again
Let Me Give My Happiness To You
Look For The Silver Lining
Looking Around Corners For You
Lord And Lady Whoozis
May I Have The Next Romance With You?
My Heart Stood Still
One Little Kiss From You
One More Kiss And Then Goodnight
Souvenir Of Love
Three Wishes
Tinkle, Tinkle, Tinkle / Over My Shoulder
Tony's In Town
When You've Got A Little Springtime In Your
Heart
Whip-Poor-Will
Living Era has already released
discs devoted to Gertrude Lawrence, Gracie
Fields and Evelyn Lane so a selection of Jessie
Matthews’s recordings was a racing certainty.
And so here is a decade and a half’s worth
of her discs.
A number of fine bands keep
her company – Carroll Gibbons principally
in the earlier sides but also Fred Hartley,
Louis Levy, Jay Wilbur and Debroy Somers.
Hutch is at the piano for the first number
where Matthews sounds a little arch, singing
"mo-ment" for "moment"
in rather over-authentically period style.
It’s actually a feature of her singing how
much more naturally she phrases as the 30s
give way to the forties and indeed how much
stronger the voice becomes, and how her vocal
range widened appreciably. She was a better
singer in the early forties than in the later
twenties.
Some songs suit her voice
and projection better than others. Ray Noble’s
By the Fireside is certainly her kind
of song and she has the advantage of Gibbons’s
band. One wonders who the violin solo is by
in the two man fiddle section – Hugo Rignold,
the future conductor, or Reg Leopold, the
future Light Music Maestro. It was almost
certainly not Ben(jamin) Frankel, future composer,
who whilst he was plying his violin trade
with dance bands wasn’t in the Gibbons band
in 1932.
There is some Matthews tap
dancing in Tony's In Town and plenty
of variety elsewhere. Occasionally one or
two of the songs push her ungratefully high
but in the main she sounds accomplished and
within the idiom. Many of the songs derive
from popular films of the time – Gangway,
Sailing Along, The Midshipmaid,
and There Goes The Bride amongst them.
And some come from stage shows – Wild Rose
opened in 1942 for instance. She remains throughout
a delightful presence – and of course we have
Over My Shoulder and Look For The
Silver Lining – no disc of this sort could
possibly proceed without them.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
LIVING
ERA CD AJA 5663 [77:24]
