Search - Teresa Brewer :: What a Wonderful World

High-class jazz album

Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 03/24/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Teresa proved her versatility in the fifties and sixties. Beginning as a jazz singer, she soon switched to pop and had much success with mainstream pop songs, novelty songs and pop covers of country and R+B songs. In the seventies, Teresa returned to her favorite music, jazz, and recorded some wonderful but often-overlooked music backed by some of the finest jazz musicians around. This album from the eighties is a fine example.The songs are mainly taken from the Great American Songbook but there are exceptions. Teresa does a great version of the title track (originally a hit for Sam Cooke but most commonly associated with Louis Armstrong), which dates from the late fifties but sounds like it belongs to an earlier era. Teresa also includes a fascinating cover of On the road again, a Willie Nelson song. Willie has recorded several albums of songs from the Great American Songbook but I'm sure he never imagined that any covers of his own songs would appear on an album mainly filled with such songs. Teresa's version is very different from Willie's but it sits comfortably on this album.Teresa's distinctive versions of such oldies as June night (a 1924 hit for Ted Lewis), I dream of you (originally a hit for Andy Russell, but Tommy Dorsey, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como all had hits with it), Just imagine (not a hit for anybody but a fine song), Isn't this a lovely day (a hit for Fred Astaire in 1935), I've got a feeling I'm falling (a 1929 hit for Gene Austin), Life is just a bowl of cherries (a 1931 hit for Rudy Vallee) and My heart belongs to Daddy (a 1939 for Larry Clinton with Bea Wain as his band's lead singer, also a 1939 hit for Mary Martin).That leaves one song, Come on and drive me crazy, which is also excellent but whose origin escapes me.If you want to sample some of Teresa's jazz music, you can't go wrong with this."