Cole Porter - It's De Lovely - The Authentic Cole Porter Collection
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Free Music Notes for It's De Lovely - The Authentic Cole Porter Collection
Free Music Review: BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD!
Hit: 3 Stars
On the face of it, much care has been take in the production of this CD; a glossy liner note penned by Will Friedwald, embellished by photos of Porter, his RCA Victor contract, a record wrapper, and the reproduction of the scroll Victor label on the CD itself. Add to that two of Porter's own recordings to which Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks have overlaid an orchestral accompaniment, and vocals by Lena Horne, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Al Bowlly, Fred Astaire, and Rosemary Clooney and you have the basis for an excellent tribute to the supreme lyricist/composer.
But that is not enough. "The Authentic Cole Porter Collection" needs the words as well as the music, and no fewer than seven of the nineteen tracks are lacking that vital ingredient. I've no objection to any jazz artist playing just the melody, least of all Artie Shaw with "Begin The Beguine" and Coleman Hawkins with "I Love Paris", but the inclusion also of Shorty Rodgers, Sonny Rollins, Paul Desmond, Tommy Dorsey, and Esquivel (who?), is surely under-egging the pudding.
To add insult to injury, the claim is made "What's special about this collection is that the selections ... are ... the performances that he himself heard when the songs were still fresh". Oh no they're not, to put it politely. You also need to get the words right when you do use them. It was "Delicious" and "Delightful" and "Delirious" but "De Lovely" it was not.
Free Music Review: Mixed reaction
Hit: 3 Stars
I bought this CD for my wife based on the great review it got here on Amazon. We were disappointed.
While there are many interpretations on this CD that I enjoyed, there are just as many that should have been left off. With some of them (e.g. track 6, It's Delovely) I had to refer back to the CD cover to read what it was that I was listening to. In other cases the quality of the recording is poor. And finally of course there is personal preference - some of the interpretations I just didn't like.
I agree that there are many of the old masters performing on this CD. Some of them did however not have a good day when they recorded these songs.
I was debating whether to give this CD 2 or 3 stars. It's more like a 2.5, so I give it a 3. I'll have to keep shopping for a Cole Porter collection that I like though.
Free Music Review: Disappointing, not delovely, collection
Hit: 2 Stars
Perhaps I should have read the print on the back more closely when I bought this on a whim. I should've known what to expect from Sonny Rollins or what they meant by "period performances" (i.e,. performances in the style of a period, but not necessarily from the period). So I got what was coming to me.
Nonetheless, I still feel cheated. This collection isn't what it appears to be, from the front cover, to the back blurbs, to the liner notes. It's a very uneven hodge podge of various recordings of Porter songs by a pretty wide assortment of artists. For too many tracks, these aren't "authentic" interpretations reflective of the period Porter and wrote and lived in, but typical "jazz standard" types of interpretations more reflective of the performing artist's own period. And don't be fooled (like I was) by seeing Cole Porter's name listed as the recording artist for two tracks - yes, those are his vocals, but the backing band is a contemporary band who've re-recorded the band section in a "period performance" style. It makes for a "cleaner" sound overall, but any one with a discerning ear will likely find the sonic incongruency between the '34 recording of Porter's voice and the '04 recording of the band too irksome.
And that's just one of several problems with this CD. It's not that these are bad performances - they're not. It's just that as a collection, they're not reflective of what the CD packages tries to tell you they are. For example, Sonny Rollins' hard bop era rendition of one of Porter's most beloved songs, "It's Delovely," is solid as anything Rollins did at the time. But it's hard bop, not swing, and it's instrumental, not vocal. So you get Rollins' wicked sax noodling, but not Porter's charming and witty lyrics. For a *Porter* collection, that's a considerable disappointment, and especially so, seeing the liner notes themselves set you up for that: "[Porter's] comic opuses like "It's Delovely" and "Let's Do it" exploit the lyricist's idea to tell topical jokes in rhyming patterns and exaggerated language, but at the same time they're wholly dependent on Porter the melodist to propel them with a catchy rhythmic motif." [liner notes, pg. 4] Well, it's would great to have to chance to hear that, but you won't with this CD. Not only is Rollins' "It's Delovely" instrumental, the other song they offer us as a choice example of Porter's comical lyricisms isn't even on this CD.
The other thing that boggles my mind is that there's no clear logic to how they selected these particular tracks. Some of the vocal tracks are very short, and don't give you a chance to ingest their Porterness. For example, Horne's "From This Moment On" and Clooney's "You Do Something to Me" both clock in under 2 minutes (compare that to Rollins' lyricless track that nearly 7 minutes long). I fear the tacks on here are so more because these were the ones the CD compliers' were able to get rights for, more than being ideal representations of Porters' songs.
I'll give it 2 stars because the preformances aren't bad in and of themselves, but regrettably, if you're looking for that one CD that'll scratch that distinctly Porter itch, I doubt this will be the one. It certainly isn't for me.