Donna Brooks - Soft And Slow + I'll Take Romance (Remastered) (2024)

Soft and Slow
Artistically known as Donna Brooks, Louise Smith (1926-2009), a native of Philadelphia, was a classically trained singer who switched to supper clubs and wound up in New York as a production singer at the Roxy Theatre. Under the tutelage of Mat Mathews, she moved into jazz. As she put it, “I started to like jazz… I lowered my range about two octaves, and overnight, I found myself.” “Soft and Slow” marked her fine debut. Donna’s main charm was her throaty, full voice, respect for lyrics, and pleasing vocal texture. She was easy to listen to and was certainly several cuts above most pop vocalists. Naturally, it was important to her that the substance of the song be worthy, and for this collection, she harvested some of the better bits of romantic poetry that existed in wisps among the voluminous mediocrities of Tin Pan Alley. Backing Donna was a group notably tailored to her own approach—imaginative and swinging. It was the Chuck Wayne Quartet, with the incomparable Chuck on guitar, Bobby Scott on piano, Milt Hinton on bass, and Billy Exiner on drums.

I'll Take Romance
“Donna sang with that withholding quality which I admired in singers and in a Carmen McRae manner (generally not an imitation, mind you, but an adaptation, not at all strange when you considered that she studied with Mat Mathews, who did most of Carmen’s early recordings),” wrote Metronome editor Bill Coss. Certainly, her efforts in this album, “I’ll Take Romance,” defined more than pleasant efficacy with an intimate form of jazz expression. She had fine assistance here from a trio composed of pianist Alex Smith (her husband), bassist Paul Worthington, and drummer Angelo Paoli. The essence of Donna’s charm lay in her careful, thoughtful delivery of lyrics, and a gratifying facility for full enunciation of words while seasoning with appropriate feeling and shading. It was all the more refreshing in this period of jazz vocalists so severely instrumentalizing as to sacrifice the story of the song almost completely.