Rita Reys...I Got Rhythm.

A great singer now !!..with some vintage tracks from 1949--1964

Rita Reys (born Maria Everdina Reijs; 21 December 1924 – 28 July 2013) was a jazz singer from the Netherlands. At the 1960 French jazz festival of Juan-les-Pins, she received the title, "Europe's first lady of jazz".

In 1943, aged 18, she met her first husband, jazz drummer Wessel Ilcken, who introduced her to the jazz scene. Rita Reys & the Wessel Ilcken Sextet, featuring Jerry van Rooijen on trumpet and Toon van Vliet on tenor saxophone, regularly performed at the Sheherezade jazz club in Amsterdam and other Dutch stages. In the following years, Reys and Ilcken performed in other parts of Europe. They performed with Ted Powder in Belgium and Luxembourg in 1945 and 1946 and they toured Spain and North Africa with the Piet van Dijk orchestra between 1947 and 1950. In 1950 Reys and Ilcken founded their own combo, the Rita Reys Sextet, with which they would celebrate many successes in the following years, both in the Netherlands and in other European countries. 

In 1953, the couple moved for six months to Stockholm, Sweden where Reys made her first recordings for the Swedish record label Artist. On 2 March 1953, they recorded for the first time with the baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin.After their period in Sweden, Reys and Ilcken returned to the Netherlands, where Rita contributed to Jazz Behind The Dikes, an album featuring contemporary Dutch jazz talent. Her rendition of "My Funny Valentine" was her big break in her homeland. Columbia record producer George Avakian, who had heard her sing at the Sheherezade club, invited her to visit the United States. She gladly accepted his invitation and in 1956 she visited New York on her own (Wessel was unable to get a visa owing to his smoking of cannabis). 

In the Netherlands, Reys started to perform more regularly with the trio of pianist Pim Jacobs, whom she knew from his playing with Ilcken.... Reys and the Pim Jacobs Trio won the Juan Les Pins Jazz Festival in France, where she was named Europe's first lady of jazz. The 1960s ended with one of the greatest high points in her career: in 1969 she was the first Dutch jazz singer to perform at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, where she played with Zoot Sims and Milt Hinton, accompanied by Jacobs on piano.In the following years, Reys recorded records with the Rogier van Otterloo orchestra. Her versions of songs by Burt Bacharach and Michel Legrand – including renditions of "Make It Easy on Yourself" and "Once Upon A Summertime" – won her both an Edison award and a gold record. Later, she also recorded albums with the repertoire of George Gershwin and Antônio Carlos Jobim with the same orchestra.

In the 1980s, Rita returned to the American Songbook, recording albums such as Memories of You with the Lex Jasper orchestra..... In 1992 she released two double albums, Rita Reys, The American Songbook, Volumes 1 & 2. These would be the last albums she recorded with Jacobs, who was diagnosed with cancer in 1995. She started to perform regularly again and even recorded a new album Loss of Love, Rita Reys sings Henry Mancini. In order to celebrate her 75th birthday, she recorded The Lady Strikes Again with the Lex Jasper Trio, the Cor Bakker Trio and the Rosenberg Trio......In 2003, Reys celebrated her 60th anniversary on stage with her 17th North Sea Jazz performance and a successful Dutch tour. Some media began to speculate about a farewell, but her fierce reaction was: "Farewell? I’m not dead yet!" 

       15. Thou Swell

AFTER YOU'VE GONE- Rita Reys & Dutch Swing College Band

Europe's First Lady of Jazz Rita Reys & The Dutch Swing College Band performing After You've Gone, from the 1963 Philips album "Jazz Sir, That's Our Baby".

Petula Clark...The International Hits.

Petula Clark, CBE (born Sally Olwen Clark; 15 November 1932) is a British singer, actress, and composer.

Clark's professional career began during the Second World War as a child entertainer on BBC Radio. In 1954 she charted with "The Little Shoemaker", the first of her big UK hits, and within two years she began recording in French. Her international successes have included "Prends mon coeur", "Sailor" (a UK number one), "Romeo", and "Chariot". Hits in German, Italian and Spanish followed. In late 1964 Clark's success extended to the United States with a four-year run of career-defining, often upbeat singles, many written or co-written by Tony Hatch (and Jackie Trent). These songs include her signature song "Downtown" and "I Know a Place", "My Love", "A Sign of the Times", "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love", "Who Am I", "Colour My World", "This Is My Song" (by Charlie Chaplin), "Don't Sleep in the Subway", "The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener", and "Kiss Me Goodbye". In the United States Clark was sometimes called "the First Lady of the British Invasion". Clark has sold more than 68 million records. She has also enjoyed success in the musical film (Finian's Rainbow) and in the stage musicals The Sound of Music, Blood Brothers and Sunset Boulevard.

1. Never On A Sunday

2. You Can't Keep Me From Loving You

3. What Now my Love

4. Why Don't They Understand

5. Have I The Right

6. Volare

1. One More Sunrise

2. I Want To Hold Your Hand

3. Love Me With All your Heart

4. Boy from Ipanema

5. I Who Have Nothing

6. Hello Dolly

      

          5. Have I The Right

Julius La Rosa.

Julius La Rosa (January 2, 1930 – May 12, 2016) was an American traditional popular music singer, who worked in both radio and television beginning in the 1950s.

        9. Our Love Is Here To Stay

Kay Starr...In A Blue Mood.

Catherine Laverne Starks (July 21, 1922 – November 3, 2016), known professionally as Kay Starr, was an American pop and jazz singer who enjoyed considerable success in the late 1940s and 1950s. She was of Iroquois and Irish heritage. Starr was successful in every field of music she tried (jazz, pop, and country), but her roots were in jazz.

At 15, she was chosen to sing with the Joe Venuti orchestra. Venuti had a contract to play in the Peabody Hotel in Memphis which called for his band to feature a girl singer, a performer he did not have at the time. Venuti's road manager heard Starr on the radio and recommended her although she was young and her parents insisted on a midnight curfew.

In 1939, she worked with Bob Crosby and Glenn Miller, who hired her to replace the ill Marion Hutton. With Miller she recorded "Baby Me" and "Love with a Capital You". They were not a great success, in part because the band played in a key that, while appropriate for Hutton, did not suit Kay's vocal range.After finishing high school, she moved to Los Angeles and signed with Wingy Manone's band. From 1943 to 1945 she sang with Charlie Barnet's ensemble, retiring for a year after contracting pneumonia and later developing nodes on her vocal cords as a result of fatigue and overwork.In 1946 Starr became a soloist and a year later signed a contract with Capitol Records. The label had a number of female singers signed up, including Peggy Lee, Ella Mae Morse, Jo Stafford, and Margaret Whiting, so it was hard to find her a niche of her own. In 1948 when the American Federation of Musicians was threatening a strike, Capitol wanted to have each of its singers record a back list for future release. Being junior to all these other artists meant that every song Starr wanted to sing was taken by her rivals on the label, leaving her a list of old songs which nobody else wanted to record.

In 1950 she returned home to Dougherty and heard a fiddle recording of "Bonaparte's Retreat" by Pee Wee King. She liked it so much that she wanted to record it. She contacted Roy Acuff's publishing house in Nashville and spoke to Acuff directly. He was happy to let her record it, but it took a while for her to make clear that she was a singer, not a fiddler, and therefore needed to have some lyrics written. Acuff came up with a new lyric, and "Bonaparte's Retreat" became her biggest hit up to that point, with close to a million sales.In 1955, she signed with RCA Victor Records. However, at this time, rock-and-roll was displacing the existing forms of pop music and Kay had only two hits, the aforementioned, which is sometimes considered her attempt to sing rock and roll, and sometimes as a song poking fun at it, "The Rock and Roll Waltz". She stayed at RCA Victor until 1959, hitting the top ten with "My Heart Reminds Me", then returned to Capitol.

Most of Starr's songs had jazz influences. Like those of Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray, they were sung in a style that anticipated rock and roll songs. These included her hits "Wheel of Fortune" (her biggest hit, No. 1 for 10 weeks), "Side by Side", "The Man Upstairs", and "Rock and Roll Waltz". One of her biggest hits was her version of "(Everybody's Waitin' For) The Man with the Bag", a Christmas song that became a holiday favorite.

 She recorded several albums, including Movin' (1959), Losers, Weepers… (1960), I Cry By Night (1962), and Just Plain Country (1962).After leaving Capitol for a second time in 1966, Starr continued touring in the US and the UK. She recorded several jazz and country albums on small independent labels, including How About This, a 1968 album with Count Basie.

In 1993 she toured the United Kingdom as part of Pat Boone's April Love Tour. Her first live album, Live at Freddy's, was released in 1997. She sang with Tony Bennett on his album Playin' with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues (2001).

1. After You've Gone

2. A Woman Likes To Be Told

3. Maybe You'll Be There

4. I'm Waiting For Ships That Never Come In

5. What Will I Tell My Heart

6. Evenin'

1. He's Funny That Way

2. I Got The Spring Fever Blues

3. Don't Tell Him What Happened to Me

4. I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good

5. Everybody's Somebody's Fool

6. It Will Have to do Until The Real Thing Comes Along

         5. What will I Tell My Heart

Rick Astley...50.

This one brings us up to date 2016 to be exact some great new songs and a more mature voice than his earlier hits...well worth a listen to...even if you wasn't a fan of his earlier work !!

Richard Paul Astley (born 6 February 1966) is a British singer, songwriter and radio personality. He rose to fame through his association with the production trio Stock Aitken Waterman; his 1987 recording of their song "Never Gonna Give You Up" was a number 1 hit single in 25 countries, winning the 1988 Brit Award for Best British Single. His 1988 single "Together Forever" became his second single to top the US Billboard Hot 100, and was one of his eight songs to reach the top ten on the UK Singles Chart. By the time of his retirement in 1993, Astley had sold approximately 40 million records worldwide.His first single was the little-known "When You Gonna", released as a collaboration with Lisa Carter, with little promotion. It did not chart. His first solo offering was "Never Gonna Give You Up", recorded on New Year's Day 1987, and released eight months later, in August. Astley's distinctive rich, deep voice combined with dance-pop made the song an immediate success, spending five weeks at the top of the British charts and becoming the year's highest-selling single. The song was also a worldwide number-one hit, topping the charts in 24 other countries, including the US, Australia, and West Germany. It was the first of 13 (worldwide) top 30 hit singles for him. "Never Gonna Give You Up" won Best British Single at the 1988 BPI awards (now called the BRIT Awards), and he performed it in front of a global audience of 100 million.

In April 2016 Astley released "Keep Singing", from his forthcoming album 50. Interviewed by Amanda Holden on the Lorraine show on 7 April, Astley explained that turning 50 had prompted him to release the single. He said, "It was a big milestone. I got back in the studio and friends were telling me the material I was working on was pretty good. So I decided to go for it." On 31 May, the release date for Astley's 50 was revealed to be 10 June 2016. The album reached number one on the Official UK Album Sales charts in the week of 17 June 2016 to 23 June 2016.

AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine  [-]

Celebrating his 50th birthday with his first album in 11 years, Rick Astley has never seemed as subdued as he is on 2016's 50. Blame it on age: not only wouldn't the exuberance of "Never Gonna Give You Up" suit a man in his middle age but Astley's instrument has weathered with age, no longer quite as booming or insistent. Such changes actually benefit Astley, who is humanized by his years, especially as this light grit adds a little bit of heft to the immaculate adult pop of 50. His first set of original pop music since 2001's Keep It Turned On isn't especially in tune with the times -- it exists in an adult contemporary netherworld, sounding as if it could've been released any time between 1999 and 2016 

          4. This Old House

Hot Chocolate...20 Hottest Hits.

We will have a quick trip to New York now and go back to the 60's for a while with the next few courtesy of John's Record store !! so enjoy the nostalgia !!.....Thanks John !!..starting with a 20 track L/P !!

1. So You Win Again

2. You Sexy Thing

3. Put Your Love In Me

4. Love is Life

5. You'll Always be a Friend

6. Rumours

7. I Believe In Love

8. A Child's Prayer

9. Don't Stop it Now

10. I'll Put You Together Again

1. Emma

2. Brother In Love

3. Man To Man

4. Cheri Babe

5. Mindless Boogie

6. You Could Have been A lady

7. Going Through The Motions

8. Heaven is In The back seat of my Cadillac

9. Disco Queen

10. Everyone's A Winner

Hot Chocolate

          2. You Sexy Thing

Sandie Shaw...Sandie.

This is the first L/P of  Sandie Shaw's doing cover versions !!

Sandie is the first album or L.P. by 1960s British singer Sandie Shaw. Released in February 1965 on the Pye label, it was her only original album to enter the UK chart (most of Shaw's success was through her singles) and peaked at Number 3. In the few months prior to the album's release, Shaw had scored two major hits with the Bacharach/David-penned "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" and Chris Andrews's "Girl Don't Come".

          10. Baby I Need Your Loving

Kinks...Face To Face.

Still residing in the 60's and if you are a fan of "Ray Davies" and the Kinks then this will definitely be your cup o' tea !!

The Kink Kontroversy was a considerable leap forward in terms of quality, but it pales next to Face to Face, one of the finest collections of pop songs released during the '60s. Conceived as a loose concept album, Face to Face sees Ray Davies' fascination with English class and social structures flourish, as he creates a number of vivid character portraits. Davies' growth as a lyricist coincided with the Kinks' musical growth. Face to Face is filled with wonderful moments, whether it's the mocking Hawaiian guitars of the rocker "Holiday in Waikiki," the droning Eastern touches of "Fancy," the music hall shuffle of "Dandy," or the lazily rolling "Sunny Afternoon." And that only scratches the surface of the riches of Face to Face, which offers other classics like "Rosy Won't You Please Come Home," "Party Line," "Too Much on My Mind," "Rainy Day in June," and "Most Exclusive Residence for Sale," making the record one of the most distinctive and accomplished albums of its time.                 

1. Party Line

2. Rosie Wont You Please Come Home

3. Dandy

4. Too Much On My Mind

5. Session Man

6. Rainy Day In June 

7. A House In The Country

1. Holiday in Waikiki

2. Most Exclusive Residence For Sale

3. Fancy

4. Little Miss Queen Of Darkness

5. You're looking Fine

6. Sunny Afternoon

7. I'll Remember

         3. Dandy

Legend Of...Dave Dee,Dozy.Beaky.Mick & Tich.

The title of this L/P says it all !!...that is if you are a fan of Dave Dee ect !!...great sounds typical of the 60's !!

Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich were a British pop/rock group of the 1960s.Two of their single releases sold in excess of one million copies each, and they reached number one in the UK Singles Chart with the second of them, "The Legend of Xanadu". The combined sales figures were in excess of one million copies. Their other top 10 UK hits included "Hideaway", "Hold Tight!", "Bend It!", "Save Me!", "Touch Me, Touch Me", "Okay!", "Zabadak!" and "Last Night in Soho".

1. The Wreck Of The Antoinette

2. Mrs Thursday

3. Still Life

4. In A matter of a Momnt

5. Last Night In Soho

1. The Legend of Xanadu

2. Breakout

3. Please

4. Master Lewellyn

5. Zabadak

          6. The Legend Of Xanadu

Ella Fitzgerald...Sings Gershwin. Vol 2.

 Here's the second Volume of the "Gershwin" songbook....Nelson Riddle's smooth arrangements and "Ella" at her peak...There's no more to say except just listen!!

1. S'wonderful
2. The Man I Love
3. That Certain Feeling
4. By Strauss
5. Someone To Watch Over Me 
6. The Real American Folk Song

1. Who Cares
2. Looking For A Boy
3. They All Laughed
4. My Cousin From Milwaukee
5. Somebody From Somewhere

          5. Someone To Watch Over Me

Peter Dawson...The Floral Dance.

Something very different from New Zealand !......Thanks John !

          9. Phil The Fluter's Ball

Jeri Southern...Coffee Cigarettes & Memories.

Here's another great singer with a voice that is easy recognisable!..maybe it was the "Ciggies" that gave her that husky individual voice !!...one L/P that is also not to be missed !!

          3. This Time The Dreams On Me

Harry Stoneham...Hammond Hits The Highway.

Just going out of the record shop when this cover caught my eye !!....so under my arm it went !!
can't beat a bit of  Organ Music at the close of the day !!!......Thanks "John" for the key's !!!

         4. Acapulco 1922

Shirley Bassey..

Here's "Our Shirl" early on in her singing career when she still had her tonsils !!....Luckily it didn't alter her voice maybe it went a bit deeper but the power is still there to this day !!
A beautiful set of songs that was a "Preface" of what was to come !

          6. Till

Ella Fitzgerald...Sings Gershwin Vol 1.

I wasn't going to post any of the "Ella Songbooks"but having been listening to them again and decided to post them...I have most of the "Songbooks"on L/P's and have also bought them again on CD's....I still think that they sound better as an L/P....true there is no crackles or pops...but there is still something different in the sound !!...starting with the Gershwin's there are 5 Volumes so will be posting the rest soon...All 5 have their covers painted by an French artist called "Bernard Buffet"who incidentally is one of my favourite modern artists.

P.S. The Info on the songs comes from the Booklet that came with the CD's it is very informative so enjoy the read !!

1. Sam And Delilah
2. But Not For Me
3. My One And Only
4. Let's Call The Whole Thing Off
5. I've Got Beginners Luck

1. Oh Lady Be Good
2. Nice Work If You Can Get It
3. Things Are Looking Up
4. Just Another Rhumba
5. How Long has This Been Going On

       2. But Not For Me

Teddi King...All The Kings Songs.

Back to a great forgotten singer singing some great classic standards....

Teddi King (September 18, 1929 – November 18, 1977) was an American jazz and pop vocalist. Born Theodora King in Boston, Massachusetts on September 18, 1929, she won a singing competition hosted by Dinah Shore at Boston's Tributary Theatre, later beginning work in a touring revue involved with "cheering up the military in the lull between the Second World War and the Korean conflict." Improving her vocal and piano technique during this time, she first recorded with Nat Pierce in 1949, later recording with the Beryl Booker trio and with several other small groups from 1954–1955 (recordings which were available on three albums for Storyville). She then toured with George Shearing for two years beginning in the summer of 1952, and for a time was managed by the famed George Wein. King later began performing for a time in Las Vegas.

Ultimately signing with RCA, she recorded three albums for the label, beginning with 1956's Bidin' My Time. She also had some minor chart success with the singles "Mr. Wonderful" (which made the Top 20 in 1956), "Married I Can Always Get" and "Say It Isn't So" (both of which made the Hot 100 from 1957–1958). Her critically praised 1959 album All the Kings' Songs found her interpreting the signature songs of contemporary male singers like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole (the "kings" of the title). In the 1960s, she opened the Playboy Club, where she often performed.

1. April Showers

2. A Cottage For Sale

3. That's For Me

4. Temptation

5. Unforgettable

6. Keepin' Out Of Mischief Now

1. Flamingo

2. June In January

3. You Brought a New Kind Of Love To Me

4. This Love Of Mine

5. When its Sleepy Time Down South

6. Let's face The Music And Dance

AllMusic Review by Jason Ankeny

The basic concept behind All the King's Songs is simple -- recast signature hits by male vocalists including Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Billy Eckstine as torch songs for Teddi King, ably supported here by arrangers Lew Douglas and Johnny Richards. To her immense credit, King makes the music here her own -- her rich contralto and serene phrasing reveal rich new meanings in familiar material like "Unforgettable" and "This Love of Mine," quickly evolving the project past novelty status to explore with sincerity and depth the transformation of the popular song as it passes from one gender to the other.

          4. Temptation