Gisele Mackenzie - Hard To Get: The Singles Collection 1951-58 (2022)

Gisele Mackenzie was a Canadian singer and musician partly of French-Canadian heritage, who was a classically-trained violinist, pianist and dancer who became a singer with her own show on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Moving to California in 1951 to take over from The Andrews Sisters on CBS, she started recording for Capitol the same year, performing in a style that was typical of what was often called “the golden age of popular music” during the early ‘50s, and was popular on TV, hosting her own NBC variety show, as well as being a regular with Jack Benny and Mario Lanza on their radio shows. She had the benefit of being accompanied on record by some of the finest arranger/conductors of the era, including Billy May, Nelson Riddle, Buddy Cole, Dave Cavanaugh, Sid Bass and Shorty Rogers. She had her biggest hit in 1955, making No. 4 with “Hard To Get”. This great-value 58-track 2-CD set comprises most of her A & B sides from these years on the Capitol, “X”, Vik and RCA-Victor labels, and features all her career chart entries including the US No. 4 “Hard To Get” and No. 11 “Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes”, and the UK No. 6 “Seven Lonely Days”. She was a songstress who was very much of her era, and this collection offers a substantial and reasonably comprehensive overview of the key period of her career and is an enjoyable showcase for her talents as vocal stylist.