Barbara Cook - Sings From The Heart

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 40:40
Size: 93.1 MB
Styles: Vocal
Year: 1959/2004
Art: Front

[2:46] 1. You Have Cast Your Shadow On The Sea
[2:52] 2. I Didn't Know What Time It Was
[4:02] 3. My Funny Valentine
[1:39] 4. Nobody's Heart Belongs To Me
[4:38] 5. Ship Without A Sail
[3:58] 6. Dancing On The Ceiling
[3:17] 7. Little Girl Blue
[2:48] 8. It Never Entered My Mind
[2:55] 9. There's A Small Hotel
[3:29] 10. Glad To Be Unhappy
[4:02] 11. He Was Too Good To Me
[4:10] 12. Where Or When

After years of favorable notices in Broadway musicals that flopped -- Flahooley (1951), Plain and Fancy (1955), Candide (1956) -- sweet-voiced soprano Barbara Cook finally got lucky with 1957's smash hit from The Music Man. The resulting notoriety brought her the opportunity to sign with tiny Urania Records, which released her debut album, Songs of Perfect Propriety, and this follow-up. Sings From the Heart contained a pun in its title, since Cook was singing the lyrics of Lorenz Hart, set to the melodies of Richard Rodgers, songs taken from the team's shows of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. The singer made excellent choices, including standards like "My Funny Valentine" and "Glad to Be Unhappy," along with lesser-known selections such as "You Have Cast Your Shadow on the Sea" and "Ship Without a Sail." Her warm, delicate voice was well-suited to these romantic ballads, though she did not yet sing with the degree of feeling she would possess in later years. (The great exception was "He Was Too Good to Me," sung with all the plaintive emotion the lyric demanded). Orchestrator/conductor Arthur Harris gave her supportive, unobtrusive musical settings that kept the spotlight on that wonderful voice. Cook made a point of singing the introductory verses to the songs (usually dropped by pop singers), which lent them greater context and meaning. The album gave fans previously forced to listen to isolated examples of Cook's talent on cast albums the opportunity to have a full collection of her work, and it demonstrated that her belated stage success was well deserved. ~William Ruhlmann

Sings From The Heart

---

Barbara Cook - You Make Me Feel So Young: Live At Feinstein's

Styles: Vocal, Cabaret
Year: 2011
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 50:28
Size: 116,2 MB
Art: Front

(2:11)  1. Are You Havin' Any Fun?
(2:56)  2. You Make Me Feel So Young
(3:05)  3. I've Grown Accustomed To His Face
(2:16)  4. Wait 'Til You're Sixty-Five
(3:18)  5. The Frim Fram Sauce
(3:52)  6. When I Look In Your Eyes
(3:25)  7. What Did I Have That I Don't Have
(3:20)  8. Live Alone And Like It
(2:22)  9. This Can't Be Love
(3:32) 10. I've Got You Under My Skin
(1:43) 11. Love Is Good For Anything That Ails You
(5:26) 12. I'm A Fool To Want You
(4:57) 13. Here's To Life
(4:03) 14. I Got Rhythm
(3:55) 15. Imagine

Barbara Cook confesses at the outset of this live recording, made in June 2011 at Feinstein's at the Regency in New York, that she has run out of ideas for themes for her nightclub sets and this time has just picked a batch of good songs she's never sung before. This isn't quite true, but it is understandable that Cook wouldn't want to state the show's theme specifically since, as the title You Make Me Feel So Young suggests, that theme concerns aging, and the perpetually young singer is 83. But why should she acknowledge that if she doesn't feel it or, especially, sound like it? Cook's voice is remarkably intact on these songs, whether she is intoning the long lines of a sad ballad like "I'm a Fool to Want You" or bouncing along to the lively rhythms of the opener, "Are You Havin' Any Fun?" But that song states the evening's throughline when the singer reminds her listeners, "You aren't gonna live forever." Other songs, such as Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane's "Wait ‘Til You're Sixty-Five" and "Here's to Life" also explore the matter of seniority, and even when the point is not made in so many words, it often is by implication, as in "What Did I Have That I Don't Have?," another Lerner/Lane composition. Cook makes a point of dedicating Stephen Sondheim's "Live Alone and Like It" to her divorced listeners, including herself in the category. It's true that not every song is about the concerns of getting and being old, but those that aren't tend to be change-of-pace palate clearers like Nat King Cole's "The Frim Fram Sauce," for which Cook breaks out a kazoo and does a solo. Even before then, her backup band has given much of the music a 1920s hot jazz feel, especially in the woodwind work of Steve Kenyon. Musical director Lee Musiker, meanwhile, has his own fast solo in "This Can't Be Love." The entire band gets a workout on a closing version of "I Got Rhythm" that might be called "The ‘I Got Rhythm' Variations." As a coda, Cook reasonably looks to a hopeful future with a songwriter outside her usual realm, turning in a precise and unadorned version of John Lennon's "Imagine" over Musiker's piano. It shows that, at whatever age one may be, idealism is still possible. ~ William Ruhlmann http://www.allmusic.com/album/you-make-me-feel-so-young-mw0002197372

Personnel: Barbara Cook (vocals, kazoo); Steve Kenyon (woodwinds); Lee Musiker (piano); Warren Odze (drums).

You Make Me Feel So Young: Live At Feinstein's

---

Barbara Cook - Loverman

Styles: Jazz, Vocal
Year: 2012
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 49:15
Size: 113,2 MB
Art: Front

(1:35)  1. Let’s Fall in Love
(2:31)  2. What A Wonderful World
(4:31)  3. Loverman
(4:34)  4. When Sunny Get’s Blue
(3:28)  5. More Than You Know
(3:41)  6. House of the Rising Sun/Bye By
(2:29)  7. The Nearness of You
(2:25)  8. I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
(3:06)  9. I Don’t Want Love
(3:07) 10. I Hadn’t Anyone But You/It Had
(3:03) 11. If I Love Again
(2:27) 12. Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love)
(4:28) 13. New York State of Mind
(3:39) 14. Georgia On My Mind
(4:03) 15. Makin’ Whoopee

Aged to perfection such is Barbara Cook. The doyenne of New York cabaret has, at 83, never sounded more appealing than she does across this 15-track set almost entirely arranged and orchestrated by Ted Rosenthal. The lyric soprano that propelled Cook to major Broadway stardom decades ago has lost its crystalline purity and, in the process, become far more interesting, intimate and inviting. Though Cook often performs with larger ensembles, here she wisely opts for small-group coziness: just Rosenthal at the piano and Jay Leonhart on bass, plus percussionist Warren Odze and woodwinds player Lawrence Feldman. It goes without saying that the theatrically trained Cook is an outstanding storyteller, among the few who can be considered the equal of Mabel Mercer. It’s a skill that serves her well when interpreting timeworn standards, effortlessly hitting the emotional bull’s-eye of “More Than You Know,” “When Sunny Gets Blue,” the too-rarely recorded “If I Love Again” and the title track. Her narrative gift proves just as affecting across such jauntier numbers as “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and “Makin’ Whoopee.”  Nor does Cook allow herself to be limited by Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. Her reading of Dan Hicks’ “I Don’t Want Love,” a breezy list song worthy of Bobby Troup, is a playful delight, and her stark reading of “The House of the Rising Sun,” sung a cappella until Rosenthal tiptoes in with “Bye Bye Blackbird,” is a masterpiece of bruised deliberation. ~ Christopher Loudonhttp://jazztimes.com/articles/66410-loverman-barbara-cook

Loverman

---

Barbara Cook & Michael Feinstein - Cheek To Cheek

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 57:17
Size: 131.1 MB
Styles: Vocal, Standards, Show tunes
Year: 2014
Art: Front

[3:04] 1. I’ve Got The World On A String
[3:23] 2. Cheek To Cheek
[3:43] 3. I’ve Got You Under My Skin
[3:21] 4. The World Keeps Changing/There’ll Be Some Changes Made
[6:05] 5. The Very Thought Of You Tea For Two
[3:36] 6. Ac-Cent-Tchuate The Positive
[3:35] 7. Ever After
[3:26] 8. Where Do You Start
[3:25] 9. You Could Drive A Person Crazy
[4:49] 10. Without A Song
[4:59] 11. Here's To Life
[5:03] 12. You're Gonna Hear From Me
[3:14] 13. Give Me The Simple Life
[5:27] 14. Shine On Harvest Moon

Bass – David Finck; Drums – Warren Odze; Piano – John Oddo, Lee Musiker, Michael Feinstein, Zina Goldrich; Reeds – Aaron Heick; Trumpet – George Rabbai. Recorded live September 30 to October 2, 2010 at Feinstein's at Loews Regency.

Michael Feinstein hosts Barbara Cook, the reigning queen of New York cabaret, at his own club, Feinstein's at Loews Regency, in this album recorded during their joint appearance in the fall of 2010. Feinstein may count himself a nightclub veteran of a quarter-century's standing by now, but of course he has nothing on the octogenarian Cook, who remains in excellent voice and was vigorous enough to have made her return to Broadway earlier in the year in the musical revue Sondheim on Sondheim. From that show, she borrows the duet arrangement of "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" to give her and Feinstein something to joust about here. Most of the time, however, they are of like minds and in warm harmony when they sing together. The set has no particular theme, simply consisting of a batch of quality songs and standards. If there is any overall message, it seems to be a celebratory and upbeat one, with songs such as "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" and "Here's to Life" (Cook solos) and "Without a Song" and "You're Gonna Hear from Me" (Feinstein solos), as well as joint efforts like "Give Me the Simple Life." Different accompanists (including Feinstein himself) slide onto the piano stool at different times, and sometimes a reed (Aaron Heick) and a horn (George Rabbai) join a rhythm section (David Finck, bass, and Warren Odze, drums) for a Dixieland flavor. Cook and Feinstein turn out to be complementary performers, both capable of belting or burning a torch by turn, and displaying considerable rapport that makes the age difference between them disappear. ~William Ruhlmann

Cheek To Cheek

---