Jasmine Records Burl IVES - Lavender Blue - Songs Of Charm, Humour And Sincerity CD

Given his range as an entertainer, it is no surprise that the offerings here show Burl Ives as a versatile singer across the musical spectrum. The folk repertoire is well represented with material like The Riddle Song and Sweet Betsy From Pike, both from the earliest part of Burl’s recording career, as is the charming I Know My Love. From a few years later come the well-known Blue Tail Fly, Big Rock Candy Mountain and Foggy, Foggy Dew, and even later Mr. Froggie Went A-Courtin’. With the unfulfilled prospect of becoming a ‘Singing Cowboy’ (the genre was over-subscribed by then), in 1947 Burl recorded two Western-type songs, It Makes No Difference Now and I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blues Eyes. Danny Kaye’s version of The Little White Duck is perhaps better known than Burl’s, but both did the children’s song justice. Other children’s songs here include The Goat and The Rabbit, although the last has a macabre finale. By contrast, and on a very serious note, the conscripted songwriter Frank Loesser, a private in the U.S. Army, was asked by the Infantry Corps to write a song celebrating their war-hero Rodger Young, a young man who had recently died in the Pacific campaign. Burl Ives was the first to record the song in February 1945, oddly at the same time recording just one other, disparate number, Foggy, Foggy Dew.Burl was only a spasmodic visitor to the singles charts, scoring his biggest hit in 1961 with A Little Bitty Tear. In the late 1940s, he had some success with the gentle Lavender Blue, also with Riders In The Sky. Here you have a very listenable cross-section of songs by Burl Ives, each one treated by the master as of equal merit, whatever its origins. Incidentally, the busy guitarist who adds so much to some of the numbers is Tony Mottola, the highly respected jazz and session musician.