Pearl Bailey "A Broad" What a great find!

This is the first Pearl Bailey I've heard in 45 years. Wish it was on CD.

Any suggestions for good sounding CD's?

Pearl Bailey "A Broad" Roulette 1958?
Non Dimenticar/South America, Take It Away/Shein Vi De L'Vone/C'est Magnifique/Loch Lomond/Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home/Thats What I Like About the North/You Come A Long Way From St Louis/Mambo, Tango, Samba, Calypso, Rhumba Blues/Anyplace I Hang My Hat is Home/Ballin' the Jack/There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon For New York.

 

Guess I should of posted this in the "Old Farts" section. Hope I gain at least one convert and/or a couple of leads on good sounding CD's.

 

Does it say who did the musical arrangements?

 

Only credit it has is "Recording Supervision - Hugo and Luigi".

On second listen it probably isn't her greatest album but has several songs that I enjoy. Good enough to make me hunger for more!

 

Pearl Bailey??

 

A little something I found while surfin.

Hugo & Luigi
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Hugo & Luigi were a record producing team, made up of songwriters and producers Luigi Creatore and Hugo Peretti, who shared an office in New York's Brill Building. Besides their working relationship, the two were cousins.

First coming to attention with singles released on Mercury Records in the mid-1950s, they went on to produce Perry Como, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke and other artists for RCA Victor, including the hit records "Twistin' The Night Away", "Another Saturday Night", "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens, the Isley Brothers's classic "Shout", and Little Peggy March's "I Will Follow Him". They co-wrote Presley's hit "Can't Help Falling in Love", with George David Weiss.

Hugo & Luigi were also onetime co-owners of Roulette Records. Songs composed by the duo were often credited to "Mark Markwell", and records they produced carried their distinct logo. While at Roulette Hugo and Luigi did a series of Beautiful Music recordings of "Cascading Voices" and later "Cascading Strings."

After founding Avco Records and producing artists such as The Stylistics in the 1970s, Hugo & Luigi launched a new label, H&L Records, which they ran until they retired, at the end of the decade. Peretti died in 1986.

 

Hello Larry,
I like Pearl Bailey too. She made it look easy so I think as time went by she became underrated. I wouldn't mind finding a good cd of hers myself.

Didn't she used to nail "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey" on the Ed Sullivan shoe a few times?

 

I guess we are alone in our Pearl Baily appreciation. I thought maybe Steve would know about her?

 

Not to worry, there are definitely other people here who appreciate her talents. I probably have just about every LP Pearl made, and she did quite a few -- between 35 and 50. She recorded mainly for Columbia, Roulette, Coral, and Mercury.

"Abroad" is actually one of the albums of hers that I most enjoy. Just a fun, mindless set of tunes. Check out the pun in the title, by the way. It's an album of traveling songs; hence the title "Abroad." But the album spells it as "A Broad."

If you have never heard her, the following clips should give you a general idea of what she was best known for -- comic singing, with a lot of spoken asides. Yet Bailey was a bona fide singer, not just a comedienne. She also sang in a more serious manner, and even recorded songbooks of Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Jimmy Van Heusen material.

In this skit, she plays a very chatty maid and sings one of her signature songs, "Tired":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIuR6AP9WG0

Here she does a lighthearted medley with Andy Williams, "Give Me the Simple Life":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRU3w415xys

And here she plays raucous partner to Dinah Shore, in "Mack the Knife":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaxBVUOkyLs


There is a fair share of her CDs still in print. If you want a basic CD representation of her material, either of the two below could do.

The first has stuff originally on Columbia, from the 1940s. It contains some of her best-known hit singles, including the aforementioned "Tired."

The second has stuff originally on Roulette, as digitized by EMI. It includes tracks from the previously mentioned songbooks and from her most famous albums, "For Adults Only" / "More Songs for Adults Only." Has a later version of "Tired," too.

As far as sound quality goes, I'd say that these two sound okay. The first sounds best to me (Columbia Legacy; "digitally remastered by Tim Greelan, Sony Music Studios, New York") and is the oldest (1991). Graphically, the EMI one is budget-looking yet the contents are not (a generous 26 tracks and liner notes).

 

Thanks guys! Looks like there's more than two of us. Thanks for the info.

 

I thought I was the only one! The Pearl I knew growing up was a campy "has been" on late night T.V.-or so I thought then. I rediscovered some of her earlier albums and was pleasantly surprised at what a great singer she was doing R&B classics, and also how funny she was. I have about 8 or 9 LP's of hers now, and they never cease to delight my friends who aren't hip to her yet. Good stuff! Her LP on Columbia "The Definitive" is really good, and her Mercury Lp "The One And Only" is a real hoot as well.

 

Oh, good choices. I actually haven't played any of her albums in years, but those 3 LPs and "A Broad" are the ones that I still remember as most enjoyable.

From "The One an Only," I loved the opening track in particular ("A Porter's Love Song to a Chambermaid"), and others whose titles I can't quite recall.

She had another Mercury LP, titled "The Intoxicating Pearl Bailey," whose cover shows her next to two wine glasses, magnified to her size.

"The Definitive Pearl Bailey" is actually a mid-50s compilation, featuring most of her best numbers from the 78 era. For the CD era, I think that all or at least most of those tracks were reissued in "16 Most Requested Songs," on of the discs that I mentioned before. Anyway, real fun set of tracks.

Nice to learn that people who do not know Pearl enjoy her at first listening. I can see how she could come across as campy -- she harks backs to the vaudeville tradition and schtick on late-night TV
can be very hammy -- but there's originality, humor and a lot of talent in her singing style.