In The Heart Of The Dark - Les Crosley

 

Sometimes I'm Happy

In The Heart Of The Dark

Les Crosley

Produced by Marty Palitz

Cover Design: Sy Leichman

Photograph: Charles Varon

Jubilee Records JLP 1082

1958

From the back cover: Les Crowley is a phenomenon in the world of popular modern piano players. He is that rarity among keyboard stylists who has known equal success as a soloist and as accompanist to singers.

And he experience a unique artistic renaissance, when, after illness had kept him away from the piano for six years, he returned to his music to reveal remarkable new depths of sensitivity and versatility.

Like the most touching of singers, he adapts his mood and style to the song of the moment, until one often feels that he is playing words, or, certainly, emotions, rather than simply notes.

This collection of great standards illustrates a most impressive diversity of moods.

It is hard to imagine a more thorough contrast than that expressed in two Youmans numbers, "Through The Years" is offered with a mixture of dignity and nostalgia that brings to it a stature it rarely receives when sung. And in "Hallelujah" from "Hit The Deck," there is a tripping, jaunty stylishness that makes it quite impossible to keep one's feet still.

Crosley has an original approach to "Too Marvelous," which he renders in a startlingly slow tempo, achieving a majestic quality which yet preserves the insinuating elements of the melody.

"Will You Be Mine," is impudent, and habit forming as peanut brittle.

Lester Crosley was something of a prodigy, giving out piano concerts as a child in his home near Hartford, Connecticut. Out of high school, and studying at the Julius Hart music school, he was for five years on the staff of station WTIC in Hartford.

He came to New York in the middle Thirties to join Ray Noble's band which was then holding forth at the Rainbow Room. With that organization, the  young pianist participated in a coast-to-coast theater tour of the United States and Canada, with the great comedienne, Sheila Barrett. Next he joined forces with a rhumba band of Ramon Ramos, which opened at the Ambassador in New York, and then launched the Camellia House of The Drake Hotel in Chicago. When Ramos was inducted into the Army, Crosley took over the orchestra.

That group was broken up when he returned to New York and began a term as accompanist for the fabulous stylist Mabel Mercer at West Side Tony's, where they continued for three years.

During this spell, Crosley also appeared regularly with Cy Walter and other pianists on radio's Piano Playhouse.

Later on he shared keyboard honors with Walter at the Drake Hotel in Manhattan, then for a while doubled into the same chain's Dorset Hotel at midnight.

His next move was back to the world of vocalizing, as matchless accompanist for Julie Wilson with whom he did two runs at the St. Regis in New York, while still appearing at the Drake.

Crosley left the latter hostelry in order to go with Miss Wilson to Europe, and played for her in London at the Astor and the Colony and later at the Embassy there.

They returned to this country and proceeded on a national tour with lengthy stopovers in New Orleans, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles. At the end of the tour, they returned to New York's St. Regis for their third engagement there within fifteen months. At the end of that booking, Julie returned to London to work at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Crosley filled engagements as soloist at the Blue Angel and the Little Club in Manhattan. He has most recently been working at home again, playing at the Statler Hotel in Hartford

This album, with its intensity, versatility, style and easy technical prowess, is a tribute to a career compounded of triumph and vicissitude in what proves to be the most fortunate proportions. – William Hawkins

In The Heart Of The Dark

Laura

Sometimes I'm Happy

Through The Years

By Myself

Will You Still Be Mine?

Tenderly

Heat Wave

Stella By Starlight

Too Marvelous For Words

The Folks Who Live On The Hill

Hallelujah