Shirley Bassey - Let's Face the Music (1962)

Bassey's fourth EMI/Columbia album is regarded as the magnum opus of her pre-Goldfinger career, bringing her together with conductor/arranger Nelson Riddle.

Riddle approached this album from the standpoint that less is more, providing elegant and subdued accompaniment that emphasized the strings. Bassey's voice comes across with a delicacy of nuance that is startling to hear, achieving new levels of subtlety on this album. One may disagree with the order of the songs – this reviewer finds the moodily expressive "I Should Care," reminiscent of Judy Garland at her best, to be the ideal opener – but not with the overall content of this album. Throughout Let's Face The Music, one gets almost a sense of Bassey slipping inside of these songs, becoming part of them and they her, rather than merely performing them. The interpretations are fresh in other respects as well, with works such as "Let's Fall In Love" or "The Second Time Around" given unexpectedly slow tempos that work beautifully. Riddle is so careful and measured in his every orchestral nuance of this record, that he leaves us open to surprises at many points, perhaps most startingly the sudden appearance of a harp glissando on "Spring Is Here," after we've been lulled into the expectation that no part of this orchestra will play full out. Re-released in the late 1990's as part of EMI's anniversary reissue series, remastered in 24-bit sound. - by Bruce Eder, AMG

Personnel:
Shirley Bassey (Vocal)
Nelson Riddle (Arranger and Conductor)

Tracks:
1. Let's Face The Music And Dance (Irving Berlin) 3:11
2. I Should Care (Sammy Cahn/Axel Stordahl/Paul Weston) 3:58
3. Let's Fall In Love (Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler) 3:08
4. The Second Time Around (Sammy Cahn/James Van Heusen) 4:34
5. Imagination (Johnny Burke/James Van Heusen) 4:04
6. All The Things You Are (Oscar Hammerstein II/Jerome Kern) 3:10
7. I Get A Kick Out Of You (Cole Porter) 2:52
8. Everything I Have Is Yours (Harold Adamson/Burton Lane) 3:16
9. Spring Is Here (Lorentz Hart/Richard Rodgers) 4:03
10. All Of Me (Gerald Marks/Seymour Simons) 2:48
11. I Can't Get You Out Of My Mind (Victor Lewis) 3:42
12. What Now My Love (Gilbert Bécaud/Pierre Delanoé/A. Igman) 2:54

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