Lee Wiley With Billy Butterfield And His Orchestra – A Touch Of The Blues (1958)

Her husky, surprisingly sensual voice and exquisitely cool readings of pop standards distinguished her singing, but Lee Wiley earns notice as one of the best early jazz singers by recognizing the superiority of American popular song and organizing a set of songs around a common composer or theme -- later popularized as the songbook or concept LP. She was also a songwriter in her own right, and one of the few white vocalists with more respect in the jazz community than the popular one. Even more tragic then, that while dozens of inferior vocalists recorded LPs during the late '50s and '60s, Wiley appeared on record just once between 1957 and her death in 1975.

The stellar "A Touch of the Blues" pairs Lee Wiley with an exceptional band led by trumpeter Billy Butterfield, whose warm, beautiful tone proves a sympathetic counterpoint to Al Cohn and Bill Finegan's otherwise dark, melancholy arrangements. While a title like "A Touch of the Blues" guarantees the listener few surprises, the album consistently avoids the familiar bluesy clichés -- Wiley's sensuality and sophistication suggest emotional depths to make such gestures redundant anyway. And like her more celebrated songbook sessions, the material here is expertly selected, complementing Wiley's inherent strengths while affording her the latitude to stretch out in new directions.


Tracklist:

01. The Memphis Blues (Handy-Norton) 3:26
02. From The Land of Sky Blue Water (Eberhart-Cadman) 2:43
03. The Ace in the Hole (Dempsey-Mitchell) 3:00
04. Someday You'll Be Sorry (Armstrong) 4:10
05. My Melancholy Baby (Norton-Burnett) 3:12
06. A Hundred Years from Today (Young-Washington-Young) 3:09
07. Blues in my Heart (Carter-Mills) 2:59
08. Maybe You'll Be There (Gallop-Bloom) 3:14
09. Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea (Koehler-Arlen) 2:57
10. I Don't Want to Walk Without You, Baby (Loesser-Styne) 2:43
11. Make Believe (Kern-Hammerstein) 3:16
12. A Touch of the Blues (George-Wilcox) 4:14


Lee Wiley With Billy Butterfield And His Orchestra – A Touch Of The Blues (1958)
(320 kbps, cover art included)