Michael Feinstein - Such Sweet Sorrow (1995/2019)

Michael Feinstein's label debut for Atlantic was a thematic album of sad love songs, but the emphasis was more on the sweet than the sorrow; this was no album of saloon songs like Frank Sinatra's Only the Lonely. As often as not, Feinstein simply chose songs of not-yet-requited love, like Cole Porter's "Easy to Love" or Leo Robin and Lewis Gensler's "Love Is Just Around the Corner," while he reflected on love's downs as well as its ups in Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen's "But Beautiful." Feinstein effectively combined such vintage material with "Wasn't There a Moment," a brand-new Jimmy Webb song, and even "For Love Alone," one of his own, and dug up such lost gems as "Theme from the Bad and the Beautiful," Dory Previn's lyrical setting over David Raksin's theme. And Feinstein made a point of inserting arcane lyrics and other musical treats, such as having a quartet of flutes play Coleman Hawkins's famous saxophone solo during "Body and Soul," amaking the album a delight for fellow archivists as well as fans of vocal music.