Keely Smith - Spotlight on
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Keely SmithEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1995-03-21
Music Label: Capitol
Soundtracks:
- It's Magic
- You Go To My Head
- Stardust
- I Can't Get Started (With You)
- When Your Lover Has Gone
- Sweet And Lovely
- Stormy Weather
- Fools Rush In
- The Song Is For You
- Mr. Wonderful
- It's Been A Long, Long Time
- I'll Never Smile Agian
- Someone To Watch Over Me
- I'll Get By
- Don't Take Your Love From Me
- Lullaby Of The Leaves
- There Will Never Be Another You
- Imagination
- On The Sunny Side Of The Street
- I Wish You Love
Free Music Notes for Spotlight on
Free Music Review: The most perfect singer of them all?
Hit: 5 Stars
Although this collection has largely been eclipsed by the new "Essential" Capitol album, it does include a few jewels not on the recent release and is moreover a better example of the "undiluted" Keely--no duets with Prima or Sinatra, no Sam Butera and the Witnesses crowding out Nelson Riddle's sublime arrangements. One of the numbers on this collection and not on the new one is Jerome Kern's "Sweet and Lovely." Unlike Monk and other jazz musicians, I've never particularly cared for the tune--until hearing Keely do it. The woman is simply unreal. Where did she get a voice like that? What right does she have to sing that well? Other vocalists spend fortunes on vocal lessons to produce a few pleasant-sounding notes; Keely breathes in the smoke of the Sahara Lounge night after night, tries to sing over the din of a burlesque band (successfully), and keeps her cool while working with a headliner with the stage persona of a manic Neanderthal man--and she ends up with not only the voice but the technique of a singer without peer. Listen to the evenness of the vibrato, the contoured phrasing, the effortless tones supported by undetectable but firm and unfaltering breath support, the clear and pellucid soprano register that literally "floats" on a stream of uninterrupted melody, the varied articulations, enabling her to "bite" with the words when necessary even while maintaining that pure soprano. She's dead on pitch, she's consistent throughout the entire register (no falsetto "breaks"), she catches the dramatic expressiveness of a lyric's meanings, her diction doesn't risk the listener's missing a single word.
So why do the names of Rosemary, Doris, Peggy, Dinah, Kay, Patti, Anita, June and all the rest get mentioned ahead of Keely in any discussion of female singers? Because she says "ma" instead of "my"? "Hort" instead of "heart"? Or because she's just too consistently perfect not to be taken for granted? Moreover, with practically any other female singer there's a 20-year window (max) during which they must be heard to be fully appreciated, after which the breath starts to fail, the voice starts to wobble, the strain becomes unmistakable. Ella, Sarah, Carmen--true of all of them, but not of Keely. Heck, you can recommend Keely Smith recordings from the present millenium, made 50 years after this Spotlight collection, and not go wrong. Perhaps, and this is a big perhaps, she was a bit too quick to separate her life from her art. If we felt we got to know a little more of the person behind that deadpan Buster Keaton face with the perfect angelic voice, we'd be less likely to overlook her undeniable supremacy.
[As I write this, I see that the price of a new copy is under eight bucks. 20 tracks, and if you have Amazon Prime, it's even more of a screaming, irresistible bargain. If you choose not to pollute the environment with another jewel case and paper inserts, spend 20 bucks and download the tracks to your iPod. It's still a good deal--Nelson Riddle, Billy May and Keely. What more could you want?]
Spotlight on Poster
20 tracks from her late-'50s sessions with Nelson Riddle and Billy May, emphasizing familiar standards like "There Will Never Be Another You," "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "Fools Rush In," and "Stormy Weather." -All Music GuideBlues Music CDs
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