Songs Tailored To Your Taste - Beverly Shaw

 

Jezebel

Miss Beverly Shaw 

Presents Songs Tailored To Your Taste

James McDonald Trio

Club Laurel Records CLR 1001

1962 (handwritten notation on back cover)

The cover image is printed on "foil" paper stock.

From the back cover: Here, at last, is a long over-due collection of songs indicative of one of the truly unique personalities of the entertainment world: Miss Beverly Shaw. As you read down the list, most of the titles will be familiar, but do not be mislead – once Beverly sings a song, it somehow becomes a personal property, a certain indefinable something is added. She sings! She swings! She conquers! That is true, you need only ask one of her impressive host of fans to verify, the fans that she has gathered from her Greenwich Village days to San Francisco's famed Telegraph Hill, she is reminiscent of the forcefulness and dynamic charm of Tallulah Bankhead, the luridness of Marlene Dietrich and the sense of humor of Hermoine Gingold. Holding a gaily-spurious sort of court nightly now in her Club Laurel, where  Beverly is the obvious mistress of all she surveys, her devoted  followers assemble to hear her sing, and often to be regaled by the frequent shafts of wit with which she ruinously impales the unwitting and the overly familiar; a practice curiously enough, that breeds only further adulation.

Imagine the scene: a Parisienne Atmosphere of intimacy dedicated to the dulcet vocalization of Miss Shaw, a piano bar, complete with a delicious spoof of a candelabra, and atop it (the piano of course) this girl who sings. "Aside from the candelabra, what's so different?" – you might ask. Take a closer look, and you will note atop the girl, a fabled mane of red hair, which she is wont to use in meaningful gesture, in visual punctuation, as she sings her songs "tailored to your taste." Her chic and sophisticated attire astounds and intrigues her audiences. Once La Shaw captures you in her gaze, and with a deadly accuracy, flings a length of mike cord over her shoulder, she starts her pursuit of her favorite lyrics. By then, she has fixed you helplessly with a searching look of brazen scrutiny, a secret-stripping tabulation. Here there, are some of the songs – her naughtily-sizzling version of "Honey Suckle Rose," and her dynamic version of "Jezebel" and wrought with a genuine regret – her famed signature song "Where Did The Night Go?" – as well as other that you will be hearing as if for the first time – straight from her heart via the Club Laurel into your. – Christopher Barton

I'm Nobody's Baby

It's All In The Game

Jezebel

Honey Suckle Rose

Day In Day Out (Cha Cha)

Something I Dreamed Last Night

Little Girl Blue

Canadian Sunset (Cha Cha)

Secret Love

Just In Time

Unchained Melody

Where Did The Night Go