There have been sporadic threads about Julie London and some of her 30 original LPs in SHF. I thought it useful to create this continuing General Discussion Thread just so there can be a collected source of relevant information and discussion. Since Julie had such an extensive and still largely unremarked upon catalog, I created an Archival series of connected threads on her entire original discography (leaving out compilations) with attention to pressings, sonics, material and album covers for each album. Julie also had 45rpm and EP records issued during her recording career, some of which contain material not appearing on her LPs. These will be discussed by year of issue. Pictures of records are from my own collection unless otherwise indicated. The plan is to have 8 discographical threads (not counting this General thread) with the following subjects: 1. In the Beginning/Julie Is Her Name. 2. 1956: Lonely Girl & Calendar Girl. 3. 1957: About The Blues, Make Love To Me, Julie. 4. 1958-59: Julie Is Her Name Vol.2 to Your Number Please. 5. 1960-61: Julie At Home to Whatever Julie Wants. 6. 1962-63: Sophisticated Lady to The Wonderful World of Julie London. 7. 1964-66: Julie London to For The Night People. 8. 1967-69: Nice Girls Don't Stay For Breakfast to Yummy Yummy Yummy. Comments or questions that are solely related to one of the covered records are probably best included in the relevant discographical thread. Otherwise feel free to comment/post here.
As far as I'm aware, there is no standard biography of Julie. Her life was not the type that would attract the interest of typical Hollywood biographers. Julie was a homebody more than most Hollywood types and had 5 children over a rather extended period. So information seems to be gathered from very scattered sources. There was a BBC documentary on her life which can be seen on YouTube. () Two websites have collected the modest amount of public information about her and her career. www.julielondon.org has material and photos culled from newspapers, magazines and movie fan sites. www.joancrawfordbest.com/londonbios.htm#Los has a section of the site devoted to Julie London. There is also a 2 volume history called Liberty Records by Michael Kelly (McFarland & Co.: 1993) with an online list of the entire label discography including of course Julie's records. (www.bsnpubs.com/liberty/liberty.html)
BIO (adapted from Wiki) Julie London was born Gayle Peck in Santa Rosa, California on September 26, 1926. Her parents, Josephine and Jack Peck, had been vaudeville performers and later had a radio show. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1940. Julie attended a Hollywood Performing Arts high school during the war. No, it is not a joke that Julie was a department store elevator operator when "discovered" by an agent in the early 1940s. She worked in a few films as well as a radio show actress initially.. She also sang occasionally with some small groups but not big bands. Julie had met Jack Webb a rising radio actor and sometime jazz trumpeter in the early 40s. After his discharge from the Army, the two resumed dating and in 1947 they were married. Although she appeared in a few films in the 40s, after her marriage Julie mostly tended to family and her two daughters until the marriage started to breakup allegedly from neglect by Webb. They were divorced in 1953. In March 1954, Julie met Bobby Troup, the jazz pianist/songwriter, who heard her sing at a party and began to pester her to sing professionally based on his assessment of her talent. She reluctantly agreed and cut four demo tracks for an EP on Bethlehem Records in 1955, but the company chose not to sign her. Julie then got a singing engagement at Johnny Walsh's 881 Club in Beverly Hills, which was very successful.. Troup brought Si Waronker, President of the newly formed Liberty Records to hear her and he immediately signed her to a recording contract. Her first album, Julie Is Her Name, was a tremendous #2 hit in 1955/56 along with the top ten single Cry Me A River. Cry Me A River was her only 45 that charted in the top 100 but she had 4 other LPs make the charts during her recording career. Her singing career also reactivated her movie career and in 1956 she appeared in The Great Man as an alcoholic singer. She then starred or co-starred in Man of the West, Voice in the Mirror, The George Raft Story and The Third Voice. She also sang the title film song Voice In The Mirror. Julie recorded albums for 14 years but in 1969 her contract with Liberty Records ended. In addition to the changing music biz, Liberty Records was in a downward spiral and soon to be taken over by Transamerica/United Artists and Si Waronker had retired. With only nightclub and Vegas work by Julie, as well as a memorable small role in the movie MASH by Bobby Troup for several years after 1969, Julie and Bobby were offered important supporting roles in a new TV series Jack Webb was developing, Emergency. Julie played the chief nurse Dixie McCall at an LA Hospital Emergency Dept while Troup played Dr .Early, one of the doctors there. The successful series lasted from 1972 until 1977 when Julie retired from show business, with only a few exceptions such as recording a song for the movie Sharky's Machine. She and Bobby lived quietly in Hollywood until 1995 when Julie, a heavy smoker, suffered a serious stroke at 69. Bobby passed away at 80 from a heart attack in February 1999 and Julie passed away on October 18, 2000 at the age of seventy-four.
Julie London Original LPs 1. Julie Is Her Name 1955 2. Lonely Girl 1956 3. Calendar Girl 4. About The Blues 1957 5. Make Love To Me 6. Julie 7. Julie Is Her Name Vol. 2 1958 8. London By Night 9. Swing Me An Old Song 1959 10. Your Number Please 11. Julie At Home 1960 12. Around Midnight 13. Send For Me 1961 14. Whatever Julie Wants 15. Sophisticated Lady 1962 16. Love Letters 17. Love On The Rocks 1963 18. Latin In A Satin Mood 19. End Of The World 20. Wonderful World 21. Julie London (S/T) 1964 22. Julie In Person 23. Our Fair Lady 1965 24. Feeling Good 25. All Through The Night 26. For The Night People 1966 27. Nice Girls Don’t Stay For Breakfast 1967 28. With Body And Soul 29. Easy Does It 1968 30. Yummy Yummy Yummy 1969
Julie London 45s with songs in bold that are not on Liberty LPs. 1. Foggy Day 1956 BEP 133EP (Bethlehem) p/s 2. Baby Baby/Shadow Woman/I'll Cry LSX 1001 EP p/s 3. Now Baby Now/Tall Boy 55032 4. Dark/It Had To Be You 57 55076 p/s 5. Saddle the Wind/I'd Like You For Xmas 55108 6. Tell Me You're Home /The Freshmen 58 55131 7. Voice in the Mirror/It's Easy 55139 8. Man of the West/Blue Moon 55157 9. My Strange Affair/Come On A My House 59 55175 10. Must Be Catching/Something I Dreamed 55182 11. Time For Lovers/ In TheWee Small Hours 60 55269 p/s 12. Sanctuary /Every Chance I Get 61 55309 13. My Darling/My Love 55337 14. Ipanema /My Lover is a Stranger 64 55702 15. We Proved Them Wrong/Free To Go 55759 16. Too Much of a Man/Sitting Pretty 69 56112 unreleased p/s = picture sleeve known to exist
( ( ( ( ( ((((((( . What I want to contribute, is the fact, that her albums, if they're originals, are still rather high priced. Therefore I'm glad with reissues. My favorite, not a least because of the cover photographs (especially the 13. month): . 'Calendar Girl' (UK Edsel Records - XED 109, 1982) originally issued 1956, comes with the terrific original center-fold cover! . . . An original release would have cost me a fortune, if it would ever turn up for sale in decent condition!
Thank you, Mr Bass, for giving Julie your love and attention. I look forward to these discussions. She's the leading candidate for my third discography project, but it may be difficult to find complete session details. Perhaps these discussions will reveal a lot of information I'm unaware of.
Yes, session info is hard to find. It would require someone who had Liberty Records contacts or background. Fortunately they were pretty good at listing Producer and Engineer for her LPs.
True. I suppose whole albums could be listed as one session, but that's unorthodox. Perhaps these discussions will satisfy my desire to represent this great artist in lieu of a discography page.
I have to admit, for many years I totally dismissed Julie London based on nothing more than the fact that her album covers made her look like an empty-headed pin-up girl. I assumed her popularity had more to do with her looks than with her talent. Then I actually listened to her. Now I own some 30-35 LPs and CDs by her. Yes, there's a tremendous amount of sensuality and sophisticated sexiness in her singing, but there's serious talent there. I think of her silky smooth, smoky voice as being the female equivalent of Nat King Cole.
Good analogy, although as you must know, there is far more variety in her albums than is commonly supposed by those only having passing familiarity.
Yes, the variety of musical backdrops cannot be overstated. I've only heard about half of Julie's albums, but of those there's only one I don't care for. Send For Me. It may be personal preference, but I feel Julie is best when she smolders like glowing embers. She seems to force her voice on the Benny Carter album and still gets drowned out by the cacophony of the brass. It comes off as shrill and un-Julie-like. Thoughts?
At least according to Julie, these albums were recorded quickly. What photos of Julie in the studio I have seen show her alone with headphones.
Thank you. I feel it is her least successful album as well. The sonics are miserable too. I had to listen to it again as part of the discographical threads and it was painful. At least it has a nice cover.
That recalls to mind the photo of her in a bathrobe, cigarette in hand, recording with phones next to the coffee urn. I love it. Julie seemed so candid, cool and natural.
A cover that drips with sexual desire. I find it appealing too, even as a gay man. I think I bought that album for the cover but was disappointed with its contents. The arrangements are at fault, not Julie. Carter himself should've had the musical knowledge to know it wouldn't work. He should've turned down the job when it was offered. As for sonics, I agree. Wretched pressing. I had a mono disc, and it sounded dull and noisy. *Had, as in I pawned the album.
She was a great singer with the right material and the right arrangement. Has anybody better personified the cool blonde than Julie London? I think the pinup girl image made her a star, but then proved impossible to shake. Jazz purists scoffed, which wouldn't have been a problem if the pop market weren't in the process of being displaced by rock. It left poor Julie without an audience. Oddly, when Joni Mitchell did her standards album Both Sides Now, on several cuts the singer she most reminded me of was Julie London ("I Wish I Was In Love Again", "Comes Love").
Good comments. However Julie's albums always sold well. Liberty wasn't losing money with her or they never would have issued 30 albums plus. But you are right that they weren't charting after the first 4 nor did they continue to make waves in the music biz after the first couple despite their excellence. Nevertheless her average quality was very high. As you say she needed a good arrangement to get involved with a song in mid and late career and was let down quite a bit.
Yes, Send For Me was her unlucky 13th album. Julie sings confidently but is let down by everyone else as you note. Julie was not in control of her albums. Back in that day artists were much more passive about management. She relied on her husband Bobby Troup, a jazz musician himself to produce her initial albums, but Liberty eventually pushed him aside when they stopped charting. After that things became variable and sometimes chaotic for the production of her albums. .
I have quickly scanned this interesting Julie thread. Are there any albums that you Julie-Junkies can recommend as being much more uptempo and swing'n than most of her other great stuff? Thanks
Well the A&R guy at Liberty should've known that Julie's voice wouldn't mesh well with the slam and bang of Benny Carter. Oh well. I'm just happy the 13th album wasn't her last, as a result of what I consider to be a "sonic experiment gone awry". Carter was popular at the time, working with a lot of big name vocalists. I don't blame Liberty for wanting a slice of the pie. It's just too bad it had to be Julie. For all we know, it could've been an idea that Julie pressed for. It may have been exciting and fun in the studio, but I can only imagine she was disappointed after hearing the playbacks.
