****RINGER OF THE WEEK****WHO IS THIS GUY?!? Jules Farmer: Complete 1959 Imperial Recordings

And you thought Jackie Paris was obscure!!!

After listening to this unbelievable reissue of the most obscure of the obscure male vocalists, I did a major Google search on Jules Farmer. All I came up with was references to these recordings and various references to him “disappearing” from the music scene.

JULES! Are you still out there?!?!? We want to hear from you!!

This guy was only 19 when he made these recordings of standards with an orchestra conducted by Henri Rene’ and Bob Bain. The session guys include some top tear studio gents like Earl Palmer/dr, Milt Bernhart/tb,Barney Kessel, Joe Mondragon/b, Victor Feldman/vib, Ted Nash/as and Gus Bivona/ts, but you’re not going to care about that as much as the fact that this guy is a swinging delight, able to mix the warm comforting tone of Nat Cole with the swagger of Frank Sinatra with just a dash of Mark Murphy looseness. IS THIS ALL THERE IS?

At least it’s a lot. He’s got a rich sizzle on pieces like “Take Love Easy,” and does an enunciation on “The Song Is You” of the word “Be-U-Ti-Ful” that NO ONE does anymore, and he milks each lyric for all it’s worth. He plays with the feel of “The Surrey With The Fringe On Top” like a cat and a ball of yarn and gets down and dirty with blisters on “Every Day I Have The Blues.” There are a handful of singles that include some rich strings for the pop crowd, but it works convincingly on “Love Me Now” and “Possibly.” A hip little nine piece band lends suave and supple support on “Come Away” with Farmer displaying that rare quality of sounding like he’s singing right at ya. We gotta do some detective work on this guy. Why did he drop out? Now that I know he existed, I feel the music world is lesser without him. Grab this and stump your friends as they’ll ask the same question I did on the title. “Please, sir, may I have some more?”

Fresh  Sound Records

www.freshsoundrecords.com

 

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