Robert Clary Lives It Up At The Playboy Club

 

Lullaby Of Birdland

Robert Clary Lives It Up At The Playboy Club

Robert Clary is accompanied by Stuart Kirk, piano; Truck Parham, bass & Charles Walton, drums

Cover Photo: Pompeo Posar

Cover Design: Boring Eutemey

Atlantic Records SD 8053

1961

This recording was recorded at The Playboy Club in Chicago. Atlantic Records gratefully acknowledges the kind cooperation of the management and staff of The Playboy Club. 

From the back cover: There surely is no doubt about it – Americas have always enjoyed listening to French singers. From the apparently indestructible Maurice Chevalier, though Charles Trent and Jean Sablon, and right up to Yves Montand (to mention only the men), there have always been large and responsive audiences in this country for the gay and romantic singers from Paris. Most certainly Robert Clary fits very comfortably in such illustrious company, but this demi-pinte of exuberance and charm does have a very special distinction: he is the only leading singer of French origin to have scored his greatest successes in the United States. Neither Left Bank bistro nor Right Bank music hall claims him; his plucks grace had to wait until it was exposed in American supper club and on Broadway before it was a truly appreciated.

Thus M. Clary finds himself in the unique position of being more closely identified with songs sung in English than in French. To be sure, his ingratiating trombone of a voice can entertain us admirably in both French and English when he goes after such popular fare as Autumn Leaves or When The World Was Young or C'est Si Bon. Yet it is quiet obvious that what the customers at the Playboy Club relish the most are to hear him do the songs from Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952 which won him his first real acclaim – the brash account of the caddish lady-killer, Lucky Pierre; the catalogue classic, Love Is A Simple Thing' and, of course, the plaintive confession of puppy love, I'm In Love With Miss Logan. (Incidentally, the first and third songs, both written by Ronny Graham, have become so closely identified with the diminutive singer that they have become hie exclusive property.)

Happily, M. Clary is also able to do right by other Broadway and east-of-Broadway pieces. Rodgers and Hart's too-seldom heard He And She (from The Boys From Syracuse) shows his special gift as an interpreter of a cleverly wicked lyric, while his rendition of Bart Howard's supper club standard, Let Me Love You, proves that he is equally adept at revealing glossier emotions. Nor is he afraid of dreaming up new twists to old favorites. Lullaby Of Birdland becomes a caressing serenade as he sings it in French; the traditional swinging treatment as the whole audiences chimes in; and even Cole Porter's throbbing paean, I Love Paris, becames Clary-fied in a way the really starts to the sparks flying in the City Of Lights.

But this should really not be too surprising. Robert Clary could probably start sparks flying anywhere. – Stanley Green - Author of "The World Of Musical Comedy" (Ziff Davis).

Luck Pierre

Love Is A Simple Thing

He And She

Let Me Love You

Autumn Leaves

Lullaby Of Birdland

Aloutte

I Love Paris

Gigi

I'm In Love With Miss Logan

When The World Was Young

C'est Si Bon