CDs For You Lovers Out There
Beautiful Ballads & Love Songs
(Legacy)
For its seemingly annual contribution to the Valentine’s industry, Legacy compiles Columbia, RCA, and Arista recordings of Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and Barry Manilow.
Sweet lovin’ aside, as a series there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to Beautiful Ballads & Love Songs (and that’s O.K., but here they are): The Manilow set comes close to a greatest hits; each of the 14 selections was plucked from a different album, spanning his 1973 debut through the present. No “Mandy,” but no “Copacabana,” either, so in many ways this might be the one Manilow disc you want. The Davis disc is predictably (and justifiably) limited to his late-’50s/early-’60s cool and hard bop days (save an odd Cyndi Lauper cover), before he would go off the fusion deep end. “‘Round Midnight” might be more Chet Baker than Barry White, but if you’re getting some to Miles you probably know that already.
Sinatra’s edition includes neither his Reprise nor Capitol recordings, and thus offers the early big-bandish work when he’s still a little green. Ditto Billie Holiday, a portion of whose disc derives from when she was part of Teddy Wilson’s orchestra — her melancholy’s best suited to trysts and fatal attractions.The most frustrating volume is Aretha Franklin’s, however, who might appear in the liners as the ’60s diva who shook R&B’s bones, though the culled tracks are predominantly ’80s dreck. Then again, from a beginning collector’s standpoint, this is as good a place as any to venture into eras you wouldn’t normally, and Legacy inadvertently provides such openings.
— Kevin Keegan
