June Christy sings Something Cool - A Centenary Tribute, Her 55 Finest 1945-1960

The ‘cool’ Miss June Christy is presented in a fabulous centenary collection of her best music from the Stan Kenton and Pete Rugolo years. When Illinois-born Shirley Luster (1925-1990) became the cool-voiced jazz singer June Christy she also became one of the leaders of the hip vocal school founded by Anita O’Day, whom she replaced with Stan Kenton. Going solo in 1947, she was a regular poll-winner yet remains one of the most undervalued singers of the post-swing era. She was blessed with a wholesome but peculiarly sensuous voice, and a bright, bubbling personality glowed through all her performances; effective in uptempo swingers, yet also adept at reflective ballads. Retrospective’s June Christy sings Something Cool presents the cream of her recorded repertoire from her 1945 to 1960 heyday. There are 19 tracks with either Stan Kenton’s Orchestra or the Kentones, including her two million sellers, Tampico and Shoo Fly Pie And Apple Pan Dowdy and such unforgettable interpretations as How High The Moon, It’s Been A Long, Long Time, Across The Alley From The Alamo and Willow, Weep For Me. And there are three intimate titles accompanied solely by Stan Kenton at the piano.  No fewer than 26 of the remainder benefit from Pete Rugolo’s inspired arrangements and include her wonderfully sensitive renditions of songs that are the very epitome of ‘cool’: Something Cool, Midnight Sun, I Should Care, It Could Happen To You and so on. Half a dozen classics arranged by Christy’s tenor-sax-playing husband, ex-Kenton sideman Bob Cooper, are added to complete an unbeatable survey of a great jazz singer. Scandinavian song has to be the most unjustly underperformed of the song repertoire, but once discovered, it is difficult not to evangelise to everyone you meet about what they might be missing out on. It set me off on my own journey; I raided the archives of Nordic composers, both well-known and little performed.