Search - Sammy Davis Jr :: Lonely Is the Name

Transitional album that didn't quite take

artanis65 | Washington, DC | 04/20/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I love Davis' voice during the late 60's. On ballads, he'd stopped imitating Sinatra and had developed a style of his own, consisting of what one reviewer calls the "Sammy Surge" where his voice swells over the music. His voice had developed character and interesting shades of color, particularly on the lower notes. It also seems as if many male singers' voices peak in their early 40's. Davis turned 40 in 1965.



The album's styles are all over the place. The title song by Bert "Strangers in the Night" Kaempfert has a wonderful pop hook, though it falters a little in the bridge and wasn't the hit Davis was looking for. He does two inferior remakes of standards he did on an earlier excellent album with guitarist Laurindo Almeida. There are also several R & B numbers in which Davis takes a crack at expanding his audience. Of these, I really liked "Shake Shake Shake" which sounded familiar and on a third or fourth listen, reminded me of "My Mother the Car" on Davis' "That's All" album. He does an awful bluesy version of "The Good Life" and sings "You've Got Your Troubles" which just isn't a very good song.



There's also some prime Davis here. "Don't Take Your Time" is a catchy uptempo ballad. Davis swings his way through "All That Jazz." Perhaps the best track and one worth buying the album for is "Children Children" which is marred only slightly by an inappropriate arrangement that starts out sounding like a Christmas song with a choir. It probably would have worked better with Davis just singing with guitar. The song is about a man defeated by life looking on some children playing and trying to remember what it was like to feel young, happy, and hopeful. The lyrics are way out there, "Children Children can you see me/I can't see you at all." It's pitch black.



Ultimately, Davis failed to prove he could appeal to the young as an R&B singer and went back to singing jazz and pop ballads on his next album, "I've Gotta Be Me." Good thing. There's enough mediocre R&B singers out there to fill a battleship; there's very few singers who could ever hope to do jazz and pop standards as well as Davis."