Lynn Taylor / Marjorie Lee - I See Your Face before Me / Remembering Marjorie Lee (2020)

Lynn Taylor (1937-1979) was a warm, unaffected pop singer with a feeling for jazz and a sense for the lyrics. She phrased every line with delicacy and intelligence, all while projecting them in a warm, breathy style. She was originally discovered by Walter Winchell while at the Composer Room in New York, an activity she combined with appearances in other leading Manhattan clubs as well as in commercial radio and television. In 1957 she recorded "I See Your Face Before Me," an album of haunting, exquisite melodies from the pen of Arthur Schwartz, most of them with origins in his many successful musical comedies. Buddy Weed’s delicate piano fill-ins and imaginative arrangements permeate all the songs, while Lynn supplies them with a sort of intimacy seldom heard in stage show renditions and which proves most alluring. You are bound to enjoy Lynn’s performances, which transmit her musicianly feeling for jazz with poise and assurance.

Marjorie Lee was born in New Jersey, and after starting as a vocalist in 1942, she was associated with an array of outstanding orchestras, including those of Richard Himber, Joe Reichman, and Russ Morgan. In the summer of 1945, she recorded her first sides with Russ Morgan for Decca, and then followed him to be one of the band’s vocalists at the Biltmore Bowl in Los Angeles a year later. In 1948 we find her singing with Dave Rose and his orchestra on several episodes of the Red Skelton Radio Show. She devoted some years exclusively to her family after marrying drummer Bernie Halpert, but in 1957 she made a comeback to the scene with the album "Remembering With Marjorie Lee." On these recordings, Marjorie Lee shows her fresh, melodic voice, and her emotional investment in every performance, how she was always mindful of the lyrics in each song, while the arrangements handed by a then-young John T. Williams are consistently artistic and subtle.