Few pop singers in the 1950s could swing like Keely Smith. Anita O'Day was certainly one of them, but Smith was the finer vocalist and surely knew more songs and required fewer takes in the studio. In some respects, Smith was the female Frank Sinatra, able to move ahead of the beat, behind it and go a different way on song lines and pull them off.
So many of her albums are excellent with a different feeling on each one. Among them is Politely!, recorded in Hollywood in June 1958. Billy May was the arranger, perhaps at his peak, crafting fabulous harmonic riffs delivered by different sections of the band to fill in behind her vocal.
The reason I chose The Song Is You for this week's Perfection track is so you can hear those swaggering May lines and hear the monster trumpet section under Smith while she was singing live in the studio. The other sections weren't too shabby either.
Here's the band in Capitol Tower's Studio A: Pete Candoli, Conrad Gozzo, Manny Klein and Uan Rasey (tp); Joe Howard, Murray McEachern, George Roberts and Si Zentner (tb); Buddy Collette, Fred Falensby, Jules Jacob, Ted Nash and Wilbur Schwartz (saxes); Paul Smith (p); Alton Hendrickson (g); Verlye Mills (harp); Joe Mondragon (b); Lou Singer (tymp); Alvin Stoller (d) and Billy May (cond).
Here's the mono recording of Keely Smith singing The Song Is You...
Other Perfection tracks in this ongoing series...
- Paul Desmond and Jim Hall: Any Other Time, go here.
- John Coltrane: You Say You Care, go here.
- Quincy Jones: Funk Junction, go here.
- Art Farmer's Work of Art, go here.
- Miles Davis: A Gal in Calico, go here.
- Gene Krupa: Mulligan Stew, go here.
- Dave Brubeck: The Duke, go here.
- Horace Silver: The Back Beat, go here.
- Horace Parlan: Up & Down, go here.
- Dexter Gordon: Society Red, go here.
- Barney Kessel: You Go to My Head, go here.
- Count Basie: Corner Pocket, go here.
- Herbie Mann: Manteca, go here.
- Donald Byrd: Bronze Dance, go here.
- George Shearing: I'll Be Around, go here.
- Ammons & Stitt: You Talk That Talk, go here.
- Count Basie: Blues in My Heart, go here.
- Moonlight in Vermont, go here.
- Johnny Griffin / Matthew Gee, Here, go here.
- Jimmy Smith / Stanley Turrentine, When I Grow Too Old to Dream, go here.
- Chet Baker: Estate, go here.
- Jazz Studio 1: Tenderly, go here.
- Herb Pomeroy: Down Home Outing, go here.
- Frank Sinatra: There's a Small Hotel, go here.
- Bill Harris Herd: Blackstrap, go here.
- Gerry Mulligan: Westwood Walk, go here.
- Red Garland/Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis: We'll Be Together Again, go here.
- Bill Evans: Reflections in D, go here.
- Ted McNabb & Co.: Mountain Greenery, go here.
- Maynard Ferguson: Fox Hunt, go here.
- Serge Chaloff & the Herdsmen: The Most!, go here.
- Maynard Ferguson: Starfire, go here.
- Urbie Green, Please, go here.
- Machito, Conversation, go here.
- David Allyn, Love Is a Serious Thing, go here.
- Lennie Tristano, Wow, go here.
- Teddy Charles, Borodin Bossa Nova, go here.
- Gerry Mulligan, Night Lights, go here.
- Tommy Flanagan, In the Blue of Evening, go here.
- Stan Getz, Stella by Starlight, go here.
- Erroll Garner, It's the Talk of the Town, go here.
- Sonny Stitt, Miss Ann, Lisa, Sue and Sadie, go here.
- Phil Urso, P.U. Stomp, go here.
- Jimmy Forrest, Soul Street, go here.
- Harry James, late 1950s/early '60s, go here.
- Hal McKusick, You're Everywhere, go here.
- Dexter Gordon, I Want More, go here.
