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Julie is Her Name Print E-mail
Monday, 19 February 2007

Julie London album cover  - Julie is Her NameSometimes you find some great jazz guitar recordings in unlikely places, or on albums under other musician's names. I'm not a huge fan of Barney Kessel's later recordings, but his 1950s work is excellent, including The Poll Winners, which is one of my favourites. Recently I've also been enjoying the first Julie London LP Julie Is Her Name which includes Barney Kessel on guitar.

As Julie London once said of her voice, "It's only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of oversmoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate" (Life Magazine, 1957). And this recording is certainly intimate both with London's voice and also the scaled down instrumentation -- with only guitar and bass backing her. Barney Kessel's playing is very tasteful, never flashy, always the perfect compliment to London's singing. And that's exactly his job here--to make Julie London sound as good as she can. And does she ever!

The album features Julie London's biggest hit "Cry Me a River" which was written by an old schoolmate of hers. It also has some of the sexiest cover art I've seen. Of course she was a pin-up star before her music career began. On the cover it looks as though she's naked except for the two slivers of fabric at the very bottom of the image--perhaps that was necessary in those days--though I have seen other versions where the fabric is cropped out.

Julie London was also an actress. She and her hit song from this album appear in the 1956 movie "The Girl Can't Help It."

The follow-up to this album, Julie Is Her Name vol. 2 is also nice, though it features a different band with Howard Roberts on guitar and Red Mitchell on bass.

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