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Rosemary Clooney - Rosie
Solves The Swingin' Riddle! (RCA/Bluebird)
Originally Released - 1960
Rosemary Clooney - Love (Reprise)
Originally Recorded - 1961 Originally Released - 1963
I saw "White Christmas" as a kid, and thought Rosemary Clooney was just
about the prettiest woman I'd ever seen. I must have been nine or ten.
According to her memoir, "Girl Singer," Nelson Riddle apparently thought
Rosie was pretty special, too...a feeling she apparently reciprocated.
(Sorry, kids. You need to read the book.)
All of that led me to these two recordings. According to her story, while
she recorded the album, "Love," with Riddle for RCA, she was so overcome with emotion that, "...tears ran
down my face as I stood at the microphone."
Well, yikes! I had to take a listen for myself. The album was originally recorded in 1961. As legend goes, RCA
thought it was a clinker, and buried it in the vault. After Frank Sinatra left Capitol
and started his Reprise label in 1963, his people were hungry for content.
They purchased the masters from RCA, releasing the disc under the Reprise
label. Allmusic's reviewer calls the disc, "...the most ravishingly
beautiful album of Clooney's career."
Well, it is very good. Riddle's arrangements on this one are far
superior than anything he did for Linda Ronstadt. Lush, thoughtful. This
is a hand-crafted job for him. And Ms. Clooney is also very good. I think
it's fair to say that nothing after this one was as good. But there's an
underlying melancholy in her voice, and frankly in this disc, that makes me
think both of them knew this love affair was doomed.
Or am I reading too much into this?
For pure joy - and arrangements nearly as good, I strongly suggest the
happier of the Clooney-Riddle collaborations - 1960's "Rosie Solves The
Swingin' Riddle," also available as a re-release. The arrangements are
more typically Riddle - trombones and saxes punctuating lush strings - but
Ms. Clooney is more clearly smitten on this one, and the performance is
brighter and more playful.
But perhaps I'm reading too
much into it all again.
Both discs are great outings for each of 'em, and they're both i-Tune-able.
Given a choice, though - I'd rather listen to infatuation than the cold,
gray morning of reality any day. Should you read the book (I found mine at
the library), the story is a heartbreaker.
Rosie Solves The Swingin' Riddle :
  Three
and one-half microphones (out of four)
Love:
Three microphones (out of four)
- Doug Boynton
(05/01/06) |
