Doris Day - The Love Album

[GA Russell]

Not long ago my girl friend informed me that she went to high school with Michael Feinstein. They didn't know each other. He was two years ahead of her. But she said that everyone knew him because he was in all the school musicals.

So now Feinstein has his own record label, called Feinery. And Feinery has obtained and issued an album recorded by Doris Day in 1967 called The Love Album.

Day had just left Columbia after 20 years when she recorded this. As I recall she regularly put out albums for Columbia, but I never got a sense of how well they sold. I never liked Columbia's 60s adult pop recordings, because the arrangements were always too sappy. Not long ago, I read that Frank Sinatra felt the same way, so that made me feel like my opinion was validated!

The Love Album was not released when it was recorded. In the 90s it was made available in Germany and England, but this is its first release in the US. There are 14 tracks totalling 43 minutes. All of the songs except Sentimental Journey are quiet. Only one song is a nod to the times, Both Sides Now.

The string arrangements are by Sid Feller, who also worked with Ray Charles. I like the sound of them. They are not sappy, and they remind me of the albums Julie London recorded in the 60s.

I'm of the school that says that the great ones make it look easy. That's why I like Julie London so much. No Aretha Franklin or Celine Dion for me. In this album, Day sings effortlessly. She has a very small warble in her voice which I could do without. She was 43 when she recorded this, and perhaps the warble is a result of age. This is my first Doris Day album, so I can't compare it to anything.

Because of Day's warble, I prefer Julie London to this. But if you like London like I do, you might want to try this album for more of the same by a different singer.

edit for typo

Edited February 19, 2006 by GA Russell

[Bright Moments]

[JSngry]

I'm interested. These type of albums by these type of singers interest me more and more.

Wish the arranger had been somebody other than Sid Feller, though. His work with Ray, though always "good", was never "great" imo. Nothing at all wrong with it, but...

Day always was a good singer, and with good material and good charts she could give a very nice rendition. She didn't get a lot of that at Columbia, but when she did, the reults were invariably nice. This one sounds like it might be worth a check out.

BTW - the Day Columbia side that she did w/Andre Previn is a perfectly innocuous and perfectly tasty bit of singing. The "warble" (I think it's just her vibrato, really) is there too, and it does bug me a little, but it's still good songs well sung.

[JSngry]

I see that it's now being issued by Concord/Fantasy!

AMG Page

[GA Russell]

Jim, I don't know what Feinery's connection with Concord is. It may be an ownership issue, or it may be just distribution. Whatever it is, I bet it is the same situation as Concord's relationship with Chick Corea's Stretch Records.

Some time ago, maybe fifteen years ago, I saw in the store a Doris Day CD that featured songs from movies like Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back. In other words, early 60s material. From time to time I have wished that I had picked it up, but never so much that I would go to the effort of ordering it online (if I could ever find it).

Bright Moments, thanks for posting that. One of these days I'm going to have to learn how to do that! I've read that it's easy with Firefox, which is what I use.

[JSngry]

You might want to check out Day's earlier work w/Les Brown. That stuff'll make your manhood stand at attention, if you know what I mean...

[AllenLowe]

there are early Doris Day Columbias that, in my opinion, make her one of the greatest singers of that era: Day in Hollywood, Day By Night, and Day Dreams - absolutely gorgeous, sexy singing with perfect time that makes her a great neo-jazz singer. Her style changed a little bit later - that warble seemed to reflect some weird, new wholesomeness, and it spoils the later singing for me. She also sings beautifully on the sound track of Young Man with a Horn; check her out, as well, as Ruth Etting in Love me Or leave me (with Jimmy Cagney); these were the days, to paraphrase Oscar Levant, BEFORE she was a virgin -

Edited February 19, 2006 by AllenLowe

[jazzbo]

I hear ya. . . .

[jazzbo]

With Kitty Kalen

[jazzbo]

On cd, pretty good.

[Larry Kart]

I agree with Allen's post. A moment of revelation for me was the time I caught Day's first film (or the first one in which she starred) "Romance on the High Seas" (1948), on TV -- "absolutely gorgeous, sexy singing with perfect time" exactly. And not only was she very nice to look at, I also recall thinking that her physical relationship to the act of singing was strikingly direct and joyful. She does a number or two in the film with the Page Cavanaugh Trio that is/are very jazzy, in the good sense. This is the one in which Oscar Levant appeared with Day, thus giving him the authority to make his remark.

[GA Russell]

Sid Feller has died. Here's the obit from today's LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...news-obituaries

Sidney H. Feller, 89; Producer-Arranger Helped Create Rich Orchestral Sound for Ray Charles

By Valerie J. Nelson, Times Staff Writer

Sid Feller, a producer and arranger who helped create the rich, orchestral big band sound for Ray Charles that resulted in such hits as "Georgia on My Mind" and "I Can't Stop Loving You," has died. He was 89.

Feller, who had a history of heart trouble, died Feb. 16 at his home in the Cleveland suburb of Orange Village, said his daughter, Debbie Feller Glassman.

From the moment they stepped into a recording studio in 1959, Feller and Charles clicked. Their musical partnership lasted 30 years and resulted in hundreds of songs. Feller also regularly toured with Charles as a conductor.

"When they were working together, they were soul brothers," Michael Lydon, author of the 1998 biography "Ray Charles: Man and Music," told The Times. "Musically, Sid and Ray understood each other perfectly."

Charles, famous for being prickly about his music, "just adored" Feller, said David Ritz, who co-wrote Ray's 1978 autobiography, "Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story."

"Ray told me that 'Sid Feller is as close as I'm ever going to come to having a Jewish mother.' That's how Sid was — very warm and patient," Ritz said.

In a 2002 interview with Billboard magazine, Charles said of Feller, "That's my angel. He … knew exactly what I wanted …. [and] how to make them strings cry."

Charles' improvisational flourishes were, in reality, carefully orchestrated.

"Ray and I had worked out the charts weeks before, and Ray didn't change a note," Feller recalled in "Ray Charles: Man and Music." "Take after take, he'd sob and crack his voice in the same places."

Sidney Harold Feller was born Dec. 24, 1916, in New York City, one of three children of Michael Feller, an Austrian Jew who sold citrus fruit in a downtown market, and his wife, Riva.

While a Boy Scout, Feller learned to play trumpet and performed in New York City and the Catskills.

The piano entered his life through a third-floor window after his mother agreed to have one hoisted into his family's Brooklyn apartment. A friend helped him learn music theory, but he was self-taught as an arranger.

He was taking trumpet lessons in 1938 when he spotted Gertrude Hager, a 16-year-old chorus girl. They got married three years later while Feller was learning to become a bandleader at Army music school at Ft. Knox, Ky.

In 1951, he became a conductor and arranger for Capitol Records and made his reputation arranging easy-listening music for Jackie Gleason.

Instead of creating a standard big band sound with strings, Feller used orchestral touches and interesting melodic lines, Lydon said. Oboes were a signature touch.

At Capitol and ABC Records beginning in 1955, Feller also worked with Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, Mel Torme, Paul Anka, guitarist Charlie Byrd and Woody Herman's big band.

He had few writing credits but received one for "You Can't Say No in Acapulco" for the 1963 Elvis Presley movie "Fun in Acapulco."

In 1965, Feller moved to Los Angeles to work as a freelance arranger and producer, including arranging music for NBC's "The Flip Wilson Show" (1970 to 1974). He also worked with jazz singer Nancy Wilson and with Eddie Fisher.

In an appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" in the 1970s, Paul McCartney was asked which covers of his music he most liked.

"He said, 'I love Sid Feller's arrangements of 'Yesterday' and 'Eleanor Rigby' for Ray Charles,' " recalled Tony Gumina, president of the Cleveland-based Ray Charles Marketing Group.

Feller moved to Camarillo in 1977 and retired from arranging in the late 1980s. He no longer kept a piano in his house, which baffled Charles.

"How could someone with such music in him just stop?" Charles asked Lydon.

With his health failing — he had a quadruple bypass in the late 1990s — Feller and his wife moved to Ohio to live with his daughter Debbie.

At a screening of the 2004 biographical movie "Ray," Feller cried throughout because he felt Jamie Foxx's Oscar-winning performance brought his friend back to life. Charles had died four months before the movie's release.

Eight of the 17 soundtracks on "Ray" credited Feller as producer.

Recently, Feller's conducting baton — and a photograph of him with Charles — became part of the Smithsonian Institution's permanent collection.

In addition to his wife and his daughter Debbie, Feller is survived by two other daughters, Lois of Northridge and Jane Toland of Loyalton, Calif.; a son, Bill, of Cotati, Calif.; a brother; and five grandchildren.

[JSngry]

No virgin, real or imagined, could sing the words "inside of me" like Ms. Day does on the bridge of this one:

As for the rest of the words, it takes a real singer to have phrasing and timing this comfortable at this tempo.

The older I get, the better Doris Day sounds, and I always liked her well enough.

[Larry Kart]

Mmmm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxZCu_TjO9o

[JSngry]

[crisp]

Jim, have you heard this album? The cover image tells you all you need to know.

For my money, the sexiest moment in a Doris Day record is the very last, spoken, line of As Long as He Needs Me. Not a favourite song of mine, but she brings so much to it.

[Pete C]

No Aretha Franklin or Celine Dion for me.

What a horrifying juxtaposition.

She also sings beautifully on the sound track of Young Man with a Horn;

Yeah, though I'm not really a fan, her performance of The Very Thought of You in the film is exquisite, and very sexy.

[Dave James]

No Aretha Franklin or Celine Dion for me.

What a horrifying juxtaposition.

Not all that "horrifying" IMO. Both singers (anything Dion does and Franklin in her post Columbia years) have a tendency to be way over the top. I much prefer a certain level of subtlety from a female vocalist, something I get none of from either of them.

With regard to Doris Day, sexy is as sexy does. She may have tried to come across as a June Allyson-like girl next door, but there was a certain "je ne sais quoi" bubbling beneath the surface that whispered of something entirely different.

Edited December 7, 2011 by Dave James

[Pete C]

No Aretha Franklin or Celine Dion for me.

What a horrifying juxtaposition.

Not all that "horrifying" IMO. Both singers (anything Dion does and Franklin in her post Columbia years) have a tendency to be way over the top. I much prefer a certain level of subtlety from a female vocalist, something I get none of from either of them.

With regard to Doris Day, sexy is as sexy does. She may have tried to come across as a June Allyson-like girl next door, but there was a certain "je ne sais quoi" bubbling beneath the surface that whispered of something entirely different.

This is not intended as an insult, but I think you don't really have an understanding of soul music. Aretha's Columbia albums are tepid wastes of her true, Gospel-based talent. I assume you'd really hate Shirley Caesar and Inez Andrews.

[JSngry]

Hate Inez Andrews?

Such a thing is not possible.

[Pete C]

Hate Inez Andrews?

Such a thing is not possible.

The devil made me say it.

[JSngry]

I'm interested. These type of albums by these type of singers interest me more and more.

Wish the arranger had been somebody other than Sid Feller, though. His work with Ray, though always "good", was never "great" imo. Nothing at all wrong with it, but...

Day always was a good singer, and with good material and good charts she could give a very nice rendition. She didn't get a lot of that at Columbia, but when she did, the reults were invariably nice. This one sounds like it might be worth a check out.

Eight years later, I finally got around to getting this (it was in the right price at the right time). Doris Day really did have wonderful phrasing when she felt like it, effortless-sounding timing, great pitch, and a way of sneaking in some odd-sounding vowels and then getting back out of them that are like a wink that you think that only you are seeing.

Sid Feller's charts are...frustratingly excellent. The singing is so good that I wanted to hear some little quirkiness, some other choices being made in the arrangements, and they never come. It nver sounds anything less than excellent, though, so no complaints about what is there.

I guess there's some bonus cuts, some Jimmy Haskell things on there as well, don't know, haven't gotten to them yet. Just listened to about 5 songs on the way to my haircut this evening, and another five or so on the way back.

Geez, that Doris Day. some people, once the "cultural baggage" (and the mistakes they all made stemming from it) wears off, they benefit from the new light. Doris Day, yes, one of them.