LURLEAN HUNTER - Blue And Setimental (1960) lp / Mp3

Singer Lurlean Hunter made five albums on her own during the second half of the '50s, starting out as a Lonesome Gal on RCA and winding up still feeling Blue & Sentimental for Atlantic. She was discovered in Chicago where she had been singing in many clubs, including a collaboration with drummer Red Saunders that held forth at the Club DeLisa. Hunter's move to New York City in 1955 was prompted by RCA's interest in recording her. The singer's recording career actually began before she left the Windy City at the behest of indie jazz labels, some of them quite short-lived -- such as Seymour, with a catalog topping out at four releases. The press described Hunter as a "blues thrush" in announcing her interpretations of three numbers actually written by the label's owner, producer and record store owner Seymour Schwartz.

The latter promotional blurb inevitably told some truth about Hunter's stylistic traits, if not her relation to winged fauna. Her recordings were more about rhythm & blues and pop than jazz, yet were done in an era when such sessions often involved fine mainstream jazz players in the accompaniment. The 1956 Night Life, for example, featured pianist Hank Jones and tenor saxophonist Al Cohn. Blue & Sentimental -- with arrangements by the progressive Jimmy Giuffre -- was reissued in 2000 as a split CD also including an album by fellow singer Betty Bennett, a former wife of pianist André Previn. Hunter's final recordings were done in 1964, at which point she was still well under 40 years old. She is known to have died young, although details of this tragedy are murky. In one version of the story she was knocked off by a mobster lover, yet whether anybody was really that mean to Lurlean cannot be completely confirmed.  by Eugene Chadbourne
Tracklist :
A1. Crazy He Calls Me
Bob Russell / Carl Sigman
A2. Blue & Sentimental
Count Basie / Mack David / Jerry Livingston
A3. If You Could See Me Now
Tadd Dameron / Carl Sigman
A4. Blue Turning Grey over You
Andy Razaf / Fats Waller
A5. As Long as I Live
Harold Arlen / Ted Koehler
A6. We'll Be Together Again
Carl Fischer / Frankie Laine
B1. Just Imagine
Lew Brown / Mack David / Buddy DeSylva / Ray Henderson
B2. My Kinda Love
Louis Alter / Jo Trent
B3. Fool That I Am
Floyd Hunt
B4. Then I'll Be Tired of You
E.Y. "Yip" Harburg / Arthur Schwartz
B5. The Song Is You
Oscar Hammerstein II / Jerome Kern
Credits:
Arranged By, Conductor – Jimmy Giuffre
Bass – George Duvivier (faixas: A1, A2, A4, A6, B5), Trigger Alpert (faixas: A3, A5, B1 to B4)
Clarinet – Rudy Rutherford
Drums – Don Lamond
Guitar – Jim Hall
Piano – Jimmy Jones
Tenor Saxophone – Bud Freeman
Trumpet – Harry Edison