A WONDERFUL VOICE
MOVIE MAVEN | New York, NY USA | 04/29/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Chris Connor was only a vague jazz name to me when I saw this recently released CD in a music shop. I love all the songs she recorded for it and so I bought it.What a wonderful voice Connor has. Every one of the ten standards is tops--from the gentle, torchy Gershwin's "Someone To Watch Over Me" to the brash, belting "Ridin' High" by Cole Porter. (I assume that Porter must have been a favorite of Connor's since four out of ten numbers were written by him.) Connor's voice is smokey and lush, deep and honey-coated. There are not too many singers who can swing back and forth between intimate jazz and musical comedy, but Connor does it with ease and never makes you believe that she is "slumming."She is accompanied by some of the finest jazz instrumentalists-- Herbie Mann, and J.J. Johnson, among them. Ralph Sharon (Tony Bennett's accompanist for 4 decades) is on the piano.This is a terrific album which has the kind of liner notes that actually give you needed information: they tell you who Connor is and what she did and when. These sessions were originally recorded in 1955, but the remastering makes them sound like they were recorded yesterday. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED."
This is great
05/18/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
""This Is Chris" was Connor's third LP for Bethlehem, a 12-incher following two 10-inchers ("Lullabys of Birdland" and "Lullabies for Lovers"). Two more 12-inchers followed, "Lullabys of Birdland" and "Chris," composed of tracks from the 10-inchers mixed in with some big band sessions prevously unreleased. Connor was always too big a talent for what Bethlehem could deliver in terms of packaging, presentation and concept (all of Burt Goldblatt's cover photos show her with a contorted mouth at what appears to be the other end of a terrible windstorm), not to mention recording quality. But this opus comes mighty close to what followed, Connor's astounding debut on Atlantic, "Chris Connor," the crystal-clear cover of which reveals her to be a blonde beauty much in the Doris Day vein. "This Is Chris" (the liner notes say it was to have been titled "Cocktails and Dusk" but that was the title of later reissue) has Connor's voice deeper and richer than on her first Bethlehem outings, with an eclectic program and toprate accompaniment (made possible by the fact union rules reqwired all musicians accompanying vocalists be paid at the same standard wage). It's a tasty album start to finish, but it surprising this C.D. reissue sticks to the lean original 10 tracks when bonuses easily could have been added. My Connor collection goes back to radio transcriptions with the Claude Thornhill band which show her to be a flawless performer who can take pop stuff such as "Wish You Were Here" and make it classic jazz. It took her a long time to get discovered, but once she broke through Connor was a top seller for Atlantic for a decade and a major international star. Great to have "This Is Chris" finally on CD."
Short & Sweet
N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 12/08/2002
(4 out of 5 stars)
"This was Connor's last album for Bethlehem before she moved to Atlantic: it's very much of a piece with the Atlantic albums, with basically the same personnel. Chris's lovely voice, which always conveys warmth, maturity & above all an impish intelligence & subtle musicality (like Billie Holiday, she doesn't scat, simply interprets the lyric according to her own light), is set to work on a classy but not overobvious pick of blue-chip songs. The arrangements are by pianist Ralph Sharon, & exploit the colours of guitar, flute, & (on several tracks) paired trombones (the popular JJ Johnson/Kai Winding duo). There's a few cute touches ("Blame It On My Youth" ends with a tag lifted from "Young at Heart"--ah, got it...), & some nice surprises in the arrangements' abrupt shifts of tempo & texture. The repertoire draws heavily on Cole Porter (four tracks), including his wonderfully wry ode to infidelity & love on the rebound, "It's All Right With Me", & two swingers which Connor handles very adroitly, "From This Moment On" & "Ridin' High" (probably the highlights of the album). The adult subject-matter & the sophisticated chromaticism & minor/major-key ambivalence of Porter's tunes suit Connor superbly (& contrast with Gershwin's rather more thematically & harmonically straightforward compositions, the body of work she's often associated with, & which she touches on here with a version of "Someone to Watch Over Me" that is an interesting point of comparison to her work on the Atlantic Gershwin album). Alec Wilder's "Trouble Is a Man" is an interestingly out-of-the-way pick here, as is "All This and Heaven Too". The trombonists are basically used to fill out the sound of the arrangements, & it's Sharon, flautist Herbie Mann & guitarist Joe Puma who are most prominently featured in the arrangements & who turn in some nice solos & obbligatos. (I'd just been listening to Sarah Vaughan's almost contemporaneous _With Clifford Brown_, & it seems to me that Mann's rather better here than he was on that album--his solo on "All This and Heaven Too" is a bit clumsy but he's otherwise quite good on the disc.)It's a very brief disc (29:45), & perhaps the reissue could have been paired with something else or otherwise beefed up. Nonetheless, there's no complaints with what's here, & fans of Connor or of jazz singing in general will want this disc."
Track Listings (10) - Disc #1