Jackie Paris on Mercury

This wonderful 1956 album was Jackie Paris' follow-up to Skylark, which I included in my last post on this great jazz vocalist.

For his second LP, the singer moved from Coral-Brunswick to Mercury. The new album was initially called Can't Get Started with You, after the Gershwin-Duke song that leads off the second side of the LP. It had a cover of several people draped all over one another on a beach.

Mercury must have thought better of the cover or the title - the LP's second pressing was called Songs by Jackie Paris, and sported the striking photo of the singer that you see above.

Jackie Paris

My transfer is from a later Japanese pressing that switched the label from Mercury's Wing subsidiary to the jazz-focused EmArcy marque, and changed the second color on the cover from blue to orange. (All these permutations can be found in the download.) The reprint also included two bonus songs - and I have added yet another, which we will get to in a moment.

The LP proper consists of standards such as the previously mentioned "I Can't Get Started," plus songs by Fred Fisher and his offspring. For this collection, the patriarch contributed the lyrics to "Whispering Grass," with music by his daughter Doris. It's s striking song, made more so by the intensity and sincerity of the vocalist, who imbues the words, "Whispering grass, don't tell the trees / For the trees don't have to know" with a spooky quality.

Doris Fisher also wrote the music for "That Ole Devil Called Love" with words by frequent collaborator Allan Roberts. Paris' reading is not inferior to Billie Holiday's famous 1945 version.

Also contributing songs was Fred's son Marvin, who wrote the lovely "Cloudy Morning" and "Strange." 

Manny Albam

The LP is very successful, not least because of the sterling charts by Manny Albam, one of the busiest arrangers of the time. One example of his imaginative work is the striking bass clarinet figure in "Heart of Gold," played by Romeo Penque. Albam's band included many of the finest studio musicians of the time, with a superior rhythm section of Barry Galbraith, guitar, Milt Hinton, bass, and Osie Johnson, drums. 

Bonus Songs

The sessions for Songs by Jackie Paris were held in November 1955. The singer had a follow-up Mercury date later in 1956, which yielded the single coupling of "Don't Hurt the Girl" and "Tell Me Something Sweet," both enjoyable without being memorable. No arranger is credited for his date. The two songs were included on the Japanese pressing of Songs by Jackie Paris, as I mentioned above.

For this post. I've also included one of Paris' earliest recordings. It comes from a 1949 session that also produced a coupling of "The Old Master Painter" and "Goodbye Sue" that was issued on the short-lived National label. The third song recorded at that session, "'Round Midnight," was certainly the most notable of the group, although it was initially unissued.

By the time of this session, "'Round Midnight" had become a bop anthem but Thelonious Monk actually had written it as an instrumental as early as 1941. Paris' recording was notable as the first one using Bernie Hanighan's lyrics. Even so, it remained on the shelf until EmArcy issued it as part of a 1955 compilation LP, Advance Guard of the 40s, which is the source of this transfer.