Randy Newman was the nephew of film composers Alfred, Emil, and Lionel Newman, which would suggest at least some familiarity with the field, even though he had only scored one minor movie (Cold Turkey). And in his songs, heard on his series of solo albums, he displayed far more knowledge of popular music styles of the early 20th century than any of his singer/songwriter peers. Listening to his records, you could always tell that he knew his way around Scott Joplin's rags. Who better, therefore, than Newman to make his debut as a big-budget film composer by scoring an adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime? So must movie producer Dino DeLaurentiis have reasoned in giving Newman the assignment. And the result worked out quite well. Newman naturally re-created much of the cakewalking Tin Pan Alley style of the turn-of-the-century era depicted in the film, but he actually had a more challenging assignment than might have appeared, since the story moves from one social stratum to another and ranges in tone from the comic to the melodramatic to the tragic.

Carl Perkins found his way to Sam Phillips and the Sun Studio during the summer of 1954 after Perkins heard Elvis's record of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the radio. "There's a man in Memphis who understands what we're doing. I need to go see him," said Perkins, who had been playing-and writing-rockabilly before Elvis made his first recordings. Carl Perkins recorded 42 songs for Sun Records from 1954 until 1958 when he signed with Columbia. This album is comprised of all but one of those 42 songs.

As the repository of the earliest phase of Frank Sinatra's solo career, 1943-1952, Columbia Records is usually thought to be at a disadvantage against the more accomplished work the singer recorded for Capitol Records and his own Reprise imprint. But in two albums released on the same day in 2003, Sinatra Sings Cole Porter and Sinatra Sings Gershwin, Columbia's Legacy division expands on its studio recordings of Sinatra by borrowing airchecks from the collection of Charles L. Granata, and thereby improves its holdings. Sinatra would not seem at first blush to be the ideal interpreter of Porter, if only because his rough-and-tumble background is always visible beneath his careful intonation, while Porter's lyrics are redolent of wealth and comic condescension. But Sinatra sang "Night and Day" in his first solo session in 1942 and went on to perform Porter throughout his career, often achieving near-definitive readings. The ground on which they met was intellectual rather than social: Porter was at heart a wit, and Sinatra understood the jokes, while emphasizing what emotional content there was, giving it a greater sincerity than the songwriter might have intended. This collection effectively mixes a bunch of studio recordings with previously unreleased radio performances that find Sinatra ranging over many different Porter moods.

Since Dick Haymes, like most of the popular artists of his era (the 1940s), has been the victim of endless low-budget, low-quality European compilations taking advantage of the continent's 50-year copyright limitation, it is refreshing to report that this collection by British label Half Moon consists of recordings licensed from Universal/MCA, copyright holder of Haymes' original Decca recordings. What that means, first, is that the sound quality is noticeably better than what you have to put up with on the fly-by-night competitors. Haymes' 45 singles chart entries on Decca between 1943-1951 are too numerous to be contained on one CD, and this 23-track disc with a 69-minute running time is inevitably missing some hits (notably the Top Fives "The Old Master Painter" and "Maybe It's Because"). But most of Haymes' big solo hits for Decca are included, along with a few of his hit duets with Helen Forrest, and the album can be recommended as providing the highlights of the singer's most popular period.

Capitol Records took This Is Sinatra!, a compilation album, into the Top Ten in early 1957, which probably prompted the label to assemble a similar collection, This Is Nat "King" Cole, later in the year. Consisting of tracks not previously issued on a Cole LP, the disc contains seven recent Billboard singles chart entries among its 12 selections – "Too Young to Go Steady" (which reached number 21), "Forgive My Heart" (13), "Nothing Ever Changes My Love for You" (72), "To the Ends of the Earth" (25), "I'm Gonna Laugh You Right Out of My Life" (57), "Someone You Love" (13), and "Never Let Me Go" (79) – while an eighth song, "That's All," was the B-side of the 1953 Top 20 hit "Lover, Come Back to Me!" "Too Young to Go Steady," which peaked in April 1956, turned out to be all that was really heard of a stage musical intended for Broadway, Strip for Action, with songs by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson, which closed out of town. "I Just Found Out About Love" and "Love Me as Though There Were No Tomorrow," two more songs from that ill-fated show, are among the previously unheard tracks unearthed for this compilation.

Excellent collection of classics! Every major artist of the forties thru the sixties performs on this box set. It will take a while to go through all 200 songs but what a joy and value.
The sound quality is just excellent. I have never heard these classics from the 40/50's resonate so clear and clean before, a real treat.

This collection of Artie Shaw big band recordings comes from his brief association with the Musicraft label. Having assembled and broken up several earlier units, this edition, heard in recordings made between 1945 and 1946, is more of an arranger's band than one that features many soloists, other than the leader. During this period of Shaw's career, he was constantly changing the instrumentation of his band and making personnel substitutions. Fellow Musicraft artist Mel Tormé and his group the Mel-Tones are added on some tracks, though this was a studio relationship exclusively and they were not a part of Shaw's organization. The innovative blend of strings, voices and brass in the swinging arrangement of "What Is This Thing Called Love" is the highlight of the vocal selections, along with an updated instrumental version of the clarinetist's earlier hit, "Begin the Beguine." The only reservation about this compilation is that several tracks are abruptly faded or even truncated.

COFFRET II, 25 ANS AVANT NOVA. 25 CD, 300 TITRES ULTIMES DE NOVA ENTRE 1956 ET 1980. Et si Nova avait existé 25 ans avant ? oe ? Après le succès de coffret des 25 ans, nous récidivons, avec un coffret 25 ans avant Nova. 25 CD pour couvrir la période 1956 à 1980 et explorer tous les genres jazz, soul, reggae, rock, world music, etc…

Hello were one of the more exciting bands of the mid-'70s glam explosion in the U.K., cutting some effervescent, almost giddy slabs of wax bolstered by thundering drums, heavy guitars, huge hooks, and boyish vocals. Not too many were hits, but a quick run through this collection of singles and their flip sides makes it clear that many more should have been. Starting in 1972 with the boogie glam of "You Move Me" and ending with a solo single from their drummer Jeff Allen from 1982, the collection covers a decade's worth of worthy attempts to scale the charts as tastes and sounds shifted around them.

Marilyn Monroe was not much of a recording artist per se, but she sang in many of her motion pictures. This European two-CD set presents dialogue and musical performances drawn directly from the soundtracks to the movie musicals Ladies of the Chorus, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The River of No Return, and There's No Business Like Show Business. She also sings briefly in non-musicals Niagra, Bus Stop, and The Prince and the Showgirl, plays "Chopsticks" in The Seven Year Itch, and exchanges witticisms with Groucho Marx in Love Happy; and there are a few stray non-movie song recordings. The second half of the second disc is taken up by miscellaneous recordings, not all of them musical, including a TV commercial, the presentation of several awards (she says, "Thank you"), radio sketches with Edgar Bergen and Jack Benny, and Monroe's appearances in Korea (singing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend") and at the 1962 birthday party for President Kennedy at which she sang "Happy Birthday".

Dean Martin finally got access to conductor/arranger Nelson Riddle for an album project, and the result was an easy swinging collection with appealing horn charts and a series of comfortable readings of recent and vintage standards. Especially notable were the two songs borrowed from My Fair Lady, "On the Street Where You Live" and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," which Martin and Riddle re-imagined as straight-forward love songs; "You're Nobody 'til Somebody Loves You" (which Martin would try again in a more contemporary arrangement four years later for one of his biggest hits); and a solo version of "Just in Time," which the singer had recently done with Judy Holliday in the film version of the musical Bells Are Ringing. This Time I'm Swingin'! was a good, confident set by an artist who had figured out how to make competent albums without expending a lot of effort, which was a key to his charm.

Born Marion Susan Maughan but dropping her first name, Susan's big hit was a cover of Bobby's girl. Originally an American hit for Marcie Blane, Susan took the song to the top three in the British charts. Neither singer had much success after that although as I explained in a review of a Marcie Blane compilation, Marcie really wasn't interested in a recording career, or indeed a singing career of any kind, and contented herself with a normal life away from the spotlight. As a contrast, Susan has built a singing career on the strength of Bobby's girl, performing on cruise liners, at seaside resorts and elsewhere on the cabaret circuit.

“Bennett’s ability to straddle jazz and popular music was one he shared with few others. He managed to retain more of a jazz feel than either, and that’sN what Basie senses in him: a kindred spirit who is devoted to the not so very taxing business of s(w)inging the song with minimum distraction.”

10 CD box set of sixteen original jazz albums from the Godmother of female jazz, Ella Fitzgerald. Including the legendary Porgy and Bess with Louis Armstrong and milestone recordings like Ella sings Gershwin and Rhythm is My Business.