ETHEL WATERS: Ethel Waters (jazz vinyl LP)

Sepia Records ( September 12, 2006 ), Genre: Jazz Vocal

She's a good one.

Release Date: 1994-10-25, Audio CD, Best of Jazz

Release Date: 2002-10-04, Audio CD, Classics France/Trad Alive

Sepia Records

Release Date: 2010-01-25, Audio CD, Max Cat Records

Release Date: 1990-07-10, Audio CD, Delta

This 24-track, hour-long CD actually combines two exotica LPs from the late 1950s onto one disc: Ethel Azama's Exotic Dreamers and Tak Shindo's Mganga! Azama's album occupies the first half of the disc, and is the less impressive of the pair. It does have many of the elements that exotic collectors want and expect from their finds: quasi-Asian plucked notes and gongs, cocktail lounge piano, glowing vibraphone notes, Latin-influenced drumming, jungle bird noises, and lyrical odes to the leisurely good life. Azama's no more than an adequate singer, though, sounding as if she'd be far more at home on a whitebread jazz diet than something more, well, exotic. Indeed, her perkiness verges on the annoying on "Happy Talk, " though that's not one of the album's more typical songs. Considerably better, and more varied though still squarely in the exotic idiom, is Shindo's primarily instrumental Mganga! If you like your exotica with the kitchen sink thrown in and some spookiness alongside the cheery lava light, this coul

Thirsty Ear Rec ( March 09, 2004 ), Genre: R&B

Ethel Ennis was blessed with a remarkable voice and an innate jazz feel that she poured into everything she sang. Relatively unknown when she made these late Fifties recordings, her acclaimed debut album, Sings Lullabies For Losers , spread her fame beyond the small East Coast club circuit and her hometown following in Baltimore, where she was born in 1932. Made with a heavyweight jazz quartet that included pianist Hank Jones and drummer Kenny Clarke, it signaled the emergence of a major singing talent. She moved to Capitol, with which she made her next two albums, Change of Scenery and Have You Forgotten . For these the label wheeled out the big guns Neal Hefti arranged and conducted the orchestra for a well-judged programme of swingers and torch songs on the first, while on the second Have You Forgotten? she sings in front of three different backgrounds a large string section, a full brass section and a rhythm section plus vibes and guitar, conducted and arranged by Sid Feller. Throughout, Ethel Ennis handles the diverse settings with remarkable aplomb, with a sure touch for the nuances of feeling and phrasing and singing with a maturity beyond her years.