Sammy Davis, Jr. – The Reprise Years
A member of the Rat Pack and an icon of cool, the multi-talented Sammy Davis
Jr (singer, dancer, actor, and comedian) was known throughout his career
as ‘the world’s greatest entertainer’. When in search
of artistic freedom, Frank Sinatra founded Reprise Records in 1960 –he
was quickly joined by the performers whose style he personally admired,
like Duke Ellington, Rosemary Clooney, as well as fellow rat packers Dean
Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., who was to spend nearly a decade with the label.
Here he is captured here at his high-flying best on ballads, show tunes
and standards.| 1 |
Bye Bye blackbird | |
2. |
Can't we be friends | |
3. |
Let there be love | |
4. |
I'm gonna live 'till I die | |
5. |
People | |
6. |
What kind of foll am I? | |
| 7. |
As long as she needs me | |
8. |
If I ruled the world | |
9. |
Give me the moonlight | |
10. |
Thou swell | |
11. |
Falling in love with you | |
12. |
Too close for comfort | |
13. |
Bee-bom | |
14. |
Kansas city | |
15. |
A stranger called the blues | |
16. |
Make someone happy | |
17. |
The shelter of your arms | |
| 18. |
Blue velvet | |
| 19. |
Blame it on my youth | |
| 20. |
Yes I can | |
| TOP | ||
Welcome back, hep cats and kittens, to The Leopard Lounge, where we have gathered a plethora of killer tunes by the original hipster and bon viveur himself. It is time to raise your glasses to the world’s greatest entertainer, the one, the only Sammy Davis, Jr., captured here at his high-flying best on these slices of suave from the Reprise label. From the late 1950s until Beatlemania hit the United States in 1964, the Rat Pack – headed by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. – reigned supreme, way up in the stratosphere of cool. Their ‘Summit Meeting’ performances were legendary, and their offstage antics, be it partying, brawling or womanising, made headlines everywhere. Even future president John F. Kennedy – whose electoral campaign they later promoted – was seen enjoying himself in the audience at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, their favourite playground and the backdrop to the spectacularly successful film Ocean’s Eleven, in which they starred. When in search of artistic freedom, Frank Sinatra founded Reprise Records in 1960 – the same year as the release of Ocean’s Eleven, as an outlet for his own recordings, he was quickly joined by the performers whose style he personally admired, like Duke Ellington (who was to head their jazz A&R wing and sign acts like Dollar Brand and Bud Powell), songstress Rosemary Clooney, as well as fellow rat packers Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., who was to spend nearly a decade with the label. A comic genius, master impersonator, immensely talented vocalist equally at ease with jazz, Broadway standards, soul and country music, who could sing, dance, act, and play drums, guitar, trumpet and bass, Sammy Davis, Jr. was, in the words of Liza Minelli “what the rest of us aspire to be”. Born in Harlem in 1925, Davis first hit the stage at the age of three, performing in the burlesque revue Struttin’ Hannah From Savannah, produced by his father Will Mastin, and by the time he was seven he had made his screen debut with Ethel Waters in 1933’s Rufus Jones For President. To sidestep truancy laws and the courts, he was booked as ‘Sam The Silent Midget’ as part of his father and uncle’s comedy and dance act, throughout his childhood and adolescence. In 1941, he met and befriended Frank Sinatra, 10 years his senior, when his father’s act was opening for Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra. By the late ‘40s, the Will Mastin Trio Starring Stammy Davis, Jr. was making a name for itself: Sinatra personally chose them to open his Thanksgiving New York shows, and Sammy recorded his very first sides for Capitol in January 1949, the same month as Miles Davis recorded Birth Of The Cool. In the summer of 1954, Sammy Davis, Jr. lost his left eye in a car accident on his way to a recording session. With the help of Frank Sinatra, who took care of his convalescence, he was back on stage in Las Vegas six months later while his first hit ‘That Old Black Magic’ on the Decca label, was riding high on the charts. Composer and producer Jule Styne, dazzled after seeing his live performance, immediately volunteered to build a show around the multi-talented star. Mr. Wonderful – a triumphant musical starring Sammy and the Will Mastin Trio, opened on Broadway in 1956. Two years later, Davis was cast in the feature film Anna Lucasta alongside Eartha Kitt, and by 1959 was enjoying the double ‘Wham Of Sam’, starring in the 1959 box office hit Porgy & Bess, and alongside Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop in Ocean’s Eleven. Sammy’s first release for the Reprise label, the very elegant Wham Of Sam, with its exquisite jazz arrangements by Marty Paich and Morty Stevens on standards by the likes of Gershwin and Rodgers & Hart (check out the rollicking ‘Thou Swell’), alongside show tunes, still stands, some 45 years after it was made, as a truly great work. His phrasing is breathtaking, immaculate, every bit as good as Sinatra at his very best, as he gently swings his way through the glorious ‘Let There Be Love’, ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ and ‘Blame It On My Youth’. While in London for a residency at the Prince Of Wales Theatre in 1961, Sammy Davis, Jr. saw Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse’s musical Stop The World – I Want To Get Off, and decided to build his second LP for Reprise What Kind Of Fool Am I & Other Showstoppers around four songs from their show, including ‘If I Ruled The World’ and the single ‘What Kind Of Fool I Am’, a top 20 hit and Grammy award-winner for Song Of The Year in 1962, which became his signature tune. Like Dionne Warwick had Bacharach & David, and Sinatra Cahn & Van Heusen, Sammy had Bricusse & Newley, and for the next thirty years, he was to sing their songs and their praise. Sammy never sounded happier than when he was belting out show tunes. His 1962 rendering of ‘Too Close For Comfort’ from Mr. Wonderful has the cream of the West Coast jazz scene on the bandstand (Jack Sheldon, Bud Shank, Red Callender) and beautifully crafted arrangements by Marty Paich, while Jule Styne’s ‘People’ from 1965 features Sonny Burke in the producer’s chair, together with arranger Claus Ogerman, also conducting. Released in 1963, As Long As She Needs Me is another fruitful collaboration between Davis and arrangers Morty Stevens and Marty Paich (with an all-star Hollywood studio band featuring the likes of Buddy Collette, Jimmy Rowles, Dave Pell and Shelly Manne), and includes the title track from Lionel Bart’s Oliver, together with ‘Falling In Love With Love’. That same year, while in London for a five-week season at the Palladium, Sammy recorded, with arranger and conductor Johnny Keating and Peter Knight, and a big band made up of British players, a tribute in Sammy’s words “to the many greats English and American, that had graced this stage”, such as Matt Monro, Johnny Ray, Nat King Cole, and Frankie Vaughan, whose ‘Give Me The Moonlight’ had two spoken codas, a politically incorrect one for the UK market and a safer one for the United States. One of Davis’ best-selling albums of the 1960’s, The Shelter Of Your Arms peaked at No 26 in the US charts, driven by its title composition, which reached No 17 as a single. Although it drew repertoire from Broadway like ‘Make Someone Happy’ (a hit for comedian Jimmy Durante), the LP sounded, in its production and approach, a lot more contemporary than its previous efforts: echoes of Mose Allison’s ‘Parchman Farm’ and Mel Tormé’s ‘Comin’ Home Baby’ can be heard in the groovy ‘Bee Bom’ (from Johnny Cool), while ‘The Shelter Of Your Arms’ stylistic pitch was is very close to what the Burt Bacharach / Dionne Warwick team were doing at the time. 1964’s concept album California Suite, from which ‘A Stranger Called The Blues’ is taken, was a collaboration with Davis’ old friend and colleague Mel Tormé, who wrote every song. His last release of that year, Sings The Big Ones For Young Lovers saw Sammy Davis, Jr. again covering pop songs of the time like Leiber and Stoller’s ‘Kansas City’ (a gutsy and spirited take), and ‘Blue Velvet’, a hit for Bobby Vinton. An appropriate ending to this compilation, ‘Yes I Can’, from the 1965 LP If I Ruled The World, was to become Sammy’s official anthem and is the title of his first autobiography. MINNIE ‘MINX’ MEHARI New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles 2006 |
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