Eydie Gormé: Eydie Swings the Blues (1957) / Eydie in Love (1958)

Although most of her career was conducted during the rock era, traditional pop singer Eydie Gormé carved out a place for herself in several areas of entertainment. For 20 years, from the mid-'50s to the mid-'70s, she consistently scored in the pop charts, with a parallel place in the Latin pop field from the '60s on. For most of her career, she worked both solo and in a duo with her husband, Steve Lawrence. Soon before she married him, in 1957, Eydie released Swings the Blues, where we find her spreading her jazz wings and digging into a nice selection of pop/jazz/blues-style material. Paired here with her usual conductor and good friend Don Costa, it's one swingin' tune after the next. From the opening 'I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues,' right to 'A Nightingale Can Sing the Blues', the theme is obvious; the sentiment apparent. Costa and Gorme would go on to record many more albums together, as would Costa and Steve Lawrence. This album was, undoubtedly, a precursor for great things to come from Costa's baton and Gorme's pipes. Standouts here include Harold Arlen's 'When the Sun Comes Out,' with its torchy, soaring vocals and blazing brass all around Miss Gorme, and the sly underlying of 'I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart' in the arrangement of another Duke Ellington classic 'Don't Get Around Much Anymore.' Listen how effortlessly Eydie glides over vocal triplets on the tags of the old standards 'After You've Gone' and Gershwin's 'The Man I Love'. A year after this release, in 1958, Eydie recorded Eydie in Love, a heartfelt, deeply sincere collection of love songs and ballads that's sweet but never saccharine, thanks as much to her poignant vocals as to the impeccable backings of Costa. Gormé manages to articulate both girlish infatuation and world-weary resignation with authority and understanding, all rendered with the signature warmth that makes her records so appealing. From the opening strains of the poignant 'When the World Was Young,' sung here by young Eydie from a woman's point of view, to the classic, simple reading of 'In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,' to Eydie's soaring vocals on the torchy 'Love Letters,' it's just one beautiful song after another. It is interesting to note that Steve Allen wrote the lovely 'Impossible'. Let's not forget Eydie recorded this in the earlier days of her career at age 27, just after she married Steve Lawrence, whom she met on the original Tonight Show hosted then by Steve Allen himself. A labor of love from one of the classiest female vocalists ever. http://www.amazon.com/
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Eydie Gormé singing 'Ma He's Making Eyes At Me':

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Eydie's rendtion of 'I Wanna Be Around', 1966:

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