Search - Rosemary Clooney :: Love

A treasurer rediscovered

Jim Andrews | Chicago, Illinois USA | 12/17/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I well remember when this L.P. came out. Frank Sinatra was bringing everyone imaginable aboard his new Reprise Records from Jo Stafford to Dean Martin to Dinah Shore to Keely Smith to many many others and here came this album with a ravishing cover--the best Rosie ever got--and inside a truly eclectic selection of songs arranged magnificently by the unmatched Nelson Riddle and sung the Hell out of by Rosemary Clooney, far far away from her "This Ole House" and "Mangos" days for sure. It's a shock to learn many moons later this actually was RCA's followup to "Rosie Solves the Swinging Riddle" and the label disliked it so it wouldn't release. With his unerring insticts, Ole Blue Eyes acquired the master and got the album out, beautifully mastered and gorgeously packaged in a manner RCA never could have mustered up (RCA, Columbia and Decca never got anywhere near the album covers of Capitol, Reprise and M-G-M. The lamest album concepts and titles and worst covers came from Decca and, even worse, its Coral subsidiary--Teresa Brewer and the McGuire Sisters and Rosemary Clooney shoulda sued). Rosemary often said this was her finest album, which is really saying something, but she's right. It's so intelligent, so incisive and so damned beautiful. Don't miss it. Last time it was barely in the stores six months before it disappeared. Use this window of opportunity to grab it!"

Vindication of old Blue's good taste

Samuel Chell | Kenosha,, WI United States | 07/01/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is the album that was a metaphoric and literal love affair between Rosie and Nelson Riddle. Yet Capital, reluctant to spend money packaging and promoting an album not reflective of the contemporary, "populist" sounds of the sixties, wouldn't release it. Determined to prove his old employer wrong, Frank Sinatra, who early in the fifties had made tons of money for Capital by returning to the classics of the "Great American Songbook," purchased the master tape and released it on his own label, Reprise. But the public was no longer buying this sort of sophisticated romantic sound, so the album quickly vanished from sight. Thankfully, it's back, and the quality is every bit as first rate as one might expect from music and musicians of this magnitude. Rosie brings to the songs not only the youthful tone and sustained breath support of her earlier years but the maturity of interpretation characteristic of her later Concord period. Perhaps it was a slight miscalculation to go with an exclusively ballad program, an approach that had worked well with the carefully sequenced Sinatra sessions ("In the Wee Small Hours," "Only the Lonely," "September of My Years") but that almost proves too much of a good thing in this heavily textured collection. Treat this one like an expensive torte, savoring its rich, sinfully delicious pleasures in small amounts, and you won't be disappointed."

Rosemary at her best

Samuel Chell | 07/06/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This truly is one of the most beautiful recordings I've ever listened to. It's haunting and I never tire of it. The choice of music is wonderful and the arrangements by Nelson Riddle are superb. After reading "Girl Singer", Ms. Clooney's autobiography, I was attracted to this album because she thought it one of her best. And I have to agree. This is Ms. Clooney in her prime, she was in love with Nelson Riddle, a hopeless love affair because he was a married man, and the emotion in her voice reveals just that, the feelings of a woman in love. It's almost as though she was singing it to him, and I suspect she was. A must for anyone who loves a beautiful voice and a superb selection of love songs."