Say It Isn't So - Herb Jeffries

 

Ghost Of A Chance

Say It Isn't So

Herb Jeffries

Back cover photo: R. Parent

Rep Records REP-215

1958

From the back cover: About Herb Jeffries there is much to be said, but listening to his voice describes him better than any words. In a musical period where singer are coming and going like the latest model cars, Jeffries' essentially masculine voice and superb tone quality have only matured and improved like wine since he shot to fame with his famous rendition of Flamingo. For the last few years, Jeffries has been trolling and singing in European casinos and vacation spots and turning down all major company offers to record an American album. He returned to the United States in January, 1957, and this is his first album since then and the first opportunity American music lovers have to hear his maturing voice and interpretations.

"Say It Isn't So" is a calculated album for us and for Jeffries. Studying the plethora of popular record packages of the current market, Jeffries realized that mass American tastes musically lay in the mood album. Jeffries decided also that an essential mood of musical expression was missing. This album is the result of that decision.

This is truly a Torch album. Torching is a universal and a unique experience for true lovers. Arranger-conductor Russ Garcia calls it Sad Joy. The brilliant Brazilian writer, Machida De Assis, writing in Portuguese, calls it the voluptuousness of misery; a yellow, lonely, morbid flower, one of the most subtle emotions of which and is capable. In defining and characterizing this Torching mood, Jeffries, Garcia and the research staff of Bethlehem began to search the thousands of standard songs for those ones which truly lit the torch of voluptuous misery and lined the sides of its sad joy with the memories of lovers' time together; of cocktail haunts, of special restaurants, of smoke from drifting cigarettes and certain moments of ecstasy.

Say It Isn't So

Ghost Of A Chance

Penthouse Serenade

It's The Talk Of The Town

If You Could See Me Now

Angel Eyes

Glad To  Be Unhappy

Easy To Remember

The End Of A Love Affair

Dinner For One, Please James