Anita O’Day “Anita O’Day Swings Cole Porter With Billy May”

Anita O’Day

“Anita O’Day Swings Cole Porter With Billy May”
( LP Verve Records, 1959 )
Catalog # MGVS 6059
Reissue Of Verve MGV 2118

Tracklisting:
01 Just One of Those Things
02 Love for Sale
03 You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To
04 Easy to Love
05 I Get a Kick Out of You
06 All of You
07 Get Out of Town
08 I’ve Got You Under My Skin
09 Night and Day
10 It’s De-Lovely
11 I Love You
12 What Is This Thing Called Love?
13 You’re the Top [*]
14 My Heart Belongs to Daddy [*]
15 Why Shouldn’t I? [*]
16 From This Moment On [*]
17 Love for Sale [*]
18 Just One of Those Things [*]

Personnel & Notes:
Anita O’Day (vo) with The Billy May Orchestra
Recorded in Los Angeles, CA, April 2, 1959
& April 9, 1959

Review:
Most of this reissue is taken from sessions in April 1959 on which Anita O’Day interprets Cole Porter songs while accompanied by some rather rambunctious big-band arrangements from Billy May. While her emotional range is wider than Ella Fitzgerald’s (who had previously recorded her much better-known Cole Porter Songbook), strangely enough O’Day’s voice does not sound as strong on the Billy May set as it does on the six “bonus” cuts which are Cole Porter songs she recorded on other occasions (from 1952-1960). Still this reissue does have its moments with highlights including “I Get a Kick out of You,” “All of You,” “It’s Delovely,” “You’re the Top” and two versions of “Love for Sale.”
By Scott Yanow (AMG)

By Rob