Eddie Fisher - You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet (1968/2018)

You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet! is a tribute album to Al Jolson on which Eddie Fisher sang a group of songs associated with Jolson. The pairing was appropriate; Fisher had emerged in 1950, on the heels of a Jolson revival and just before Jolson's death, with a bravura singing style that many people attributed to Jolson's influence, not the least of them Fisher himself. Even in an era of big-voiced singers like Frankie Laine, Fisher stood out for what some found thrilling and others dismissed as over-singing, but his approach clearly came from an established musical/theatrical tradition, one that Jolson had done much to originate. Eighteen years later, Fisher's singing voice had deepened, which made it sound even more like Jolson in Jolson's later years. Fisher had enjoyed something of a comeback on records after re-signing to RCA Victor in 1966, and on some of his new recordings he seemed to be imitating Jolson deliberately. He had not quite re-established himself as a record-seller, so the tribute album was a risky project. The original idea had been to find new songs in Jolson's style, but Fisher wasn't able to find any. He sang the old songs in new arrangements that gave them more of a '50s than a '20s sound, and he sang them as himself, though he did not hesitate to throw in an occasional inflection or bit of phrasing that were Jolsonesque. The result was an entertaining gloss on the work of "the World's Greatest Entertainer" that made the case for Fisher as his spiritual heir. Unfortunately it had nothing to do with the pop music of 1968 and did not sell. That might have been a minor problem, though, if Fisher had not quit RCA, leaving him without a major-label berth he was unable to replace.
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