Perfection: Keely Smith - The Song Is You (1958)

Few pop singers in the 1950s could swing like Keely Smith. Anita O'Day was certainly one of them, but Smith was the finer vocalist and surely knew more songs and required fewer takes in the studio. In some respects, Smith was the female Frank Sinatra, able to move ahead of the beat, behind it and go a different way on song lines and pull them off.

So many of her albums are excellent with a different feeling on each one. Among them is Politely!, recorded in Hollywood in June 1958. Billy May was the arranger, perhaps at his peak, crafting fabulous harmony riffs delivered by different sections of the band to fill spaces.

The reason I chose The Song Is You for this week's Perfection track is so you can hear those swaggering May lines and hear the monster trumpet section Smith was up against while singing live in the studio. The other sections weren't too shabby either.

Here's the band in the Capitol Tower's Studio A: Pete Candoli, Conrad Gozzo, Manny Klein and Uan Rasey (tp); Joe Howard, Murray McEachern, George Roberts and Si Zentner (tb); Buddy Collette, Fred Falensby, Jules Jacob, Ted Nash and Wilbur Schwartz (saxophones); Paul Smith (p); Alton Hendrickson (g); Verlye Mills (harp); Joe Mondragon (b); Lou Singer (tymp); Alvin Stoller (d) and Billy May (cond).

Here's the mono version of Keely Smith singing The Song Is You...