Day By Day/Day By Night

When Doris Day freed herself from those cotton candy films she appeared in, where her singing for the most part was limited to cute novelty tunes, she showed that she could successfully sink her vocal teeth into some solid standard material. The LPs compiled on this CD come from the late '50s, when she was recording for Columbia with backing from an orchestra headed by Paul Weston. The songs fall into two categories. The first are those where Weston employed a large, sugary string section. The far more interesting tracks are those where the strings were held out and Day was backed by a dance band group with some jazz personages present. "Hello My Lover, Goodbye" and "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" feature Barney Kessel on guitar and consummate studio musician Ted Nash's alto sax. There is an unidentified muted trumpet on an excellent interpretation of "But Not for Me." It could well be Don Fagerquist, who worked with Weston on several occasions. Day will never be confused with a jazz singer. But given the way she could put over a song with her impeccable timing and phrasing, whether she made it into the jazz singer society was basically immaterial. She was a top-of-the-line traditional popular singer who could wrench a feeling of intimacy from a romantic ballad. Moreover, her swinging credentials were solid as she bounces along on such cuts as "I Hadn't Anyone Till You," "Don't Take Your Love From Me," and "Close Your Eyes." The Collectable collection is Doris Day at her best and that means outstanding vocalizing by one of the more popular singers of the 1950s and 1960s, whose work has stood the test of time. ~ Dave Nathan|