• Afterglow
• Dreamsville

November 23 & 25

December 11 & 14

1992

 LINER NOTES

Ever since 1958, when Cleo Laine left the John Dankworth orchestra to make her first appearance in a dramatic play, the singer and the actress in her have never been far apart. With Blue and Sentimental, her enormous gift for musical storytelling takes center stage. This is the Cleo who can bring you inside a plain woman's romantic fantasies, then slip into the skin of a '20s madam who bellies up to the piano in a "bawdy flat" in Harlem. The Laine voice, with its long, soaring lines, silky upper register, and endless color, is still a marvel, but never has she used it more affectingly than she does here. Dankworth, her "old man" and lifelong musical partner, frames these thirteen mini-portraits with some of the most sensitive, understated arranging and horn playing of his career. And several friends, George Shearing, Gerry Mulligan, Joe Williams, drop by to add their own elegant touches.

Using the Count Basie title song as their theme, Cleo and John have uncovered the sort of off beat treasures that only they seem to find. From the New York cabaret scene comes The Lies of Handsome Men, songwriter Francesca Blumenthal's poignant account of the stories we tell ourselves to make it through the day. "I believe with just one glance he's craaaazy for my eyes," sings Cleo, pouring a world of false hopes into that one word. Not You Again, by British composer Duncan Lament, is a glimpse into the life of a woman who is tired of letting her heart get the better of her. Carroll Coates, another English writer, contributed Love Comes and Goes, a bitterly philosophical tale about a love that vanished as quickly as the season. In the hands of Cleo, John and George Shearing, it becomes as evocative as a Victorian novella. As the strings wrap around her like an icy wind, Cleo dismisses love in a set of terse phrases that can't hide the pain: "The tide turns, the heart learns...so love comes and goes."

Leave it to Cleo to take such an unconventional view of the two standards included here. For her, I've Cot a Crush on You is no adolescent love letter, but the anthem of a mature woman ready to give romance another shot. Cleo and the great Joe Williams, their voices at a near whisper, transform Irving Berlin's What'll I Do from a lover's lament into a song of mutual parting.

In the bluesier cuts, Cleo's combination of grit and grandeur serves her well. Dipping into the bag that produced her '70s showstopper Gimme a Pigfoot, she has come up with Soft Pedal Blues, another raunchy Bessie Smith tune. Duke Ellington's Creole Love Call, first sung wordlessly by Adelaide Hall, here features a lyric by singer Lorraine Feather about sleepless nights in a lonely hotel room. Things start to heat up in Love Me (If It Takes You All Night Long), written in 1916 by Joe McCoy, the blues composer whose Why Don't You Do Right? made a star of Peggy Lee in 1942. Then there's Primrose Colour Blue, the work of a songwriting team that deserves to be heard from more often, the Dankworths themselves.

Characters evolve in all these songs, life stories unfold, the mark of the great singing actress that Cleo Laine has always been. I n Blue and Sentimental, she sings with the wisdom and expressiveness of a lifetime.

James Gavin

THE BEST OF

The art and the allure of Cleo Lane have become such a constant on the quality music scene that it's far too easy to take her for granted. Sometimes it takes a special event or occasion to bring into focus what we knew and felt all along. One such event was the publication in 1994 of Ms. Laine's autobiography, under the simple title 'Cleo' (published by Simon & Schuster). Another occasion for prolonged reflection on Cleo's contribution to the field of popular song is the present compilation from over two decades of her career.

What this collection demonstrates definitively is Cleo's high standard of performance, her attention to detail and her success in getting the best out of a song, The range of her material is wide indeed, covering slow ballads of several different eras of popular music, plus complex jazz and pieces with the simplicity of folksongs. A quick glance at the list of songwriters reveals names such as Ralph Mc Tell, Carole King, three items each by Stephen Sondheim and George Gershwin (how very different from each other!) and no less than six numbers by Duke Ellington. Naturally, this reflects the compilers' tastes as well as the original performer's, but it's worth noting that the majority of the enclosed selections were nominated by Cleo herself.

Faced with this superb body of work, it's also easy to forget how very gradually Cleo's reputation spread. Because she didn't sound like anyone else, her fame in the 1950s was more or less confined to the world of British jazz. Despite the fact that she began to do more stage and television work and even had a couple of hit pop records, the restrictions of her jazz association clung to her throughout the 1960s. The autobiography makes it clear that two factors above all changed the way she was perceived. One was the 1971-73 UK revival of Show Boat, in which her performance of the song 'Bill' helped to spread her name as far as the USA, where she began to tour shortly afterwards. The other was signing a contract in 1973 with RCA Victor, which along with a subsequent and continuing period with their Red Seal (Classical Music) Division, has produced 16 albums to date.

One of the delights of Cleo's book - which, by the way, was not ghost-written - is that she uses words with a skill many professional authors might envy. Yet this is hardly surprising, given her interpretations of songwriter's words and, indeed, her own lyrics (such as 'He Was Beautiful"). The book, of course, was typically modest about its author's unique singing style, but it did shed welcome light on her love affair with music and acting. It also reminded the reader that, in one sense, her first big musical break was the one that has sustained her since. The group led by John Dankworth (or Johnny, as he was in 1951), was not merely the only name group with a vacancy for a girl singer at the time, but it was probably the only band in the U.K. then that could have made full and appropriate use of her talent. That she has worked with Dankworth from that day to this (with well-defined pauses) and that she has been married to him since 1958, is only remarkable when one thinks how few musical relationships have ever lasted that long.

Naturally, because of Cleo's eminence in the last two decades and more, she has also been able to call on some expert and renowned collaborations. Some of the guest appearances here are by artists who have made whole albums in tandem with Cleo, such as guitarists John Williams and flautist James Galway - whose brilliance in the classical music field has lent an enviable panache to their more popular outings - and the even more unpigeon-hole-able Dudley Moore. (Dudley's first brush with fame, even before the famous Beyond the Fringe revue, was as the pianist in John Dankworth's 1959-60 band). The other whole-album collaboration, to record the entire Porgy and Bess album with Ray Charles, was offered to a surprised and flattered Cleo by independent producer Norman Granz. On the other hand, two albums with a variety of guests (Jazz and Blue & Sentimental) are responsible for the contributions of saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and trumpeter Clark Terry, harmonica genius Toots Thielemans and singer Joe Williams - all of whom the Dankworths had know since the 1950s.

Brian Priestley

• Walking Shoes
• Midnight Sun

1991

 LINER NOTES

In truth, the sumptuous singer never abdicated her love for jazz, even through untold professional endeavors - in theatre, opera, television - that showcased her formidable skills before an ever-widening audience.

"I don't think I've ever strayed far from my roots," she said one day recently after completing this album. "In records I may have attempted different thematic approaches, but in concerts I've always favored music like this - songs that mean a great deal to me."

Given Ms. Laine's impeccable judgement, she has chosen songs for this album that mean a great deal to many people. All are, or are destined to be, standards, enduring jewels that gain new life each time a magnificent talent holds them to the light and examines their secrets.

Laine has been doing that for years, playing diamond-cutter to the world's great song-form gems. That she should honor (and be honored by) the likes of Gershwin, Ellington, Hampton, Torme and Handy, bespeaks the kind of company she rightfully keeps. Clearly, she associates with a class crowd.

Moreover, she has welcomed here a few guest musicians whose elegance and grace are perfectly suited to the treasured material at hand. Clark Terry, Gerry Mulligan, and Toots Thielemans are old friends; Jane Ira Bloom and Mark Whitfield are relative newcomers to the fold. All respond to Dankworth's musical direction with the kind of empathetic communion expected of seasoned professionals.

Their contributions help Laine color tunes like "Midnight Sun", "My One and Only" and "A Child is Born" with a wistfulness and nostalgia that befit artists who use a full palette of life's experience in their work. Yet, just as those readings underscore the dreamy side of desire, the uptempo treatments of "It Don't Mean a Thing", "Walking Shoes",'Just A Sittin' and A Rockin' ", and "You Can Always Count on Me" trumpet forces that are both joyous and vital.

In "Jazz", Cleo Laine offers us the chance to measure exuberance against melancholy. She implies that an artful balancing of emotions is not just business as usual for a multifaceted performer like herself, but a necessary exercise for achieving some fundamental truths. The sentiments expressed on "Jazz" are exactly those Ms. Laine has expressed throughout her career.

Those with a feel for her brand of interpretative flair are encouraged to sit back and enjoy this album; it's an intimate affair. For the uninitiated, attention should be paid tothe one tune on"Jazz" most likely to become a standard. It's called "I Told You So:'and as far as communicating to the world Ms. Laine's authority as a singer, the title speaks for itself.

- Jeff Levenson