Buddy Greco

Recently Will Friedwald let me know that Buddy Greco was celebrating his 85th birthday (it was August 14), and suggested that I might want to mark the occasion with a post devoted to the great swinging vocalist.

I'll do better than that - this is the first of two posts devoted to Buddy. Will is a great admirer of his, so let me quote from Will's recent book A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, where he calls Greco "the perfect synthesis of the two greatest male jazz-pop artists of the mid-twentieth century, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole." As Will says, Buddy has the swagger of Frank and the piano skill and precision of Nat.

Buddy in 1957

This 1956 LP, unreissued since then, is a good example. Unlike most of Greco's later records, it features his piano playing along with his singing, with repertoire selected from shows then (or recently) on Broadway. The least known show on the list is the Harry Warren flop Shangri-La, which closed in less than a month. Interestingly, this record contains a song that apparently did not make it into the final show, "Listen to the Sound of My Love." This suggests that this record was taped in the run-up to the show's June opening.

As Will points out in his book, Buddy heavily influenced the swinging side of Bobby Darin, and the template for Darin's biggest hit can be heard on this LP - "Mack the Knife," although Darin's version is more flamboyant and has a big band backing. Greco also influenced (either directly or through Darin) such quasi-rock artists as Bobby Rydell.

Broadway Melodies was Buddy's first LP for Kapp and only his second overall, I believe. Too bad that Kapp did not do very good work on the sound. Buddy sounds like he was recorded in a closet and his band like they were recorded in another closet down the hall. I've done my best to address this, with some success, and the results are pleasant if not the ultimate in fidelity.

As a bonus, I've included a single that Buddy recorded at about the same time as the album. It couples "Love Don't Be a Stranger" with "In Time to Come". The latter is a Carolyn Leigh-Phil Springer song that is strongly reminiscent of their hit for Sinatra, "How Little We Know," which had come out just a few months earlier. Jerry Wald contributes a suitably Riddle-like arrangement to the effort.

These days, Springer is best known for "Santa Baby," but he also had such gems as "I Want Eddie Fisher for Christmas." Carolyn Leigh was just about to embark on a notable partnership with Cy Coleman, which brought forth another Sinatra classic, "Witchcraft," along with such shows as Wildcat and Little Me.

Oddly, the sound on the 45 is much better than the LP. I'll be back at a later time with some of Buddy's early recordings for Coral and other labels.