Jazz
From her debut singing with The Earl Hines Band in 1952 to her 2000 Croatian language album Jelena Ana Milcetic, the lovely Helen Merrill has always been a song stylist supreme! In 1954, Merrill recorded her first (and to date most acclaimed) LP, an eponymous record featuring legendary jazz trumpet player Clifford Brown and bassist/cellist Oscar Pettiford, among others. It was to be one of Brown's last recordings, as he was killed in a car accident just two years later. The album was produced and arranged by Quincy Jones, who was then just twenty-one years old.
The success of Helen Merrill prompted Mercury to sign her for an additional four-album contract. Merrill's follow-up to her first album was the 1956 LP, Dream of You, which was produced and arranged by bebop arranger and pianist Gil Evans. Evans' work on Dream of You was his first in many years. His arrangements on Merrill's laid the musical foundations for his in following years with Miles Davis. Both these wonderful albums get their first European CD airing here... and they just don't come any better! |
