Swing Music

Just the title song here, "Thanks for the Memory," is enough to buy this CD. You'll never think of Jack Benny again after you hear this. She does the tune without being cynical, maudlin, or sappy, and boy does she swing it. Then old Mildred probably swung when she was asleep, when she did her laundry, or just walking down the street. They didn't call her Mrs. Swing for Nothing.

Mildred Bailey was not just the first real female Jazz band singer. She was one of the earliest real jazz singers and she continued to have a jazz based strain to her singing throughout her career unlike some singers with her success who might have gone more pop. She was fun. She was fun. She was fun. She jived, she joked, she played. You are going to smile when you hear Mildred and know she is really serious when she is serious. She could bring out the jazz in the most wooden of accompaniest, but usually she had great musicians, white, black or otherwise playing behind her, because Mildred is fun.

In an age before television, Bailey continued to have fans white and Black who did not know she was white. This remains true even recently when I have loaned tapes of Mildred to other African Americans without any liner notes or anything and had them ask why they had never heard of this great Black singer.

However, I do find it distressing that Mildred Bailey seems to be so forgotten. She was the first prominent female band singer in Jazz. She was and is fun to listen to and a great voice. Mildred was actually able to swing and swing hard even with Paul Whiteman. She produced masterpieces using some of the same small groups as Billie Holday for HER Columbia recordings, although Bailey semed to prefer Herschal Evans to Lester Young. Bailey was also pretty out front for the time as a white female singer performing with an all black combo--"Mildred Baily and Her Oxford Browns." Mildred was simply magnificent in the small combos her husband Red Novro organized, She had a sense of humor about her performances and a bit of salaciousness that you won't find in Billie's recordings.

I don't think it was just out of sentimentality, but in tribute to her artistry, that Sinatra and Bing Crosby (who owed his career to Bailey's bringing him in contact with Whiteman)spent thousands of dollars helping her out in the last years of her life when health problems and the end of her career led her to very hard times.

Mildred was a great singer, a great jazz pioneer, and a lot of fun. How does anyone get along without the joy her music has brought to my life. There have been times when my life was worse than it is now when I was depressed and just thinking about one of Mildred's tracks on this CD started to turn my life around!

As a fairly new jazz explorer, I "discovered" Mildred Bailey after hearing one track on a compilation and decided I would like to hear more....I did and love this CD. Although the tracks were recorded 50-60 years ago, they are of high quality. Lovely (and extensive)choice of material.

I don't think you will be disappointed with this.

This is a wonderful little pastiche from the beginning of the swing era. Benny and his bunch seem to romp and jump through these broadcast pick-ups with all the verve of cat on a hot tin roof. The re-mastering from these old air-checks is superlative and the quality is ten times better than from your old Zenith with all the knobs. Helen Ward sounds youthfully pert with that vivaciousness that helped Benny's early vocals swing. Indeed, this should be a part of any Benny Goodman collection and, for that matter, any collection of the early swing era.

I was impressed by how modern Shaw's 1936 orchestra sounded and there are some really interesting vocals like Peg LaCentra singing "There's Frost on the Moon". Instrumentals such as "Japanese Sandman" are terrific.