Obscure & Neglected Female Singers Of Jazz & Standards (1930s to 1960s)

This is a wonderful and thrilling performance by Paula Castle — Why Can’t I.
Thanks Pomotu!

 

Susannah McCorkle (1946-2001), a native of Berkeley, California, McCorkle studied Italian literature at University of California at Berkeley. She was inspired to become a singer when she heard Billie Holiday sing "I've Got a Right to Sing the Blues".

She moved to England in 1971 where she worked with Dick Sudhalter and Keith Ingham, among others, performing at concerts with such visiting Americans as Bobby Hackett, Ben Webster, and Dexter Gordon, and recorded her first two albums, one a tribute to Harry Warren, the other to Johnny Mercer released domestically by Inner City.

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After moving back to the U.S. in the 1970s, she sang at the Cookery in Greenwich Village and the Riverboat in Manhattan. Later in her career she sang often at the Algonquin Hotel.​

No More Blues (1988), her first album for Concord Jazz, was recorded with guitarists Emily Remler and Bucky Pizzarelli and pianist Dave Frishberg. Her writing was published in Cosmopolitan, Newsday, New York, and the O. Henry Award Prize Stories.

Stereo Review magazine named How Do You Keep the Music Playing (1986) album of the year, while critic Leonard Feather named it vocal album of the year.

A breast cancer survivor, McCorkle suffered for many years from depression. She died by suicide at age 55 by leaping off the balcony of her apartment at 41 West 86th Street in Manhattan. She was alone in her home at the time. The police immediately entered her home after identifying her body and found no foul play. Suicide was ruled the cause of death.

Haunted Heart, a biography of Susannah McCorkle written by Linda Dahl, was published in September 2006 by University of Michigan Press.

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One of the finest interpreters of lyrics active in the jazz world during the 1980s and '90s, Susannah McCorkle did not improvise all that much, but she brought the proper emotional intensity to the words she sang; a lyricist's dream.

Susannah McCorkle - Alone Together 1986




From this great album (Cbs/Sony Serie)


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She was a very nice person. I spent an entire evening with her in conversation at the beginning.

 

Lynn Castle - Rose Colored Corner 1966. Listen here: Lynn Castle
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A beguiling singer and songwriter who crossed paths with many great talents in the 60s without leaving behind a significant catalog of work, Lynn Castle would develop a cult following decades after her only single came and went with little notice. Lynn Castle was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939. By the time she was four years old, Castle was learning to play the piano, and her talent impressed her teachers and peers at the Catholic boarding school she attended. Stung by her parents' divorce and her uncomfortable relationship with her new stepmother, as a teenager Castle began writing songs to make sense of her feelings. Castle was encouraged by her high-school boyfriend, Phil Spector, who was just beginning his career as a member of the vocal group the Teddy Bears. In 1958, Castle wrote a doo-wop-styled tune called "Love's Prayer," which, with the help of singer Rush Adams (Lynn's uncle), made its way to the A&R staff at Capitol Records, who placed the song with the vocal group the Spinners.

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While having her song recorded by a major-label act might have seemed like a big break for Castle, there was no immediate follow-up, and after leaving home and moving to California, she soon found herself in a relationship and became the mother of two children. Castle continued to write in her spare time, and she stayed in touch with Lee Hazlewood, whom she met in the 50s. He liked her songwriting well enough to give her a Martin guitar and encourage her to keep honing her craft. In the mid-60s, Castle took up a career as a hair stylist, and she soon developed a specialty cutting men's hair, just as longer styles for men were coming into fashion in Hollywood. Castle's successful hair-cutting business put her in touch with many show biz notables who made their way to her Sunset Strip shop. Her regular clients included members of the Byrds, the Monkees, and Buffalo Springfield, as well as Del Shannon and Sonny Bono. Two more of Castle's frequent customers, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart (who were then enjoying success writing and producing material for the Monkees), heard her songs and were favorably impressed with one called "Teeny Tiny Gnome." Retitled "Kicking Stones," it was recorded by the Monkees in 1966, though the song would go unreleased until it appeared on a collection of rarities in 1987.

Another of Castle's circle of friends and admirers was the noted producer and arranger Jack Nitzsche; one night in 1966, he brought her into a recording studio and cut acoustic demos of 23 of her songs, tunes infused with a playful psychedelia while also reflecting her personal difficulties in life and love. It would be a year later before Castle finally made her debut as a recording artist; produced by Lee Hazlewood and with backing by the band Last Friday's Fire, "The Lady Barber" b/w "Rose Colored Corner" was issued by Hazlewood's LHI label. Despite Castle's minor celebrity cited on the A-side and adequate promotion by LHI, the single failed to find an audience, and various personal trials prevented her from continuing her career as a performer, though she never stopped writing songs for her own satisfaction. As Hazlewood's work developed a cult following in new millennium, Castle's single was rediscovered by record collectors, and it was reissued by Light in the Attic Records in 2014. The first Lynn Castle album was released in 2017; Rose Colored Corner featured both sides of her LHI single, as well as ten songs from her Nitzsche-produced 1966 demo session.

Though most of the world may not know the songs of Lynn Castle, she is an artist whose work stretches across seven decades. She has created a diverse and vast (albeit mostly unreleased) discography of pop, folk, country, gothic, rock, punk, blues, and children’s songs. Light In The Attic Records is very excited to continue its Lee Hazlewood Archive Series with Rose Colored Corner, a collection of intimate recordings Lynn Castle made with Jack Nitzsche in 1966 and her complete recorded output with Lee Hazlewood on LHI Records. For the first time ever Lynn is sharing recordings from her personal archive and telling her story.

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Just because her songs weren’t recognized at the time doesn’t diminish their magic. This music is meant to be found and heard. Though commercial success may remain elusive, sometimes strange premonitions are realized… “When I was young, making music in the 60s, I had this strange thought that one day I would be this old woman, and young people would come find me and tell me that my music meant something to them.” – Lynn Castle

She came back to the studio in 2019 for two singles

Achin' in the Dawn 2019

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Here's a press photo of Vicky Palmer from 1950 that's on ebay:



The flac download on qobuz was just made available by Northwind Records. Maybe they can put the covers and liner notes (if there were any) on their website.

 

Here's the back:



Searching for Vicky Palmer on ebay can be tricky. You need to search for Vicky Palmer ABC or search in music, because there is another Vicky Palmer who had a very different occupation.

 

An interesting story... I haven't listen to her yet and am unfamiliar with her, which I shall correct; but for the time being... the 1966 Lynn Castle as they say... huba huba. Elle est geniale. Merci Pomotu.

 

From this list

Betty Carter - love the album with Ray Charles
June Christy - am I wrong thinking of her as more of an actresss
Rosemary Clooney - kind of indifferent
Chris Connor - who
Doris Day - actress
Blossom Dearie - well regarded jazz musician
Ella Fitzgerald - one of the three best jazz vocalist of all time
Judy Garland - one of the classic performers of all time
Eydie Gorme - pop
Billie Holiday - one of the three best jazz vocalist of all time
Shirley Horn - ok
Lena Horne - ok
Eartha Kitt - no interest
Peggy Lee - pop
Abby Lincoln - I definitely like
Julie London - stage and screen
Carmen McRae - indifferent
Ethel Merman - indifferent
Helen Merrill - isn't she an actress
Anita O'Day - who
Patti Page - pop music
Dinah Shore - tv personality
Nina Simone - classic jazz performer
Keely Smith - who
Jeri Southern - who
Jo Stafford - I recognize the name an for some reason tie it to Playboy
Kay Starr - who
Dakota Staton -who
Barbra Streisand - classic pop performer
Sarah Vaughan - one of the three greatest jazz vocalist of all time
Dinah Washington - ok
Margaret Whiting - who
Nancy Wilson - so so

 

For all of those that you labeled "who", it looks like you got some listening to do.

 

Plus, I would add that you should listen some more to those above that you dismissed, and learn about them.

"June Christy - am I wrong thinking of her as more of an actresss
Rosemary Clooney - kind of indifferent
Doris Day - actress
Eydie Gorme - pop
Shirley Horn - ok
Lena Horne - ok
Eartha Kitt - no interest
Peggy Lee - pop
Julie London - stage and screen
Carmen McRae - indifferent
Ethel Merman - indifferent
Helen Merrill - isn't she an actress
Patti Page - pop music
Dinah Shore - tv personality
Jo Stafford - I recognize the name an for some reason tie it to Playboy
Dinah Washington - ok
Nancy Wilson - so so"

 

We need more job to do in our corresponding thread:

From Anita & Ella To Nina & Sassy: Celebrated Songstresses Of Jazz & Standards

 

In particular, the casual dismissal of Peggy Lee and Doris Day as "pop" and "actress" completely overlooks the tremendous vocal talents of both of these singers and the fact that they developed a new, gentler approach to jazz vocal art that may actually be the most influential style shift of the last 70 years, away from a focus on the blues-based approach.

I think that many who dismiss them do so on the basis of their appearance.

 

Yes, you are wrong. One of the greatest jazz singers of all time.

 

Here are some newspaper "clippings" of Vicky Palmer. Four of them include the press photo that's on ebay:

 

Barbara Eden!? My inclination towards exotica lead me to just purchase a cd fom Real Gone Music called simply, Barbara Eden. It's a very short 26 or so minutes from a 1960s album, perhaps the only one the star
of "I Dream of Jeannie" recorded.

Several of the tracks are pop songs of the day but her versions are rather unlike the hit versions. But this one was already a standard from earlier times.

Dream

 

OK , let´s see if this time I´ve got it right (the first links that I posted didn´t work ), here are the links for two new titles of The Best Voices Time Forgot series : Sheila Guyse & Joya Sherrill - This is Sheila + Sugar & Spice (2 LP on 1 CD) Bonus Tracks - Blue Sounds and Cora Lee Day & Debby Moore - My Crying Hour + My Kind of blues (2 LP on 1 CD) - Blue Sounds .

 

good job , they work !

 

I found this article by "The American Flaneur" to complete this thread

In Search of Helen Carr - 10/14/2018


When one comes across the name Helen Carr, too many people it often has a very vague ring of familiarity to it. Who was that? Was she in films? In music?

But in reality, most people don’t know Helen Carr. Nor have they probably seen or heard any of her work. To those who know of her, she has an aura of legend and mystery – principally because there is so little known about her, and because of her premature death – the cause of which very little is also publicly known.

Helen Carr was a jazz singer. The actual location of her birth presently remains undefinitive, although both the 1930 and 1940 U.S. Census records record her birthplace as Utah, and the liner notes of her Bethlehem album, Down in the Depths of the 90th Floor further confirm that she, "hails from Salt Lake City." However, no corroborating documentation has yet been found.

Various sources report multiple dates for the year of her birth, ranging from 1922 to 1928. Her second husband, pianist Donn Trenner indicated that she had, “…never been honest about her age.” My guess is that October, 1922 is probably the most accurate date based on U.S. Census records and private family correspondence, making her five years older than Trenner.

She was attractive and had a pleasing voice. Her voice was soft and breathy – almost sounding like a bluesy Marilyn Monroe. She was clearly a mature singer who was in command of her material and was quite poised on the bandstand. Donn Trenner opined that he could hear the influence of Billie Holiday in her voice. I think that’s a bit of a stretch, but she did have a sultry quality, and she could interpret music with great feeling.

When Donn Trenner first met Helen Carr, it was on a double-date with Jimmy Hanson, a tenor saxophone player with the Ted Fio Rito band in 1945. They had just finished their gig at the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco, and drove to the Mondre Café in Oakland with two women they had met earlier. Trenner was driving the car, and when he looked at Helen Carr in the rear view mirror seated on the back seat with Hanson, he knew that she was the woman he really wanted.[3]

At the time, she was an operator for, “… a telephone service in bars and late-night clubs where one could dial-up a song. You told the operator what song you wanted to hear and they would play it from their central station.”

Shortly thereafter, Donn Trenner was drafted into the military, but he continued to date and remain in touch with Helen Carr. At one point he was transferred to Scott Air Force Base near Belleville, Illinois about 25 miles east of downtown St. Louis, and Helen moved to the Midwest to be near him.

She moved into a place next to the Chase Park Plaza Hotel in St. Louis. According to Donn Trenner’s autobiography, “They had a venue called the Steeplechase Room with a trio lead by a great guitarist, Joe Schirmer. That’s where Helen learned one of Cole Porter’s lesser-known songs, “Down in the Depths of the 90th Floor." The song has three different segments; it’s not written as a standard thirty-two bar song form. It tells a story, which requires a distribution of different emotions within the lyric content.”

That song became one that is most associated with Helen Carr, as hers is arguably the definitive version – in much the same manner as Artie Shaw’s version of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine” is certainly the most definitive version of that. Interesting to note, by-the-way, that neither song follows the standard 32-bar format.

When Donn Trenner was discharged from the military in the autumn of 1946, he and Helen Carr moved to New York City to a small flat on West 86th Street and began looking for work. Several months later they eloped, getting married in Elkton, Maryland.

But unfortunately from the outset, even before they got married, there were behaviors exhibited by Helen that ultimately doomed the marriage. According to Trenner, she, “… reacted in negative ways whenever she was in the presence of other women.” He at first attributed it to insecurity, but he soon realized that it was more than jealousy, and characterized it as a neurosis.”[7] Remember too as noted earlier, the wide variation in her reported dates of birth, as she frequently, apparently misled about her age. I won’t elaborate on this behavior in terms of her jealousy and mistrust any further here, but for those who wish to research this aspect of Helen Carr’s life further, I would refer you to Donn Trenner’s autobiography.

During this period, Donn Trenner claimed he could only play with bands where a spot could also be guaranteed for Helen Carr, or things just wouldn’t work out given her behavioral issues. They played with Blue Barron and Chuck Foster, and ultimately got a call to join Buddy Morrow in 1947.

After the work with Buddy Morrow ended in 1948, the couple moved back to San Francisco where they had first met, and where Helen had a child named Gordon from her first marriage still residing. Even at this point, Trenner claims that he did not know much about Helen Carr’s past.

Once back in San Francisco, they put together their own group, known as The Donn Trio and Helen, which was together for about a year when Charlie Barnet made the couple an offer to tour with his big band, which they did during 1950-51. This resulted in Helen Carr’s only known filmed performance, a Snader Telescription, which also included Donn Trenner playing piano.

The only known filmed performance of Helen Carr, here with Charlie Barnet & His Orchestra, and with Donn Trenner on piano.

There was some excellent research done on the Obscure & Neglected Female Singers of Jazz & Standards forum that indicated while in San Francisco, an article in the Oakland Tribune on Friday, July 22, 1949 reported that Helen Carr was awarded five weeks’ custody of her son who was living in a foster home after her divorce from her first husband, Walter A. Carr, a chef in Orinda, CA on November 24, 1947. (Note that according to Donn Trenner’s autobiography, they were married in Elkton, Maryand in late 1946 or very early 1947.)

The California Birth Index indicates that Helen’s son, Gordon William Carr, was born on August 2, 1942, and that Helen Carr’s maiden name was Huber.[10]

The Oakland Tribune on Friday, June 13, 1941 recorded a marriage license issued in Reno, Nevada to Helen M. Huber (age 19) and Walter A. Carr, both of Oakland. So that, along with the 1930 and 1940 U.S. Census records, would seem to solve the mystery of her birth year (e.g., 1922).

Researching her name in the 1930 and 1940 Census and other newspaper records indicate that she was living with her parents in Danville, Illinois in 1930; in Kansas City, Missouri when her father died in 1936; in Seattle, Washington with her widowed mother in 1940, working as an usherette in a theater; and finally shown as being registered to vote in Alameda County, California with her mother by 1944 (though married in 1941).

After leaving Charlie Barnet, Donn Trenner worked with Les Brown from 1954 to 1961. Helen was not part of the band, but she did travel frequently with her husband. During this period however, she picked up recording gigs and club dates when she was able, including two record albums for the Bethlehem label in 1955. The first being, Down in the Depths of the 90th Floor, followed by, Why Do I Love You. Interestingly, her picture never appeared on either album cover.

While in Philadelphia finishing an engagement with Oscar Pettiford and Anita O'Day, three days before Mothers’ Day, Trenner was in a greeting card store looking for a card for Helen when he was approached by a woman who asked him if he was ‘all right’ because he looked rather sad. They spoke for a few minutes, and while he claims she wasn’t soliciting for a date, she left him with a card that had her name and telephone number written on it in case he needed someone to talk with. While back in his hotel room, he was writing a thank you note to the woman when Helen, who had been in New York, unexpectedly arrived at his room to drive him back to Manhattan. So he shoved the half-written note under a pillow, and of course his wife found it. A very bad move indeed. All of this only reinforced Helen Carr’s mistrust in him.

Nonetheless, they headed off back to New York from Philadelphia in their blue Buick, and an argument ensued in the car, to the point where she was apparently beating Trenner over the head with her shoe while he was driving. As he approached the toll plaza to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, he pulled off to the side of the road, dove out of the car and ran for cover in some bushes, all of this occurring at about 2 o’clock in the morning.

According to Trenner, she drove back and forth several times looking for him while he was hiding in the bushes, until finally getting on the Turnpike and returning to New York alone. Trenner returned to Philadelphia for the night.

The woman with whom Donn Trenner spoke in the greeting card store was named Joan Martin, who also happened to be a close friend of Chan Parker, Charlie Parker’s wife. Chan lived in New Hope, Pennsylvania and owned an ice cream parlor called the Bird’s Nest. That was where he ultimately found Joan Martin who came back to Philadelphia and took Trenner to her apartment until he returned to New York.

While back in New York, Trenner claims he found papers proving that Helen Carr had never gotten divorced from her first husband (although this would appear to be contrary to the Oakland Tribune article from 1949), so he was able to get his marriage to Helen annulled. All of this would have been around 1958. Chan Parker married Phil Woods shortly thereafter (Charlie Parker died in 1955) and left New Hope, PA for France in 1959.
After the separation, Helen Carr remained in New York, and ultimately worked with Charlie Barnet again. During a 17-day tour with Barnet, she found out that she had cancer. Donn Trenner stated that he visited Helen in the hospital approximately two weeks before she died.

And so Helen Carr died in a hospital from cancer, apparently in New York City, at 37 years old. She is buried in an unmarked grave, in Linden, NJ. This cannot be allowed to stand. She will have a gravestone in time for the 60th anniversary of her death next year.

Donn Trenner did not attend her funeral, though he states that her son Gordon put his photograph in her casket.

Gordon William Carr was Helen's only child, by her first marriage to Walter Carr, in California. He was only 18 at the time of his mother's death, and he himself apparently passed away in New York City in December, 1988 at the age of 42.

We’ll never really know the fears, the profound sadness, and for that matter, the demons that haunted Helen Carr throughout her short life. She’s not here to tell us her side of the story. But I can also only hope that she had much joy as well. It pains me profoundly that she apparently died essentially alone and forgotten.

This young girl, who lost her father at about age 14, and who traveled around the country with her mother until ultimately settling in northern California, became a big band and a club jazz singer who recorded two albums that were reissued on CD, and that are still in print – almost 60 years after her death.

And there still remains a cadre of jazz researchers and aficionados who want to ensure that this lady – this sensitive and talented human being, is not forgotten. And a worthy aspiration that is, indeed.

 

Thank you for this nice and unavailable before article.
Helen Carr remastered second album still available in Japan:
"Reissue in UHQCD format. Features 24bit digital remastering in 2017. Comes with bonus track(s), lyrics."

"We pay a lot of attention to Helen Carr at the thread, but...
Helen Carr story didn't finish here.
Just recently two independent Japanese companies Solid Records and Ultra-Vybe licensed from Verse/BMG 30 Bethlehem titles, remastered them and printed in the best Red Book format named UHQCD or Ultimate High Quality CD. Their series is called Bethlehem Deluxe Series.

I bought 7 Jazz Vocal titles ($16.49), including:

Betty Blake Betty Blake Sings in a Tender Mood (1961)
Helen Carr Down In The Depth Of The 90th Floor (1955)
Audrey Morris The Voice of Audrey Morris (1956)



Finally, my long waiting for a new remaster has ended."

toilet_doctor, Sep 16, 2017 #1060

 

I don't think Pat Healy has been mentioned here. She recorded one album Just Before Dawn in 1958 on World Pacific Records. I intended to ask if anyone else had this record ever since it turned up in a box of "junk records" at a thrift shop about a year ago. Anyone else?

Like many singers, she married and went on to other passions in her life. She died late last year at age 92 after a long career in Northern California owning and running several restaurants among other interests.

Here is her long and detailed obituary:

Pat Healy Obituary from Pointe Reyes Light, 01/09/2020

 

When a girl like Pat Healy comes along –a girl who sings lovely, literate lyrics, and sing them with understanding and taste- it's a great day indeed. A day for bunting and confetti and dancing in the streets among lyricists and their followers.

Pat Healy is a Cleveland girl. In Los Angeles, her present home, where pretty girls are stock-in-trade, she shines out like the only new coin in a handful of change. She has an open-air, Texas plains look about her that is softened and darkened by her frequent Irish moods.

Her whole life long, Pat has never wanted to do anything but sing. As things worked out, though, most of her time so far has been spent doing almost everything except singing. She has been a dental assistant, a model, a waitress, an occasional photographer, a horsewoman, a bookkeeper... among other things.

For a girl who has so compulsively avoided working as a singer, Pat has managed to accumulate an incredible reserve of lyrics. The accumulation began when she was about two years old.

Pat Healy's mother was a singer herself, who set out nightly to perform in local Cleveland clubs. But before leaving the house each night she tucked the child Pat into her bed and turned on the radio beside it –a rectangular box of an RCA Victor mounted on long, thin legs. And as the little girl drifted off to sleep she heard (instead of "Rockabye baby") Ben Bernie, Paul Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, and a world of vocalists recounting bittersweet lyrics of grownup bed-times.

The romantic child didn't wait long to begin performing the songs she had learned at two. She wasn't much more than three when, on a pale green summer morning, riding in a wagon drawn by playmate Dickie Newman, she directed a clear blue-eyed gaze at him and with passionate infant feeling sang "We could make believe".

Besides the feeling for music, the feeling for performing –the great show business need to be the center of attention- manifested itself early with Pat. Her mother and a group of friends had taken her to a night club where Mrs. Healy was performing. The child fell asleep in the club and was removed by whispering adults to an office to sleep 'til the group left. When the time for rousing the young Pat Healy came, she couldn't be found in the office bed, but was located, instead, in front of the club doing an energic if undisciplined tap-dance for a row of spectators who were throwing her money to spur her on. This childish predilection for tap-dancing was not a devout one, though; she had no aspirations to tap-dance into the hearts of her school chums. However, the susceptibility to lyrics flowered into the most ardent devotion, and, by the time she was eleven she already had easy access to a great many songs. Pat remembers long successions of late afternoons after school, in the kitchen of a friend named Terry. There, sitting in front of the stove eating hot buttered toast and drinking hot tea, the two girls talked about songs. Pat, hardly old enough to have anything to remember but Christmas eves and summer storms, would preface the singing of a lyric with "Listen! Do you remember this one?".

The need to sing remained a principal need, even in the days when Pat thought she might like to be a veterinarian -How she planned to reconcile the two careers is anybody's guess- In high school, in art school, and after, when she began to study voice with serious young intensity, Pat was almost troublesome to be around. A word that only sounded like song was enough to set her off on the "do you remember this one?" business. She never performed these songs that she recalled -only talked them- talked wistfully about them, and asked everyone in sight when or when would she summon the courage to launch herself professionally.
She first began to get some notice in impromptu performances in Los Angeles area night clubs. At a place called The Nitecap in Glendale, Pat used to go to hear Diana Gale, a fine singer herself with discriminating musical taste. Pat haunted the place, recalling lyrics with Diana somewhat as she had with her friend Terry. If the drinks and the atmosphere were different from those in Terry's kitchen, the attitude was the same, intense and bittersweet. One night, in a rare burst of courage, she sang for the people in The Nitecap. They applauded with such fervor that Pat returned to the place to sing as faithfully as if she were being graded on attendance.

A piano player named Jo Marino, who knows nearly every good song ever written, and is passionately willing to learn those he doesn't know, used to haunt The Nitecap himself. There he heard Pat, and spirited her away now and then to sing where he was playing. People continued to clap for her and to ask for more. The unflagging praise she met everywhere she sang invested Pat with uncommon derring-do, so that in the summer of 1957 she gathered herself together and began to emerge.

Tired of asking herself and everyone else when she would sing, tired of getting up daily to go to a job she abhorred, she quit the job she was holding, and began the wearisome business of promoting herself. Fortunately, she didn't have to promote long or hard. Jimmy Baker, the producer of the "Stars of jazz" show heard some tapes Pat had made and signed her to a guest appearance, her first really professional appearance anywhere. Dick Bock, of World-Pacific Records, heard the show's tapes and liked the way Pat Healy sounded. He signed her to do an album –this one- and away she went. The girl who had frittered away too much time over a dentist's drill or a ledger was suddenly happy in her work.

Dick gave Pat Healy complete freedom in selecting her songs. She reacted to the freedom the way little boys turned loose with a mail order catalog react: giddily and with infinite joy. If the songs she selected seem far from giddy, far from joyous, it's because she's an incredibly romantic girl to whom the melancholy in love, rain, and soft spring days is sweet.

Pat still spends hours recalling songs. Still, a little like the Ancient Mariner, she stops passers-by and questions them intently about this song or that. But there's a new quality in her remembering: happiness. She's singing for a living now, so the songs she knows, the taste and understanding she's able to bring to the singing of them no longer needs to be dissipated in wistfulness, in asking anxiously when. Hoorah ! At last the Cleveland girl has an occupational niche.

 

If you want more informations about female singers, you can check my old blog, abandoned since a very long time but still readable.

Jazz, Blues, Female Vocalists, and more...

 

Thank you, guys, for your posts and articles.



I have this a very nice and very moody album for years, but I’ve never paid enough attention to Pat Healy – she was a Person with Character…
This album was remastered in Spain in 2011 by LPTime Records, but at that time they unfortunately switched to CD-R.
However, I have a feeling that it will be reissued on a real disc in the near future.

 

The switch by LPTime to CDR was the stupidest business move. Collectors stopped buying and it killed the label.