DORIS DAY

[AllenLowe]

listening now to her old recording of You're My Thrill.

She is my favorite singer, though a lot of her later and more "girlish" stuff puts me (and a lot of people) off.

Get her before, as Oscar Levant said, she became a virgin.

[flat5]

Kay Sarah, Kay Sarah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_My_Thrill_%28album%29

(Sarah Kay?)

Is this the recording?

Edited February 12, 2010 by flat5

[Christiern]

Doris Day has long been a favorite of mine.

[JSngry]

The lady had skills, no doubt.

[J.A.W.]

The Complete Doris Day with Les Brown

Edited February 12, 2010 by J.A.W.

[ghost of miles]

If I won a lottery I'd snap up the Bear Family boxes in a sec.

[Larry Kart]

Those two sides she did in 1950 with Harry James and a small group in conjunction with "Young Man With A Horn" -- "Too Marvelous For Words" and "The Very Thought Of You"! She phrased so gracefully at very slow tempos and was so sexy. Here's "Too Marvelous":

Dig the note she hits on "that" in the phrase "'and that old standby amorous."

[paul secor]

Nice vocal. Sounds like she'd been listening to Billie - especially in terms of tempo - less often in her phrasing.

[AllenLowe]

I have that sound track - great Harry James on that, too. I actually liked the movie, also.

[Dan Gould]

Sounded way strange to me because I've only heard that tune sung by Joe Williams, and it was medium-up, not molasses-slow.

[J.A.W.]

If I won a lottery I'd snap up the Bear Family boxes in a sec.

They contain some nice stuff, but unfortunately also a lot of dross. There were four boxes, but the last one, Move Over Darling, which covered the 1960s, is OOP.

Edited February 12, 2010 by J.A.W.

[BruceH]

I think the dismissive attitude of many people to her singing owes a lot to the fact that the style of singing she exemplified went pretty much out of fashion in the 1960's. But the woman did have skills, no doubt about it.

[JSngry]

That and the fact that she, by her own admission, made her singing career secondary to her acting & as a result made a lot of bullshit records.

But...

[Ted O'Reilly]

Doris did a lovely LP (in one session!) with Andre Previn, Red Mitchell and Frank Capp in late 1961 for Columbia. Some great tunes, including Nobody's Heart, In Love In Vain, Close Your Eyes, and others....

Edit to note: this is in the Bear Family releases, Vol. 3 I believe.

Edited February 12, 2010 by Ted O'Reilly

[AllenLowe]

the problem was that she also changed her style of singing - she took a lot of the sensuousness out of her voice, got kind of "girlish," as I said, though I know that's not a real precise description.

whereas on her version of I'm Confession she just does it right.

Edited February 12, 2010 by AllenLowe

[jazzbo]

I have to admit, she's never clicked with me at all. But she was undeniably quite a singer.

[AllenLowe]

have you listened to the songs from the late 1940s?

[Larry Kart]

have you listened to the songs from the late 1940s?

Not that I'm a scholar on this subject, but I agree with Allen that prime Day time might have begun to end by the early '50s. Listen, for instance, to these two versions of "It's Magic," the first from her first film, "Romance on the High Seas" (1948) -- the recording was a big hit --the second from 1952:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVoTPSLDgPE&feature=related

An impressive piece of singing, I suppose, the '52 version is also very "presentational" and kind of bravura blowsy at times, while the '48 one is IMO wonderfully warm and intimate. Also, the placement of her voice has clearly changed by '52, been pushed (forced?) upwards. Again, I'm not a Day scholar, but the upwards push I think I hear will lead to an overall thinning out of timbre, much less sustaining of tone, and choppier phrasing -- plus there's a perhaps related, perhaps unrelated advent of post-blowsy coyness in how the stories of the songs are presented (the thing Allen aptly describes as "kind of girlish"). I suppose we should be grateful that the young Day was so fine, but she was only 28 in 1952 and seemed on the basis of her earlier work to be a very technically secure vocalist. I wonder if there is some extramusical story behind these shifts.

[Larry Kart]

On the other hand, somewhat girlish though it may be, this 1959 version of "The Way You Look Tonight" reveals that Day's laidback time and phrasing could still be damn fine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V34t8i74pow&feature=related

Orchestra is Frank DeVol's, wonder who the muted trumpet is. Not Sweets, I think.

[JSngry]

Is that Tony Oliva?

[jazzbo]

have you listened to the songs from the late 1940s?

Yes, just not my thing, though she's full of talent.

[JSngry]

Horrible arrangement, but this tune should have been played more over the years:

[AllenLowe]

wow! thanks, Larry, love the 1959 "Way You Look Tonight." Shows she could turn it back on when she needed to.

I would say that the vocal change possibly coincided with the general change in the kind of parts she was playing.

just a theory -

[Larry Kart]

Is that Tony Oliva?

You lost me there. But, seriously, I'd guess Pete Candoli.

[JSngry]

No, I mean in the video, the Minnesota Twin guy.