I Cry By Night / Losers Weepers - Emotional Poetry Book for Healing & Self-Reflection | Perfect for Nighttime Reading, Book Clubs & Gift Giving

Kay Starr newbies may confidently start with EMI Australia's ULTIMATE COLLECTION for the monster jukebox hits and singles rarities, but her RCA and Capitol concept albums contain Kay's most consistent and distinguished singing, her deep-grooved Memphian artistry at its career pinnacle. Her final RCA set (and first stereo album) I HEAR THE WORD (1959) is extraordinary, progressive and perhaps her supreme masterpiece, successfully fusing jazz, gospel and rock modes (and Kay recalled that she worked harder on that project than on any other.)Her subsequent Capitol concept releases are as significant as, and even more consistent than, parallel albums from Sinatra, Lee, Cole, Martin (and June Hutton too). MOVIN'! and MOVIN' ON BROADWAY! are hard-swinging big-band keepers, JAZZ SINGER is Starr's most personal project, and JUST PLAIN COUNTRY lays down daringly deep countrypolitan grooves. These are all Desert Island Discs.Both I CRY BY NIGHT and LOSERS WEEPERS approach concept-album perfection, however, and not least because of their stylized cover art (and vintage stereo sound). Starr is utterly at ease in the relaxed gig-aftermath setting of I CRY BY NIGHT, smoothly trading licks with discreetly stellar jazzists on older torch standards. Kay famously and industriously mined rival singers' (and producers') disreputable reject piles and came up with pure gold, motherlodes of songcrafting genius ripe for her singular artistry: She is sensitive to Johnny Mercer's domestic poesy in "P.S. I love you" with its nonchalant afterthought "I burned a hole in the dining-room table," covers "More than you know" devastatingly, and includes marvelous oddments such as "Whispering grass" and "What do you see in her?" Starr's bluesy but restrained take on "Lover man," a cooler and deeper remake of her RCA prequel, is a killer. This afterhours combo is stellar, with charts by leader Gerald Wiggins, piano; Al Hendrickson, guitar; Joe Comfort, bass; Lee Young (Lester's sibling), drums; Manny Klein, trumpet; and Ben Webster, tenor sax.LOSERS WEEPERS is no less torchy, the core jazz combo augmented by a tastefully small string section softening the pain of unrequited or lost love. Kay's preferred arranger-conductor Van Alexander (from the brilliant MOVIN'! albums and JAZZ SINGER) leads this set. Starr is of course a naturally exuberant swing sister, less effortful in gear changing than her friend Miss Fitzgerald, and the pathos of torch angst is consistently mollified and modified by her instinctive musical artistry. "Don't take your love from me" is belted almost operatically, returning the elderly song to new life, and "When a woman loves a man" clearly demonstrates La Starr's authentic, Memphian blues chops. The late, regal Dinah Washington was not generous in praising her few competitors, but incisive Queen Dinah recognized in Kay Starr a contemporary and a genuinely bluesy musical soul sister.These are Kay Starr's rarer Capitol albums (two of fully six masterpiece sets she laid down all between 1959-62), essential, rewardingly satisfying without end, and touchstones both within her legendary career and within that noble edifice the American Popular Songbook. The very highest musical artistry is consistently expressed in these indispensable 24 keeper tracks.