More June Christy
More Pop and Jazz Vocals
[This is an old review for the mono. We may prefer the stereo pressings now. We will find out next time we do a shootout for the album, one of Miss Christy’s best.]
Both sides of this 1963 All Tube Recorded and Mastered Mono record are just as rich and relaxed as you would expect. The balance is correct, which means the top is there as well as the bottom, with good vocal presence throughout.
We are HUGE fans of this album at Better Records, but it’s taken us a long time to pull together enough clean copies to make this shootout happen. We’re happy to say it worth all the trouble.
Get the volume just right and June will be standing between your speakers and putting on the performance of a lifetime. This is one of our favorite female vocal albums (along with Clap Hands, Julie Is her Name and a fair number of others) and this amazingly good copy will show you why – the sound and music are wonderful.
The Mono Is King
This early mono pressing is the only way to find the MIDRANGE MAGIC that’s missing from modern records. As good as the best of those pressings may be, this record is dramatically more REAL sounding.
She’s no longer a recording — she’s a living, breathing person. We call that “the breath of life,” and this record has it in spades. Her voice is so rich, sweet, and free of artificiality you cannot help but find yourself lost in the music, because there’s no “sound” to distract you.
Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here. You could certainly demonstrate your stereo with a record this good, even one that’s not nearly this good, because this one is superb.
But what you would really be demonstrating is music that the listener probably hasn’t heard, and that’s the best reason to demonstrate a stereo.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Spring Is Here
Fly Me To The Moon
I Fall In Love Too Easily
Time After Time
The More I See You
Don’t Explain
Side Two
It Never Entered My Mind
You’re Nearer
Misty
Suddenly It’s Spring
I Get Along Without You Very Well
Ev’ry Time
AMG 4 Star Review
On June Christy’s excellent run of albums for Capitol Records the vocalist was most often backed by Pete Rugolo’s complex orchestral charts or by small, freewheeling jazz groups led by her husband, Bob Cooper. So The Intimate Miss Christy is a special treat for her fans as it finds the cool blonde singer backed only by Al Viola’s guitar and Don Bagley’s bass (though a flutist sits in on a few tracks).
This guitar/bass-only approach was first popularized by Julie London and went on to be utilized by many other singers during this era. The backing not only suits the laid-back, cool jazz approach of June Christy perfectly, but it also means that the singer is never forced to strain too hard, as she sometimes did when working with the experimentally inclined Pete Rugolo.
And while the vocalist usually put a dark emotional spin on her ballad readings, this album is definitely aimed more toward romantic entanglements than romantic regrets. The Intimate Miss Christy may be a fireside makeout album, but it’s one that merits repeated listens even when the embers die out.
AMG Biography
Though she was the epitome of the vocal cool movement of the 1950s, June Christy was a warm, chipper vocalist able to stretch out her impressive voice on bouncy swing tunes and set herself apart from other vocalists with her deceptively simple enunciation.
Christy’s debut LP for Capitol, 1954’s Something Cool, was recorded with Rugolo at the head of the orchestra. The album launched the vocal cool movement and hit the Top 20 album charts in America, as did a follow-up, The Misty Miss Christy. Her 1955 Duet LP paired her voice with Kenton’s piano, while most of her Capitol LPs featured her with various Kenton personnel and Rugolo (or Bob Cooper) at the head of the orchestra. She reprised her earlier big-band days with 1959’s June Christy Recalls Those Kenton Days, and recorded a raft of concept LPs before retiring in 1965.