Judy Garland : Collector's Gems From The M-G-M Films

Judy Garland's recording career can effectively be divided into two halves -- the first, lasting until the dawn of the 1950s, was spent at Decca Records and ran parallel to (but not in tandem with) her tenure at MGM, while her concert years, overlapping with her signing to Capitol Records, cover the last 15 years of her life, from the mid-'50s until her death in 1969. The double-CD set Collector's Gems From MGM Films adds yet another layer to her legacy, representing some of the music derived from her 15 years at MGM, from 1935 until 1950. That contract resulted in 28 movies and a brace of renowned songs, among them "Over the Rainbow," "The Trolley Song," "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe," and "Get Happy." You won't find those on this double-CD set -- rather, it's devoted to the highlights of the rest of her repertory at MGM, most of which have never appeared on legitimate audio releases before, from her screen debut (in tandem with Deanna Durbin) in the short Everybody Sing (1936) to her never-used prerecordings of the songs from Annie Get Your Gun, a movie from which she had to withdraw in 1950. Garland's extraordinary precocity is her most pronounced attribute on the early sides, as the young teenager displays an a command for swing-style vocals and even aspects of scat-singing that belong more properly to someone a half-decade older. She can be lost a bit amid the extended introductory sections of some of the songs included (which, in fairness, were conceived to accompany specific visuals), such as the choral setting of the opening of "Your Broadway and My Broadway," a medley than encompasses various familiar tunes, but once she takes center stage, the effect is mesmerizing as she rifles through blues, pop, and jazz stylings like a veteran. Scattered amid the familiar songs from these movies are a selection of alternate takes, of which the most interesting and enchanting is "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart," a favorite song of hers that Garland had auditoned with -- this is a much more swing-oriented side than the rendition finally used in the movie. Some of the other material, such as "It's a Great Day for the Irish" from Little Nellie Kelly, will be of interest primarily to Garland cultists, and her version of "Singin' in the Rain" from the same movie is a little too abbreviated to be more than a curio, though her rendition of "Danny Boy" is arguably a highlight of her early career. She's at her best when most working closely with Roger Edens, a mainstay of the MGM music department and Garland's musical mentor for most of her tenure at the studio -- when his influence was coupled with her love of swing music, the results are impressive on a universal level, and that goes for a lot of the music here. The audio quality on most of these cuts is astonishingly good, a result of generally careful preservation of MGM's sound elements, though a few cuts, such as "Easy to Love" from Life Begins for Andy Hardy, suffer from poor fidelity; many of the oft-bootlegged outtakes, such as "Voodoo" from The Pirate, still have flaws in the sound, though they are sharper here than they ever sounded on their various unauthorized vinyl releases in previous decades. During the 1940s, MGM was using what amounted to an early version of multi-track (really multi-"angle") recording, and some of the resulting sides here have been mixed to stereo. The annotation is also very thorough, providing a background not only on the singer's entire career but also the essential facts about each movie and, where relevant, her relationship to specific songs. The whole collection represents a long overdue extension of her recorded legacy. ~ Bruce Eder