Marian Bruce, Jacy Parker - Marian Bruce: Halfway to Dawn / Jacy Parker: Spotlight on Jacy Parker (2016)

Tracklist

01. Lucky to Be Me
02. Let Me Love You
03. It Never Entered My Mind
04. Things Are Looking Up
05. Something to Live For
06. Looking for a Boy
07. I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good
08. My One and Only
09. A Ship Without a Sail
10. No One Ever Tells You
11. The Gentleman Is a Dope
12. Don't Like Goodbyes
13. I Thought About You
14. Guess Who I Saw Today
15. Here Comes Trouble Again
16. My Ship
17. Time After Time
18. You're the Cream in My Coffee
19. Like the Likes of You
20. Sweet William
21. Long Gone Love
22. It's You or No One
23. You Mean Old World
24. But Beautiful

This CD showcases two fine singers who, after starting promising careers, recorded only a single album each.

In similar, intimate settings aimed at both pop and jazz listeners, they showed their sophisticated talents on a series of quality songs. Marian Bruce had perfected her sultry style in the early 50s night clubs of New York, Paris and London. In 1958 trumpeter Clark Terry introduced her to the Riverside label, where she was able to make the most of her warm, strong and beautiful voice on a laid-back, late-night album, aptly titled “Halfway to Dawn”, backed by the superb accompanist, pianist Jimmy Jones, and the subtle, sensitive trumpet of Joe Wilder, with bassist Al Hall and guitarist Everett Barksdale.

Jacy Parker recorded her lone and lovely date for Verve in 1962. Having left her hometown, Chicago, in her mid-20s, she had been singing and playing piano around New York since 1954. “Spotlight on Jacy Parker” captured well the clarity of her voice and her jazz-oriented, musical phrasing. Her style—like that of so many singers of her generation—was marked by the influence of Sarah Vaughan, but her wry, sassy vocals and forward-thinking piano solos are in stark contrast to the prevailing girl singer sensibilities of the time. She is backed by an equally fitting rhythm section, and persuasively supported by Ernie Royal’s insinuating trumpet.

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