Trouble Is A Man - Judy Holliday

 

Lonely Town

Double Is A Man

Judy Holliday

Musical Direction by Buster Davis

Arrangements by Glenn Osser

Columbia Records CS 8041

1958

From the back cover: Judy Holliday is what every singer should be, a great actress.

And so, in her first album, she illuminates the words and music of a dozen songs with her own convictions about them. Cast in a dozen starring roles, as the girl in each of these lyrics, she makes each song her own. It's fun to hear it done so simply and so well, with such genuine warmth and truth.

Judy's determinations to appear without appearing – that is, to sing without being seen by an audience, was born primarily of her love and respect for good songs, and of her desire to try the only medium of entertainment in which she is a comparative newcomer. And her own discriminating musical tastes made her goal the more difficult to achieve, and the more irresistible. For three nights after the curtain of Bells Are Ringing had fallen at the Shubert Theatre on Manhattan's 44th Street, Judy set out for the Columbia Studios to sing for another three hours and to listen as critically to herself as she had to her favorite Ella Fitzgerald albums on other nights. Her own success derives from her respect for the songs she sings, and from her knowledge of the difference between style and distortion.

Prior to those exciting record sessions, Judy had tried out hundreds of songs. Her final choices were made first on the basis of her own feeling for the song and its meaning, but also, you'll be delighted to hear, on the basis of what wonderful songs there are that have seldom or never been recorded before. And not incidentally, her songs turned out to be written by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, Julie Styne, Alec Wilder, Betty Corden, Howard Dietz, Arthur Schwartz, etc., etc. Don't ask about the ones she set aside. Many of those you'll hear her sing next time.

Ready at last with her songs, tastefully arranged for her by Glenn Osser, she faced a microphone, an orchestra, and an otherwise empty studio sing first Alex Wilder's wise and moving Trouble Is A Man.And when she listened to herself, she smiled in surprise, "Hey, I sound like a singer!" Better than that, she sounds like herself.

Irving Berlin's How About Me is a wistful, delicate song. Judy sings it softly, simply, maturely. And suddenly it means more than it ever has meant before.

What I Was Warned About is one of the discoveries in the album, a Hugh Martin song that somehow got lost along the way and will never be overlooked again. Judy presents it with the gentle determination of a lovely girl tossing caution to the winds.

Berlin, again, with I Got Lost In His Arms, and again, too, Judy floats through a beautiful song with restraint properly restrained.

What'll I Do, a Berlin classic, sees a turning in mood, a glimpse of despair she describes with a glowing sound.

Lonely Town is the Camden-Green-Bernstein monologue Judy loves. Perhaps it is because her close friends wrote it. Perhaps it is also because the song is pure and beautiful.

A new side of the record is also another side of the singer. A honky-tonk piano and a raucous fling with Am I Blue ends with a defiant growl.

Dietz and Schwartz wrote Confession, and it is. Quiet, ladylike, and banned in certain circles. Not yours, now.

Martin and Blane wrote the familiar An Occasional Man to provide an unattainable, irresistible dream for us all. Judy puts the dream almost within reach.

Julie Styne, whose songs Judy sings at each showing of Bells Are Ringing, provided another "find" with A Ride On A Rainbow. And it turned out to be still another mood suited to Judy.

Where Have You Been many just be the only old Cole Porter song you have never heard before. If so, it's another reward you may look forward to.

Judy closed with I'm One Of God's Children, with a beat and abandon.

Meeting Judy in this album is a delicious experience, because she sings as a great actress, yet in closeup few of her admires have ever heard before. When next you see her on the screen or on the stage, you'll know her better because you've been this close to her.

Trouble Is A Man

How About Me

What I Was Warned About

I Got Lost In His Arms

What'll Do

Lonely Town

Am I Blue

Confession

An Occasional Man

A Ride On A Rainbow

Where Have You Been

One Of God's Children