DRG Records, US
(509999-64827-2-8)
Release date: July 7, 2009
DRG Records and EMI Music Special Markets present Peggy Lee’s first album recorded in stereo, finally available in stereo on CD.
While many great arrangers contributed to the classic pop vocal albums of the 1950s and 1960s, few are as revered as Nelson Riddle (1921-1985). Best remembered today for his many hit collaborations with Frank Sinatra — 14 albums and dozens of singles on the Capitol and Reprise labels — Riddle also arranged and conducted enduring works for Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr., Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Jack Jones, Dean Martin, Johnny Mathis, Dinah Shore, Keely Smith… and Peggy Lee. The Lee-Riddle partnership at Capitol spanned a short period of time: eight sessions between April, 1957 and January, 1958 that resulted in two albums and a few singles, all now available from DRG with the releases of The Man I Love and Jump for Joy.
On Jump for Joy, buoyed by Riddle’s large orchestra with a prominent use of vibraphone and harp, Peggy sails through a dozen up-tempo songs, one of them recent (Just in Time from the Broadway hit Bells Are Ringing, by Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green) and the rest from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, including titles by Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington, E.Y. Harburg, Burton Lane, Frank Loesser, Jimmy McHugh, and Richard Whiting. The title song Jump for Joy by Ellington and Sid Kuller, from their 1941 musical revue of the same name, beautifully captures the brassy, bubbly, percussive charm of an album that was clearly designed to make the very most of stereo technology. It jumps with joy.
DRG’s release includes two Lee-Riddle bonus tracks from 1957 singles sessions: Listen to the Rockin’ Bird, which Peggy performed on The Frank Sinatra Show that year, and Baby, Baby Wait for Me, heard here in a previously unreleased version. The sixteen-page booklet includes rare photos, original cover art, detailed personnel information, and liner notes by Will Friedwald.
Originally released as Capitol T/ST-979 (1958); mixed and mastered in 2009 from the original three-track session tapes by Alan Silverman at Arf! Digital, New York
1. Jump for Joy
2. Back in Your Own Back Yard
3. When My Sugar Walks Down the Street
4. I Hear Music
5. Just in Time
6. Old Devil Moon
7. What a Little Moonlight Can Do
8. Four or Five Times
9. Music! Music! Music!
10. Cheek to Cheek
11. The Glory of Love
12. Ain’t We Got Fun
Bonus tracks
(from 1957 singles sessions)
13. Listen to the Rockin’ Bird (original mono single)
14. Baby, Baby Wait for Me (previously unreleased stereo version)