Bobby Short - 50 by Bobby Short - Signed Box Set Atlantic US 4 LP set. 1986.

$

25

Bobby - Short 50 By Bobby Short

Year of Release:

1986

Artist:

Bobby Short

Title:

50 By Bobby Short

Format:

4 X Vinyl Box Set

Record Label:

Atlantic

Catalogue No:

81715-1

Country of Origin:

USA  

Tracklisting

I Like The Likes Of You
Manhattan
You Make Me Feel So Young
You Are Not My First Love
Gimme A Pigfoot
Sweet Bye And Bye
Autumn In New York
From This Moment On
Down With Love
I've Got Five Dollars
Sand In My Shoes
At The Morning Picture Ball
Bye Bye Blackbird
The Most Beautiful Girl In The World
Easy Come Easy Go
So Near And Yet So Far
Bedelia
I Love You Samantha
Hooray For Love
Down In Mexico
This Is What I Call Love
Dream Dancing
Some Fine Day
It's Bad For Me
From Now On
Wake Up Chillun Wake Up
Lydia The Tattooed Lady
Sweet So And So
Changes
Don't Bring Lulu
Della's Gone
Be My Host
Just For Today
Romance In The Dark
Simon Smith & His Dancing Bear
I Love To Rhyme
Don't Mention Love To Me
The Best Is Yet To Come
Bojangles Of Harlem
Something To Live For
And Her Mother Came Too
On The Amazon
I Can't Get Started
Rap Tap On Wood
A Room With A View
If Love Were All
I'll See You Again
Losing My Mind
Spring Is Here
Our Love Is Here To Stay

Bobby Short defines American cabaret. He's been around for so long -- effortlessly doing what others strive to do but cannot -- that it's difficult to imagine the genre without him. Short doesn't have the world's most mellifluous voice, nor is he a piano virtuoso, but no one puts over a song like him. His enthusiasm and pure style allow him to mine the gold from each tune he touches. Incontrovertible proof can be found in this excellent collection, which finds New York's finest interpreting the work of such inimitable composers as Gershwin, Cole Porter, Vernon Duke, and other classic songwriters, on to more contemporary names like Randy Newman and Stephen Sondheim. There are plenty of familiar standards here, but it's Short's penchant for offbeat material like Bessie Smith's "Gimme a Pigfoot (and a Bottle of Beer)," the Marx Brothers' "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady," and such wonderful obscurities as "And Her Mother Came Too," " Wake Up Chillun Wake Up!," and "Don't Mention Love to Me" that makes him so special.

All Music Guide - William Ruhlmann

For a middle of the road nightclub entertainer during the rock era, Bobby Short was very well documented on record. This was due to his long on-and-off association with Atlantic Records. The New York-based label led by the Turkish brothers Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun and Jerry Wexler made its money on R&B music initially and rock eventually, but the Erteguns in particular were always jazz aficionados who frequented the New York clubs, and they could afford to indulge an affection for the suave Short, who held forth in a series of those clubs until he secured his permanent residency at the Cafe Carlyle in 1968, brightly declaiming the songs of Cole Porter, Noël Coward, George & Ira Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart, and others while fronting a piano trio. For the most part, Short's Atlantic LPs can't have cost too much money to make, although his series of double-LP songbooks of the early '70s must have absorbed something in pressing costs, even if one of them, Bobby Short Loves Cole Porter, actually made Billboard's Top LPs & Tapes charts for a couple of months in 1972. The compilation 50 by Bobby Short, released as a four-LP box set different , no doubt to even out the lengths of the LP sides) may have been the Erteguns' greatest indulgence, however, and a monument to their noblesse oblige as well as their love for Short. Compiled by the artist with Nesuhi Ertegun (who produced most of Short's Atlantic LPs), the collection covers two decades of performances from the mid-'50s to the mid-'70s, which is to say from Short's own early thirties to his early fifties. While it is roughly chronological, and shows the singer's voice changing from a pure tenor to a slightly more gravelly croon, the musical approach never changes. That is not to say that the arrangements are always the same, however. While the basic unit is the piano trio, there are solos by Short as singer/pianist, and there are occasional entries by small bands of various sorts as the music leans toward blues or '20s jazz. The moods also vary, from light love songs to novelties to somewhat more somber fare. But Short always maintains an artistic distance from his material; he is always presenting it rather than inhabiting it. That means he tends to be at his best when the mood is upbeat, and especially when the words are witty. The Porter and Coward songs come off better than anything else, although Lorenz Hart's lyrics are also heard to great advantage. And anyone else who is capable of a humorous twist in his lyrics benefits from Short's approach, whether it's Ira Gershwin or E.Y. "Yip" Harburg. Although this is an album of highlights carefully culled from a large catalog, it also illustrates Short's less-sure feel for more contemporary fare -- he does his best with Randy Newman's "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear," but there's a level of irony he never gets at, and in Stephen Sondheim's "Losing My Mind," he shows himself unwilling to plumb the depths of its bitterness. Short simply isn't that much of an ironic or bitter guy, but he excels at the kind of humorous wordplay achieved by Ivor Novello on "And Her Mother Came Too" or any number of other songs on this generally brilliant career summary.