Julie London

The most remarkable thing about Julie London is remarkable indeed: that she used her erotic persona not so much to interpret songs as to change the nature of them to become something other than when sung by anyone else. Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan or Peggy Lee may have sung the definitive version of this or that tune, but London wasn’t playing the same game. This may be a function of her coming to recording only after starting a career as an actress. Born Julie Peck in 1926, London made her first movie in 1944 and had already been a sexpot in 13 films by the year of her first album (1956). As a singer she had technical limitations, but as an actress she knew how to work within these to create a song style consistent with the seductress image – and luckily, among her many physical attributes she had the ears to make it a highly musical style. She used her breathy, sexy, sultry voice (to use three of the 13 most often used Julie London adjectives – see Greg Gardner’s excellent London website for the other nine) not to sing a version of a song that could compete with someone else's on a scale of good to better to best, but to change it's meaning. The selections on this compilation seem to have been chosen to highlight that aspect of London's art.



Come On-A My House, when sung by one of the greatest pop singers of the century, Rosemary Clooney, was one of the worst records ever made. Her version (coerced and commanded by Columbia producer Mitch Miller) is just a dumb novelty tune – a impossible to take seriously. When London sings it, it’s a different song – a carnal invitation impossible to dismiss. When Mary Martin and others sang Cole Porter’s My Heart Belongs to Daddy, it was possible to take the line "dine on my fine finnan haddie" as a double entendre. With London, no misunderstanding is possible; her single-entendre sexuality rules out the possibility that she is actually preparing smoked Scottish fish for dinner. Girl Talk changes from a piece of instruction to a piece of seduction. Wives and Lovers is no longer friendly advice to a gal pal, but a threat.



London constructs these scenarios with certain stylistic tricks that may have been born of necessity. For instance, she sings in short, breath-in-your-ear phrases. No disciple of long-lined Sinatra-style phrasing, London’s typical unit consists of no more than three to five words, and phrases of two or even one word are not uncommon. She also has an interesting habit of falling off just a microtone in pitch at the end of many phrases, which has the effect of enhancing a sense of intimacy. And she almost never sings loud; on the rare occasions when she does, her voice changes character, taking on a harder, less attractive tone. (Lee and Sinatra sound like themselves no matter what the dynamics.) Yet even though these effects may be born of an insufficiency of chops, it’s impossible not to admire the way she uses them so musically and in the service of her persona. A persona that may have had very little to do with the real Julie Peck, but which was highly effective during a prolific mid-1950s to mid-1960s Liberty Records career that these selections encompass. (She was also used in a sensational Marlboro cigarette campaign during these years – "You get a lot to like in a Marlboro" – that no one alive at the time will forget.)



And she does swing. Backed on this album by various accompaniments from solo guitar to jazz combo to big band to orchestra, she is always subtly hip. Whether her jazz-flavored sensibility was shaped by her husband, songwriter-musician Bobby Troup (Route 66, Daddy), or whether she and Troup gravitated to each other because they both loved jazz, I don’t know. It is safe to assume that Troup had a lot to do with the various backings here, as he produced several of her albums, though he isn’t credited as arranger on any of these tracks. (The only arranger credit this album cares to tell you about is Gerald Wilson, on two tracks – Girl Talk and Watermelon Man. Both are standouts.)