June Christy (L) and Peggy Lee
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger (Re-posted by popular request from 2012)
We don’t need to reproduce the lyrics when posting a song from the 1940’s. The big bands all had vocalists who valued clear pronunciation. Frank Sinatra had to lose his Hoboken accent and he took diction lessons. He took great pride in the presentation of clear lyrics, and so did June Christy who sang with the Stan Kenton Orchestra.
Kenton performed big band jazz arrangements, and Ms. Christy was known as a jazz singer. As a college student in the 1960’s, I played in the FDU jazz band, and, although we were about done with the big bands, we loved to play those Stan Kenton charts.
June Christy (1925-1990) was from Decatur, Illinois. She started out as a band singer when she was 29 years old. This song is from the album “Ladies of the 1940’s.” And, all kisses aside, I decided on this song because it’s been a long, long time since we had a ’40’s era tune on Blogfinger.
Note the precision in Kenton’s sax section: 5 musicians sounding like one.