1. All the Things You Are
2. Personality
3. My Old Flame
4. Come Rain or Come Shine
5. In Atlanta GA
6. I'm in the Mood for Love
7. Walking My Baby Back Home
8. I've Got the World on a String
9. Sioux City Sue
10. In the Moon Mist
11.
Irving Berlin Medley: Say It With Music/Alexander's Rag Time Band/Remember/Soft Lights and Sweet Music/The Piccolino/Always/A Pretty Girl is like a Melody/They Say It's Wonderful
12. April Showers
13. S'posin'
14. Cement Mixer
15. Oh, What it Seemed to Be
16. Strange Love
17. Great Day
18. All Through the Day
19. Just You, Just me
20. One-zy, Two-zy (I Love You-zy)
21. I've Got the Sun in the Morning
22. All the Things You Are
Jo Stafford, Helen Carroll and the Satisfiers - Vocals
Carl Kress and his Orchestra
Jo Stafford was one of the most popular singers of the 1940s and 1950s - understandably so, because she had a clear, pure voice and sang beautifully in tune. She let you hear every word of a lyric, which she didn't emote over but simply delivered with clarity and conviction.
This CD illustrates Jo's talents through a series of six radio shows recorded by Stafford in 1946 for the Armed Forces Radio Service. She is backed by Carl Kress's big band but gets little chance to show her jazzier side. Jo improvises a little but her excellent pitch is shown by the way that she can start a song without any orchestral introduction. Most of the songs are well-loved standards, including a medley of Irving Berlin songs to remind us of what a multi-talented composer he was.
The other singers on the album are Helen Carroll and the Satisfiers, a close-harmony group which even tackles Slim Gaillard's hit nonsense song Cement Mixer.
This is not particulary profound music but it is very pleasurable.
As I said in a review of a previous Jo Stafford collection: "This
is the kind of album that makes you smile quite often: both at the
beauty of the songs and at the honest rightness of Jo Stafford's vocals".
Tony Augarde
CD Reviews
Sounds of Yester Year DSOY 823 (distributed by The Woods)
