1. Prelude To A kiss
2. Aren't You Glad You're You
3. Little Girl Blue
4. Who Cares
5. My Ship
6. Will You Still Be Mine
7. The More I See You
8. Deep Purple
9. Life Is just A Bowl Of Cherries
10. My Silent Love
11. Night And Day
12. I Want You To Be The First One To Know
13. April In My Heart

November 27 & December 1 & 20, 1961, January 27, 1962

NOTE: Jerome Klinkowitz mentions that Tercinet includes Gerry Mulligan in this session. On this CD neither the bylines nor the liner notes from the original LP mention Gerry at all.

 LINER NOTES

Then she started to sing.

Those who'd begun to leave looked around. She sounded pretty good. And she looked very pretty. We looked some more. And we listened. And the more we listened, the more we began to realize that Carol Sloane was an exceptionally exciting singer. The first thing that impressed us was her sound. It was round and warm and clear. The next thing was her phrasing. It was musicianly, full of the freedom of a confident jazz artist, and yet with an intelligent appreciation of the lyrics of each song. And finally it began to dawn on us that this gal was singing in time as only a handful of other girls can and do.

The payoff came on the verse of Little Girl Blue. Her pianist gave her the first note. Then she went through the entire verse, slowly, out of tempo, full of warm feeling, and without a single instrument to help her with the pitch. Then, after she'd hit the final note, the piano hit the final chord. Her intonation had been absolutely perfect!

From then on, this fresh-looking girl with the pretty face and the perfect pitch was in. For about fifteen more minutes the hungry- and restless two hundred forgot about their empty stomachs and falling arches. When she finished, Carol Sloane was given an ovation that must have sounded to her as though it had come from two thousand delighted discoverers.

Who was this gal who'd come out of nowhere. Bob Bonis, her manager, was there to tell us. So was Mort Fega, the discerning disc jockey, who'd heard her before. "She's right here from Rhode Island. She lives in Providence," Bonis explained. "She filled in for Annie Ross with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross," Mort added. "She did a helluva job, too."

Jon Hendricks, spending the same four days in Newport, verified this. "I don't really know how she did it. It was a sudden thing. Annie'd gotten sick and we needed somebody to work with us in Philadelphia. Carol came right down, we gave her some of our records to listen to, and the next day she came back with a whole bunch of the parts memorized. She sang them perfectly." (Those familiar with L. H. R. know that nothing they do is simple, so this represented quite an achievement.) "She has a fantastic ear."

Another team, that of Fega, Hendricks and Bonis, plus several others, induced producer Bernstein to present Carol before an evening audience, and on the final night's concert she succeeded in captivating about 6,800 more souls than she had a couple of afternoons before.

Newport proved to be the turning point in her career. Before the Annie Ross SOS arrived, she had spent two years on the road with Larry Elgart's band, then had settled into a secretarial job, with occasional singing interludes.

Carol's career began at the age of fourteen, singing twice a week with a Providence dance band. From there she migrated into trios and cocktail lounges. "I even played cocktail drums." Then followed some emigration-to Germany, France and Austria as one of the leads in a road company Kiss Me, Kate. "I wanted to do musical comedy then. Now I'm not so sure."

It was after she'd returned from Europe that she met Bob Bonis in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he was looking for a singer for Elgart. And it was while with Larry that she began to appreciate the unusual talents of an arranger who, as far back as the mid-Forties, had been writing for the Elgart Brothers. This was Bill Finegan.

Bill, who besides his Sauter-Finegan contributions had penned many- outstanding scores for the bands of Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller (Glenn tabbed him as the most creative arranger ever to write for his band), wrote nine of the eleven arrangements in this album. How great they are, as well as the two by Brookmeyer, are yours to appreciate at the drop of a stylus. Ditto for Miss Sloane.

Now there are many things you're going to notice about this girl, and If you're hearing her for the first time you're likely to be in for as much of a pleasant surprise as we were in Newport. There's a round richness to her voice that's absolutely real - no electronic gimmicks are necessary. There's a warmth that reflects so accurately her personality. There's a jazz feeling that comes across in her phrasing of a ballad as much as in the natural, swinging beats she lends to uptempoed tunes. There's a respect for the music she sings, for the meaning of a lyric, for the mood that the composer intended to create. And, of course, there's that fabulous intonation.

"I admire singers of all kinds who sing in tune. I love Billie Holiday and Lee Wiley, and I love Joan Sutherland and Victoria De Los Angeles. And Mahalia Jackson, of course. And there's always Ella. I'm not singing to make quick money. Of course I do want to be a success. But what I want to do most of all is to sing good material to the best of my ability."

All eleven songs of this record fall into Carol's "good material" category. Her respect for the writers is indicated by the fact that when she supplied us with the breakdown of the tunes, she listed the names of the composers along with the songs and the featured sidemen. She also gave us a few personal observations that might interest you.

"I guess I've taken some liberties with Duke's Prelude to a Kiss. But, you know, I don't think I've ever really heard the song sung absolutely straight. I'm not too sure exactly how it goes. I imagine the way I sing it is a composite of many other singers' versions." This is one of Brookmeyer's two arrangements, arid it features, as do several other numbers, Bobby's wondrously soulful trombone.

Aren't You Glad You're You, one of several light numbers which Carol calls "tension Breakers," features a smaller group of Brookmeyer: pianist Bernie Leighton, guitarist Barry Galbraith and bassist Art Davis. "Bill heard Art when he was playing for me at the Village Vanguard and he was so impressed that he was the first man he hired when he started putting the band together for the date."

Little Girl Blue reveals much of the little girl delicacy that helps make up much of the Sloane charm. This is the number, you'll recall, that stopped all of us cold in our dinner-seeking tracks at Newport.

Who Cares is taken at a slower tempo than expected. "I like it as a ballad." So did composer Gershwin, who made it the featured love song in Of Thee I Sing. Note the use of Carol's voice as part of the woodwind section in the beginning of the second chorus.

My Ship is this writer's favorite track on the record. It is also one of Carol's two favorites. The other: Deep Purple. "Truthfully," she says, " I prefer singing ballads. But you can't do them all the time."

Will You Still Be Mine reveals a light rhythmic romp, in which trumpeter Nick Travis and flutist Al Klink (Carol and Finegan agree with some of us that this is one of the most underrated of all jazz musicians) join with pianist Leighton, guitarist Jim Hall, bassist George Duvivier and drummer Walter Perkins.

The More I See Youimparts a lovely, informal ballad feeling. It also serves to show off Carol's good pronunciation. Note the word "imagine:" She really sings "imajin" and not "imajun" as most singers do.

Deep Purple gets the deep Finegan treatment, full and rich scoring that's obviously inspirational for Carol.

Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries, another "tension reliever" with Messrs. Brookmeyer, Leighton, Galbraith and Davis, makes way for an impressive My Silent Love, which, in addition to Klink on flute, features Nick Travis on muted trumpet and Clark Terry noodling behind Carol on flugelhorn. Terry's blowing especially tickles Carol. "The way he darts in and out so beautifully gives me a mental picture of Emmett Kelly walking very quietly all around the room while I'm singing."

And then there's the final Night and Day, another rich Brookmeyer score, modern, swinging and sensitive, a fitting climax for this first and extremely impressive record by an exceptionally talented singer, who perhaps right now may be giving you the same sort of wonderful surprise she gave the two hundred lucky ones of us who stuck it out and "discovered" her on one warm and very sunny Saturday afternoon in Newport.

- GEORGE T. SIMON