Close, But No Cigar

I have this LP by June Christy, "June: Fair and Warmer." I love the cover—it's way 50s. When I see a treasure such as this, I have to own it; so I bought it, cleaned it up and put it on.

June Christy is treated with reverence on the web. She was pretty good lookin', and not just for her time, either. She was blonde, pert, nice figure, and she could sing. That or acting, in the Fabulous Fifties, and you were on your way. June Christy released lots of records and was a star for years, until she retired in 1965. She died in 1990.

Christy is credited with capturing (even launching) something called the "vocal cool movement," an offshoot of "West Coast" or "Cool" jazz, I think. This record doesn't catch that and it bothers me to say so, because her "Something Cool" ^* is one of the greats and I want to rave about her.

Her voice was on the muscular side, like Keely Smith and Jo Stafford. To get to the mezzo side of alto, Smith went effortlessly to the higher notes where Stafford just pushed harder. Christy does something a little different, at least on this LP: she works to keep it alto and resists the sweeter tones her voice naturally makes, favoring diaphragm-ey, throaty lowers.

On "June: Fair and Warmer," Christy works pretty hard, but it sounds too much like it. You want someone to reach excellence and it's nice to have an ear good enough to hear it. But if someone strains to hit something, and you hear the effort more than the achievement, it means they missed. Take "Let There be Love," where Christy expends a huge effort, and most of it at breathing. There's no artful phrasing, no vocal skills, because she's gasping for air so she can pound out notes like a baritone sax. On "No More," Christy again out of breath, challenged—and flat.

But I really want to be fair, because she is good and I want to enjoy her talent. Christy handles "Best Thing" well: the song is uptempo and she doesn't blurt. Her voice dances sweetly along the melody, supported by a perky arrangement by her husband and long-time collborator, Pete Rugolo. Christy positively excels on "I Want to be Happy" and "It's Always You," the opening and closing numbers on the LP. Rugolo's arrangement on "It's Always You," incidentally, is smokin'.

These songs are the solution, in my estimation: they have pep and move steadily (if not briskly) and make her carry more music on one breath. What happens is she doesn't take time to stop and reach deep into the gut, and force those notes. (I figure she was going for "sultry," or to keep that jazz cred. Whatever the reason, it was of that era, I'm sure.) Instead, she sings up in the register where her voice is true and beautiful, flying through the arrangement and landing with precision on every note.

A songbird, not an owl.

OK—a flute, maybe, not a saxophone. Now there's nothing wrong with a sax, of course. But when Bob Seger bleats like a sax, it's not-so-good vocals. Or Michael McDonald, who doesn't sing—it's more like, uh, "BURRRRRRR!"


(From the diaphragm, people. You know I'm right.)

^* Check out this version by Jacqui Naylor!