Search - Susannah Mccorkle :: Thanks for the Memory - Songs of Leo Robin

My favorite

Steven R. Becker | Columbus, OH USA | 12/11/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"great range of emotion, with a witty presentation that will make you laugh on one song and cry with the next. in my humble opinion her best album, of the five I own. great stuff, from a guy who wrote terrific lyrics."

Susannah McCorkle working too hard

Keith Carlsen | Asheville, NC, USA | 12/21/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Leo Robin was one of the great musicals writers who isn't one of the first three or four you immediately think of when you think "standards writers", and probably for reasons not enitirely fair. For one thing, inasmuch as so many of his tunes are for women, Frank Sinatra didn't do all that many of them;and for better or for worse, the catalog of Sinatra is a pretty good approximation of the canonical American Songbook.



Susannah, therefore, had to do a Leo Robin album, and while these songs are great, Susannah's versions will for the most part never be the canonical version. She just works too hard at singing these songs, and consequently, they come off as a Berklee degree recital-exactly the reason so many people have never really been fans of several other "cabaret revival" vocalists, such as Karen Akers.



It doesn't help her case that the canonical versions of two of the most famous of these songs were defined by a non-singer and a singer better than she was credited for in her day but hardly in McCorkle's class, namely Bob Hope (Thanks For the Memory) and Marilyn Monroe (Diamonds). Those who follow my reviews know by now that I'm an irredeemable Monroe-worshipper, so if you think that colors my judgment that Marilyn's 'Diamonds' is a whole lot more fun to listen to than Susannah's, maybe you're right.



Monroe also did the other songs here from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", with Jane Russell, and briefly 'Thanks' as well in her last musical engagement-the JFK birthday show in Madison Square Garden-so her shadow is cast over this album more than perhaps even McCorkle realized. Marilyn was a reasonable vocalist-better than her modern emulator, Madonna-and it's a great regret she never recorded except for vocal parts to her films, although one could make a pretty good case she probably intended to and had in any case never intended to leave us so early!



Susannah's work succeeds-or, rarely, fails-on its own terms, and while this album is no failure, I reluctantly can only give it three stars, because it shouldn't be your first or second or probably even third McCorkle album. It's for McCorkle fans and hardcore students of Leo Robin only."

Stunning renditions of Leo Robins' fogotten gems...

Mr. B | Santa Ana, CA | 03/01/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Leo Robin who wrote such pop tunes as My Cutsie's Due At Two Two Two Today, has written many gems that are not recorded often enough by todays great jazz singers. Miss McCorkle does a perfect job with her "1930's art deco" swing style voice, and her litling and soulful swinging sense of rhythm, and unique(but always swinging)jazz phrasing. She is backed up by a small all-star swing combo includung trad jazz pianist Kieth Ingam. Miss Mccorkle was the answer to Maxine Sullivan's passing away, as McCorkle carried on the tradition of that style of swing singing. This cd features McCorkle covering Two Little Girls From Little Rock, It Was Written In The Stars, Thanks For The Memeory, My Cutsie's Due... and several other forgotten gems. These are difinitive version of Robin's songs sung by the classiest jazz singer of the 1980's & 90's, McCorkle kept the style of Maxine Sullivan and other older generation jazz and swing singers styles alive and brought them to new generations, and this cd is essential for anyone who likes to listen to timeless singers like Maxine Sullivan, Helen Humes and Lee Wiley."