Carmen McRae - The Singles & Albums Collection 1946-58 (2021)

Carmen McRae was one of the finest and most highly-regarded jazz and sophisticated pop singers of the post-war era, renowned for her highly individual interpretation of the standards of the Great American Songbook. Born in Harlem of Jamaican parentage in 1920, she performed in New York’s jazz clubs in the 1940s and made her first record until 1946. This great-value 97-track 4-CD set comprises her first release on Musicraft with Mercer Ellington, plus A&B sides of her singles on the Stardust and Decca labels through to 1958, including her releases with Sammy Davis Jr., and which include the titles from her “A Foggy Day” album for Stardust, plus all the titles from her albums “Carmen McRae” on Bethlehem, and “Torchy”, “By Special Request”, “Blue Moon” and “Afterglow” on Decca. It includes her chart entries from this era “Next Time It Happens” and “Skyliner”. On these recordings, she is accompanied by orchestras arranged and conducted by Jack Pleis, Tadd Dameron, Vic Shoen and Ralph Burns, and star-studded jazz groups led by Mat Mathews and Tony Scott. It’s a substantial and thoroughly absorbing overview of the first key decade and more of her career when she established herself as a highly distinctive and supremely talented vocal stylist across the jazz and pop spectrum.