If you’ve ever watched old movies from the 30s and 40s, there’s always a scene where the main couple (Think Gloria Graham and Bogie) are in some swanky night club, and there’s a classy band playing for the couple to dance to. That’s the kind of music that “Sweet” bands like Kay Kyser, Horace Heidt, Glenn Gray, and yes, Shep Fields. What set Fields apart was that he came up with ingenious idea of adding the sound of blowing bubbles to most of the early pieces, creating a mood like music to imbibe champagne to. Hey, it worked!
While Fields’ bands were not known for their instrumental soloists, he did have an impressive supply of vocalists, all doing their best to impersonate Bing Crosby, in Bob Goday, Charles Chester, Dick Robertson, Sonny Washburn, Ken Curtis and Ralph Young, with canary Dorothy Allen also in the mix. The band definitely knew how to swing, grooving out a hip take of “Jersey Bounce”, but most of the time you get vocal refrains, with the songs being played as the composer meant them to be. Definitive reads of “That Old Feeling”, “Did I Remember” and “That Old Feeling” were big hits for Fields, while he also displayed impressive arrangement talents on “September In The Rain” and “Don’t Blame Me”. This album remind me of what the head of the music department at the local university once told me, that “today’s students don’t know how to play a melody straight”. This 2 disc, 50 song collection is an excellent tutor.