Search - Damita Jo :: Golden Classics: Best of

Absolutely the Very Best of Damita Jo

06/22/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD is very good in quality. Listening to this CD in comparision to a tape cassette given to me by Damita....it rates quite well. It leaves you with the spirit of Damita Jo DeBlanc, not DuBlanc. I loved it and cried feeling I was hearing her in this life again. She would be proud. I marveled at how clear her voice, rhythm and sound came across. I have the old albums, but the CD was better."

Only Collectables Would Do This!

08/12/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Damita Jo DuBlanc, born in 1930 in Austin, Texas, had exactly seven hit singles on her own from 1960 to 1967 and, in a compilation titled "The Very Best Of," our friends at Collectables contrive to leave off three of those hits. AND all seven B-sides in a 16-track release.



After singing in the band of one-time husband Steve Gibson [& The Red Caps - she was married to him twice, once from 1951 to 1953, and again fron 1959 to 1960 - she hit it big in late 1960 with an answer song to The Drifters' Save The Last Dance For Me. With the backing of the Cliff Parman orchestra on the Mercury label, I'll Save The Last Dance For You made it to # 16 R&B/# 22 Billboard Pop Hot 100 b/w Forgive. Several months later she took an old Jay McShann/Priscilla Bowman # 1 R&B hit tune, Hands Off, to # 75 Hot 100 as Keep Your Hands Off Of Him with the backing of Belford Hendricks and his orchestra and The Mike Stewart Singers. That is not included here, nor is the flipside Hush, Somebody's Calling My Name.



For her third Mercuty hit, in the summer of 1961, she went back to the "answer song" mode with a response to Ben E. King's Stand By Me. With Chuck Sagle and his orchestra backing, I'll Be There peaked at # 12 Hot 100/# 15 R&B b/w Love Laid Its Hands On Me. It would then be four long years before her fourth hit single when, now with Columbia's Epic subsidiary, she had yet another real oldie, Bessie Smith's # 15 hit from 1929, Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out (track 3), reach # 30 on the Adult Contemporary (AC) charts in August 1965, b/w a cover of The Ink Spots 1940 hit, Whispering Grass (Don't Tell The Trees) - which isn't here. Over a year later she took a French song with new English lyrics by Rod McKuen called If You Go Away to # 10 AC/# 68 Hot 100 in December 1966/January 1967 (track 13) b/w When The Fog Rolls In To San Francisco, both with the backing of Leroy Glover and his orchestra. The B-side is omitted.



In 1967 she added two more AC hits, with Yellow Days reaching # 34 in August b/w No Guilty Feelings, and in December, Walk Away, from the Broadway Musical How Now, Dow Jones, settled in at # 28 b/w Dinner For One Please James. None are in this volume.



In 1977 Damita Jo would appear on the Redd Foxx Show, and on Christmas Day 1998 she sadly passed away at age 68 from a respiratory illness. Katherine Jackson, matriarch of the famous Jackson Family, upon the birth of her youngest daughter, born on May 16, 1966, named her Janet Damita Jo Jackson, and in 2004, the now-famous Janet herself named her newest album after Damita Jo, explaining that "Damita Jo is one of the characters that lives inside of me."



Why would Collectables put together this compilation in her honour, and under that bold title, and then go on to leave out so much of her musical legacy? It's just unforgiveable."

Damita has an unique way of interpretation !!!

11/28/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A beautiful voice, an unusual sensitive interpretation, and the "If you go away" is a masterpeace; It sounds much better than being sang by its "father": Jack Brel (French Composer.) Whoever likes soft, pleasent, sensitive music, should not miss this CD."