1. Do It Again Ultimate
2. Love For Sale

September 13, 1962

 LINER NOTES

Shirley Horn is one of the most satisfying success stories in jazz - she is the rare underground hero who has emerged to enjoy popular success while still in her prime. This definitive singer-pianist came from Washington, D.C. in 1960 to make her first recordings and impress such influential taste makers as Miles Davis and Quincy Jones. Then family responsibilities brought her back home, where she turned into a local phenomenon for more than a decade. Horn resumed her career after her daughter had grown, buikt a steady word-of-mouth following all over again through touring and recording for foreign labels, and rose into the jazz pantheon when she became a Verve recording artist in 1987. Her decade plus with the Verve label has allowed Horn to demonstrate the full range of her interpretive abilities, her unmatched empathy with the Charles Ables-Steve Williams rhythm section that has served her for two decades, and the way in which her musical aura accommodates new settings and affects guest artists.

One of the many musicians who have paid close attention to Horn's art is Diana Krall. Horn and krall have much in common, each being a singer-pianist who works with a super-tight trio, stresses sound and rhythm rather than vocal pyrotechnics, and (as of Krall's soon-to-be-released album) has collaborated with the great composer-arranger Johnny Mandel. Krall was enjoying some down time with her family in Nanaimo, British Columbia when she selected these tracks, and used the opportunity to provide some particularly insightful reflection on one of her personal favorites

- Bob Blumenthal

Loads Of Love

Shirley Horn is sitting in her living room listening to the past. The occasion is the forthcoming reissue of two albums she made for Mercury in 1963, collectors' items that today fetch ten times their original price in specialist record shops. No listings of accompanists can be found in the Mercury archives, now owned by PolyGram. The album liner notes reveal only a few pertinent details, and a search of jazz discographies uncovers no additional information.

So Shirley is listening intently, transporting herself back 27 years to the record sessions that first brought her national acclaim and, in the process, reassessing their significance in her evolution as an artist.

She had recorded twice before signing with Mercury. In August 1959, her trio backed violinist-singer Stuff Smith on 6 of the 11 tracks of the Verve album Cat on a Hot Fiddle. (In the late '50s, Smith frequently appeared in Washington D.C. clubs as guest artist with Shirley's trio.) Verve was notoriously careless about personnel listings in those days, and the album was issued with only John Eaton and Paul Smith, who played on the other 5 selections, credited as pianists. 30 years later, she still recalls the heartache of failing to receive acknowledgment for her first appearance on record.

The warm reception accorded Embers and Ashes, Shirley's first "official" appearance on disk in 1960, more than compensated for that unhappy experience. Although not widely distributed or well-promoted, this album, produced by the independent Stere-O-Craft label, won her overdue recognition from fellow musicians, notably Miles Davis who, after hearing the record, masterminded her 1961 New York debut at the Village Vanguard. Shortly before Shirley's first Vanguard engagement, John Levy, the former Geaorge Shearing bassist who gave up performing to become personal manager for Shearing, Cannonball Adderley, Wes Montgomery and other jazz greats, was so impressed by Embers and Ashes that he negotiated a contract for her to record for Mercury.

Loads of Love, her first Mercury album, was carefully designed to position Shirley in the pop/jazz middle-ground, a territory dominated at that time by Peggy Lee and Nat Cole, two of her major inspirations. Pianist Jimmy Jones, arguably Sarah Vaughan's finest accompanist, was engaged to write orchestral arrangements for reeds, brass and a string section. Jones was a spare, harmonically sophisticated musician whose approach to accompanying singers was quite similar to Shirley's own pianistic style. In fact, when Levy first heard Embers and Ashes, he phoned Jones to compliment him on how sensitively he had played for Shirley on the album. Only after Jones insisted he had never even met Shirley Horn did Levy realize that she had provided her own accompaniment.

In preparing Loads of Love, Levy did everything possible to make Shirley feel at ease. He asked her to send him live performance tapes in order to choose the repertoire and provide Jones with guidelines for preparing the arrangements. He then instructed Shirley to compile a list of her favorite musicians, and promised to hire them for the upcoming sessions. She combed through her record collection and assembled a dream band, most of whom Levy managed to deliver.

When the big day arrived, Shirley was terrified. "I panicked. I was standing outside the studio door, looking through the glass window. Some of the greatest musicians in the world were waiting inside. I was shaking so hard that John had to push me through the door. Then they put me in this little closet with a microphone, and I nearly went ape. The first takes were very hard on my nerves, so John came in and asked if there was anything he could do to help. What I really wanted was a piano in that closet, but there wasn't enough room."

Her anxiety gradually subsided, only to be replaced by another problem. Although Shirley had begun her career as a pianist and only added singing to her performances after establishing herself as an instrumentalist, Mercury's executives decided to separate Shirley from the piano and showcase only her vocal talents. "They didn't give me any reasons and I didn't ask any questions. I was just a little child thrown into the big time. It seemed like a wonderful opportunity to work with musicians I respected, so I took it."

The Loads of Love rhythm section was stellar - pianist Hank Jones, guitarist Kenny Burrell, bassist Milt Hinton and drummer Osie Johnson - but Shirley found it extremely frustrating not to be able to hear her own chords and set her own tempos. "They were great musicians, but they were playing their changes, and I kept wanting to hear mine." She felt most relaxed on the two tracks where Jimmy Jones, uncredited, replaced Hank at the keyboard.

As Loads of Love spins on her turntable, Shirley is able to identify some of the uncredited musicians. Ernie Royal and Joe Newman are in the trumpet section; Al Cohn, Frank Wess and Jerome Richardson are among the saxophonists, with the latter two doubling on flute. Gerry Mulligan's baritone sax anchors the ensemble on "Love for Sale." Shirley recalls being particularly impressed by violinist Gene Orloff, concertmaster of the string section.

She listens to the record, alternately registering satisfaction and displeasure. The string writing on "My Future Just Passed" (a vintage Richard Whiting ballad Levy found for her), Jimmy Jones' piano on "The Second Time Around" and "Love for Sale", and his Ellington-flavored "Love for Sale" arrangement still please her. But she grimaces during "There's A Boat That's Leaving Soon for New York", a selection that was forced upon her. "I remember Sammy Davis Jr. singing it in the movie Porgy and Bess and really felt that song belonged to him. I didn't like the arrangement - too juvenile, too cutesy. In those days, Rachmaninov was on my mind most of the time."

"Do It Again," the George Gershwin - Buddy DeSylva standard which, then as now, was one of her most-requested numbers in clubs, particularly exasperates her. Levy refused to let her perform it at her customary ultra-slow tempo on the grounds that the result would be "too suggestive" for airplay. When she rerecorded the song a decade later for the Perception label, her performance was 2 and 1/2 times longer and 100 times sultrier than the sanitized Mercury version.

After Loads of Love was released and received substantial airplay, booker Joe Glaser sent Shirley out on a "horrible" 13-week tour that left her exhausted and disillusioned. "I had been working in Washington since I was a teenager, and always imagined that going on the road would be exciting and glamorous, but it wasn't. We had a four week gig at a Holiday Inn in Valparaiso, Indiana. When we arrived there, somebody told me it was the home of the Ku Klux Klan. The hotel bartender was a fan, but the audience wasn't prepared for my music. There hadn't been much jazz in Valparaiso before. The third week, I asked the hotel manager why I hadn't seen any Negro faces in the club. He smiled and said 'That's because we ran them all out of here.'"

No sooner had Shirley come off the road than she was summoned back to New York for another album. (She recalls it was winter, because she was briefly marooned in a snowstorm in D.C.) This time, she had considerably less input on the choice of musicians, though she approved most of the material. The cover of Shirley Horn with Horns misrepresents the album's contents. A cutline announces "Shirley Horn at the piano with Four Trumpets, Four Trombones and Four French Horns, but, again, Shirley was not permitted to accompany herself. Even the cover art was botched; the inch-high mocha lettering reads SHIRLEY HORN WITH HORN, an obvious blunder that, amazing, nobody corrected.

Shirley's memory - far more reliable for faces than names - fails her on Shirley Horn with Horns. The original liner notes for this Quincy Jones-conducted and produced brass-and-rhythm album provide only arranger credits - six charts by Billy Byers, and two each by Thad Jones, Don Sebesky and Quincy himself. Of the horn players, Shirley can only remember trombonist Jimmy Cleveland. But she has no trouble recalling the tracks featuring Bobby Scott on piano- "On the Street Where You Live", "Mack the Knife", "Let Me Love You" and "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" Scott's funky, assertive keyboard lines distracted her so much, she had to remove her headphones in order to sing. Although she admires Scott's musicianship and still hangs out with him from time to time, she doesn't feel they were very compatibly teamed. She's happier with the other cuts, which feature she thinks, Jimmy Jones' piano. (A phone call to John Levy fails to provide positive confirmation that Jones performed on those tracks, but he recalls that Byers loved Jones' playing and tried to us him whenever possible.)

Shirley's favorite track is Byers' rich, muted setting for "I'm in the Mood for Love", although she's bugged by the badly tuned piano. She's less fond of "Let Me Love You", another of her slow, smoldering nightclub favorites that, like "Do It Again", was sped-up for the recording. "I really don't like that fox-trot tempo. Far me, a song should either swing hard, or be very mellow - nothing in-between." Asked why, on "Mack the Knife", she sings "Sister Sadie" at the point where Louis Armstrong interpolates Lotte Lenya's name on his classic recording, Shirley shrugs and says "I was just reading the words off the paper they handed me."

Shirley's association with Mercury continued after Shirley Horn with Horns was released. She cut another complete big band album which has never been issued. Perhaps someday it will be unearthed in the Mercury vaults; thus far, efforts to locate it have not been fruitful. She also began recording a live album at the Village Vanguard, this time at the piano with her trio. Unfortunately, her grandmother, with whom she was very close, died during the Vanguard engagement. Shirley gratefully recalls Levy's compassion; he abandoned the project after one night's taping, and absorbed the recording costs himself.

By the time her Mercury contract expired, the increasing dominance of rock music had virtually eliminated production of pop jazz albums like those Shirley recorded for the company. Tired of touring and concerned about not having enough time to spend with her young daughter, Rainy, she withdrew to Washington. She continued to perform with her trio in the Washington-Baltimore area for many years at her own club, The Place Where Louie Dwells. "I worked constantly, but I was home every day with Rainy"

Between 1963 and 1978, Shirley made only two albums - Travelin' Light for ABC-Paramount and Where Are You Going? for the short-lived Perception Label. Only after Rainy was married did she resume life on the road. Her highly-lauded European debut at the 1981 Northsea Jazz Festival in Holland established her as an international artist, leading to a series of triumphs capped by signing an exclusive contract with the newly reactivated Verve label in 1987. Her two Verve albums to date - I Thought About You and Close Enough for Love - have been the greatest critical and popular successes of her career.

In his liner notes for Loads of Love, Bill Hegner writes "She sings here without the inhibiting responsibility of having to ascent her lyrics with her own accompaniment. To those who know Shirley well, this is readily apparent and a further asset to her first major album."

But the person who knows Shirley best of all disagrees. "The piano is my rent, my foundation. The Mercury albums were a wonderful opportunity for me and I'm not ashamed of them. But they weren't what I'm about; they aren't me. I was young and starry-eyed arid got headed down the wrong path. Eventually I had to stop, turn around and get back to basics. When I made those records, I hadn't experienced enough to know what the song lyrics meant; I hadn't lived them yet. It's almost like listening to somebody else a little girl who's just starting to find out about life. I know what I'm singing about now."

Joel E. Siegel