Silk Satin and 66 Strings - Georges Norman

Laura

Silk, Satin and Sixty-Six Strings
The Georges Norman Orchestra
Design Records/Division Of Pickwick Sales
DLP 39

Budget release, which recycles some tracks from the album titled The Enchanted Garden. However, it seems like Design's engineers ran the tracks through a reverb filter, possibly to help give the overall set some audio cohesion. It's hard to tell what was borrowed, what tracks are filler or what titles were sonically altered to complete either LP.

From the back cover: Here for the first time in America, DESIGN RECORDS is proud to present the artistry of a continental conductor-arranger of note. In this album of lush string phonic arrangements. George Norman brings to America the music that he has been delighting the continent with for over a decade. Georges was born in Marseille, France in 1921. Here he was subject to the color of the Mediterranean, the sailors, the ships, the cosmopolitan life of the traveler, the docks, and the magic of Southern France… always a panorama of color, gay music and mellow wine. He has chosen Laura by Dave Raskin and Johnny Mercer as his first American recording in honor of his lovely wife Laura Stephenson Norman. Laura is an American by birth. She met Georges while she was traveling with a USO show after the Second World War. He had recently been released from duty with the resistance forces and was trying to assemble a band. He heard Laura singing at Camp Lucky Strike; an American assembly area on the southwest coast of France and offered to help her with some of her arrangements. It wasn't long before the two fell in love and Laura (after completing her tour) return to France to marry Georges. They have two children, Pierre and Zizi and live comfortably in a little home on the Cote D' Azur. The orchestra Georges conducts here is the same organization that he leads at the Montparnasse nightclub where he plays dance music for Paris' elite. Noel Pinsult, France's leading music critic has called this musical group "the symbol of the Paris heart." There is a certain joy that you can only feel when you are in Paris. A blanket of happiness that envelops you the moment you step from your plane at Orly airport.

Laura
White Lilacs
Treasure Waltz
Oh Lovely May
Alone Together
When The Citron's Bloom
Stardust
Dancing In The Dark
Wine, Women And Song
The Nearness Of You
Yesterdays
Morning Journals