Search - Sarah Vaughan :: Complete on Mercury 4: 60's

Rare, sheer delight, lots of great tracks but overpriced

nostaljames | 10/29/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"virtually an unconditional fan with over 100 sarah vaughan cd's collected, it's certainly one of my all-time favourites
in the easy listening jazz pop category.
for the real jazz connaisseurs out there, i give it to you this is not the sarah at the consumate epitomy of the vocal jazz tradition but this compilation does not serve this purpose.
the context here is the plentiful and easy fun lovin' 1960's
where America had almost everthing going for it.
Mercury being the decider here for sarah (though not for much longer) the word was out to produce of maximum of commercial hits with, apart from a few over-honeyed
ballads, a base line which said : give fun to your audience as much as you can, and boy, what fun did our generous sarah give them / us.
this last Mercury compilation contains eight albums on
6 cd's (124 songs!) with a good number of bonus rare savoury tracks 'details unknown' (this is for you collectors out there who want more than the albums you've already got).having said that, sarah's talent could not be smothered by
the 'commercial dogma' and she does a great job throughout ,cleverly instilling her unique jazz flava into the
fun. for balladry, my favourite is her spine-tingling interpretation of 'the shadow of your smile' which for me
is unmatched by anyone to this day, the fun tracks are
her 1963 live performance in Copenhagen, the 1964 Viva Vaughan bossa nova flavoured album and her covers of
the prozac placebo 'l-o-v-e' and the twist dance hit 'sneakin up on you'.
this collection is a rare item these days as it was issued at
the dawn of the cd era in 1987 and would definitely need
to be reissued and remastered by Universal/Mercury at
an affordable price.
as for the price offered at Amazon, i fail to understand why, apart from the rarity issue, the compilation is advertised in the used section as 'low priced' at usd 249,-- when the list price is usd 103,-- ???????
finally, for those who want to get into sarah's serious jazz stuff, i would highly recommend the 'Roulette Years' exhaustive studio sessions 8 cd box set recently reissued and remastered by Mosaic records - it's a pure gem and a
must have collector's item (5'000 copies only). i also recommend most of the stuff issued on the Mainstream label (virtually only available on vinyl) as well as the stuff issued on the late Verve label founder Norman Granz' label Pablo Records.
Enjoy ...... !
that's all for now from over-obviously die-hard Sarah Vaughan fan."

An out of print of ,steal classic of Sarah's final Mercury

Richard Meyer | Woodbridge,VA | 07/11/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Contains 8 great albums.Contains 22 songs never printed before.The Sassy Swings The Tivoli(a double album) covers a lot of Sarah's former Roulette & also contains 7 classic songs in the collection that were never released in Holland or Japan.Sarah never does anything the same way twice,"It Ain't music,close order drill,or yodaling, It's not music".Listen to"Poor Butterfly","More I See You","Green Dolphin Street" never reprinted.The 6th disc is a 2 on 1 Containing 2 trips"It's A Man's World & Sassy Swings Again".The 5th disc containg "Pop Art" & "The New Scene" go from good pop to classic jazz & back again worth listening.Also contains the 2 classic albums "Viva Vaughan"& Mancini Song Book"listen to the song "Slow Hot Wind"one can feel that Slow Hot Wind.The McRae songs "Who Can I Turn To?"& "The Shadow Of Your Smile" are not anything nice just excellent.Liner notes on the first 3 are the same but on the 4th complete works are very different because Sarah had just left Roulette.Don't miss this one;it is different;it ranks 3rd in the collection of complete works.I had these albums for years & lost them. When I got them from your man @amazon in perfect shape @ a great price I was elated."