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Kelly's brilliant tribute to Jerome Kern

Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 07/13/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Kelly Harland may not be the most famous jazz singer on the planet, but she is certainly among the best as far as I'm concerned. Kelly had an eventful musical career singing jingles, providing backing vocals for others and trying to make a career in various musical styles including pop, rock and country. Eventually, Kelly returned to the jazz music that her parents loved and which she heard a lot of as a child. Kelly's first album actually released, American Songs, was followed by Twelve Times Romance, both of which I've already reviewed. Kelly also contributed vocals to some tracks on the predominately instrumental Year 'Round Christmas, which I've never heard. Six years on from Twelve Times Romance, this album was released. Well, it may have been a long wait but it was worth it.



Kelly decided to do a tribute album to a single composer and eventually decided upon Jerome Kern. While Jerome doesn't have quite the catalog of some of his contemporaries such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and the Gershwins, he nevertheless composed the music to about 700 songs, collaborating with several lyricists. Many of those 700 songs were of of a very high quality indeed. Kelly mainly opted for a selection of Jerome's better known songs, which has the advantage that they are among the very best that Jerome and the lyricists created. Nevertheless, it means that if you're into this type of music, you've probably heard a lot of these songs elsewhere. Quite apart from individual songs recorded by a variety of jazz and pop singers, I was already familiar with many of these songs from Margaret Whiting sings the Jerome Kern Song Book, an album that I rate very highly as my review of it illustrates. But there is room for more than one tribute to Jerome Kern in my CD collection and, despite featuring a lot of songs that I already knew, this is a very different album.



Kelly chose to record this album with just two musicians supporting her, these being Bill Mays on piano and her husband and the album's producer, Chuck Deardorf on bass. So the sound is vastly different from Margaret's 1960 album, which was recorded with an orchestra. With only two musicians, Bill Mays in particular gets plenty of opportunity to demonstrate his skills as a pianist without ever taking the spotlight away from Kelly's outstanding vocals.



The most famous song here is, of course, Smoke gets in your eyes, here coupled in a six-minute medley with Can I forget you. Another classic is The folks who live on the hill, a song popularized by the late great Peggy Lee. Among the others, I have a particular soft spot for Look for the silver lining, a song popularized in the twenties by Marion Harris, a singer who shot to fame very quickly then had twelve enormously successful years before fading back into obscurity equally quickly. Well, those are just some of the great tracks here, but all of them are real gems.



Kelly, Bill and Chuck have between them recorded an outstanding album that I'm sure Jerome Kern would be proud of if he were able to hear it."