A very moody, heady, tribute to the style and feel of June Christy’s classic Capitol album, Something Cool. But Bentyne retains a unique style and a very personal interaction with Isham’s arrangements and soloing. Excellent sound; great late evening jazz. You’re going to have to snatch this one fast. Cut-out copies are available at Tower Records.com as of 11/2/00. Except for Diana Krall and Patricia Barber, she puts to shame the rest of the female vocalists marketed to the audiophile community.

June Christy is the very model of the nearly vibrato-less "cool" 1950s jazz sound, alternately carefree or resigned to fate, bittersweet and jaded. She was a graduate of the Stan Kenton orchestra with whom she had a number of hits and on these three albums uses Kenton arranger Pete Rugolo and soloing from her saxophonist husband, Bob Cooper.

Christy seemed to fall back heavily on mannerisms in the latter part of her career, but you are completely safe here. This is the "A" material of a great jazz/ballad singer.

Something Cool is her classic album, the one that established her style. It is largely melancholy in content ("The Night We Called It A Day," "This Time The Dream's On Me," and the title tune) and perhaps harder to approach for those not inclined toward introspection.

Gone For The Day is perhaps the most easily accessible of the group for the novice. I've always loved the innocent beauty of "It's So Peaceful In The Country," and "Lazy Afternoon." There's also marvelous version of "When The World Was Young (Ah, The Apple Tree)."

But if I had to choose only one, and you shouldn't, The Misty Miss Christy may be her best effort with absolutely knock-out, definitive versions of "I Didn't Know About You," and "Daydream" in a stunning back to back presentation.

Don't be afraid that these are mono recordings. They have good high fidelity sound.

Blossom Dearie is one of the best, but least known jazz/cabaret singers. The appearance of these four albums on CD is a landslide find for collectors who never acquired this material on hard-to-find vinyl.

Blossom's voice and style mimic her name: light, intimate, surprisingly girlish and innocent, while insouciant and sexual in turns. She is a master of interpreting a lyric without affect, the prerequisite for any truly great singer. These four albums are the apexes of her career. All four are in intimate settings where close miking captures the nuances of her "small" voice. Gentlemen, you are going to want to hear Blossom whisper to you.

Start with Once Upon A Summertime for the tender ballads therein, then search out Blossom Time for "I'm Hip," the hilarious send up of trendy society:

Then collect the mono's.

Almost 10 years after her astounding, Grammy-winning performance on Here's To Life, Shirley Horn again teams up with arranger Johnny Mandel for another hands-down winner.

Horn is a modern master of subtly in interpreting a lyric. With a well controlled vibrato, a satin voice, and exquisite timing, she gets more out of a whisper or a slight pause and anyone singing today. Like Sinatra, she has the erotic gift of seeming to sing personally to you, as if this were not a performance, as if she were next to you.

About half the tunes are up-tempo; easy, sensuously swinging things like "Why Don't You Do Right (Like Some Other Men Do)," or "The Rules of the Road." The rest are lost-in-your-eyes ballads. "You're My Thrill" is taken at an ultra slow tempo and is imbued with every bit of Horn's minimal glitz/deep meaning paradigm. It's the second great interpretation of this classic ballad by a modern singer. [Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now is the other.]

Finally, if you have any pretensions of liking jazz singing and don't already own Here's To Life, you need to purchase it immediately or be laughed at by your friends. The sound is great on both CDs and Johnny Mandel's arrangements never intrude or swamp the singer. Tasteful. Gorgeous.

  Lilac wine is sweet and heady,
  Like my love…lilac wine,
  I feel unsteady, like my love.
  Oh, listen to me. I cannot see clearly
  Isn't that he coming to me…nearly here.

Just superbly sung against the gentle accompaniment! King has a much more cultured voice than the typical jazz singer. More controlled and mannered, it may take some getting used to. It is a café voice, not a big band swingers' voice.

Tender Moments is an excellent anthology of King's recordings on the Muse label. The 15 tracks are well chosen, but it has the disadvantage of all anthologies: you duplicate some material if you go on to collect the originals. It comes at a bargain price.

A smoky, late-night joint. Crowded tables and 6 partially emptied Schlitz beer bottles on the table. Someone is singing. The style seems evenly and seamlessly divided between an R&B ballad style and jazz. The singer lags behind the beat in a world-weary manner, sometimes nearly whispering, sometimes nearly talking.

There is something different about the voice. You peer through the smoke at a small, thin, older man, but the craggy voice sounds nearly like a woman's. It's the result of a hormonal abnormality in his youth that caused his voice to never "change" during his teenage years. Yet there is the overlay of age and experience. And he seems to suspend time, here, in our late-night joint, in the wee small hours.

How does one recommend such a strange, initially off-putting portrait of a singer? Well, in jazz it's always been the ability to interpret a lyric and syncopate time that has been most important - not the absolute purity (or incongruity) of the voice. And Scott is totally unique in personality, yet familiar in the context of American music.

The man has been singing since the mid 40s and recording since 1952. He mostly does the standards and some quality R&B material. "Little" Jimmy Scott has been an influential jazz vocalist, albeit very much in the background as far as the average jazz fan or record collector is concerned. Jazz singer Nancy Wilson credits Scott as a major factor in her development as a stylist.

Scott recently began recording again and the lead CD of this group, Mood Indigo, features a high-powered group of jazz musicians to back him up. Scott gives them room to stretch out between his choruses. The lead song, "Smile," takes you aback, both for the bitterly ironic way it's phrased and in the sound of the voice. What's going on here? The tempo picks up, Hank Crawford and Crus Chestnut solo beautifully, and Scott reenters in a minor groove, resolving his sorrow, swinging easily into the future. And so it goes, each standard getting it's own unique reading, with "Imagination" and "Day By Day" developing into minor masterpieces of café singing.

Over The Rainbow is Scott's latest release and it maintains the same high quality of interpretation and musicianship. "P. S. I Love You," and "Just Friends," are standouts. His version of "Strange Fruit" is totally unique in both his phraseology and the musical arrangement.

If these wet your appetite, The Savoy Years and More documents Scott in the youthful prime of his career. Here the emphasis in style is a bit more in the R&B strain, a result of the 50s milieu.