Garland Touch [Bonus Tracks]

Performer: Judy Garland
Artist: Norrie Paramor & His Orchestra; Roger Edens; Geoff Love & His Orchestra
Producer: Norman Newell; Andy Wiswell; Voyle Gilmore; Hugh Fordin (Reissue)
Distributor: E1 Distribution (USA)

Notes: Liner Note Author: Peter Brennan. Recording information: 10/11/1957-10/13/1961. Having waited a year for Judy Garland to follow up her chart-topping, gold-selling, Grammy-winning album Judy at Carnegie Hall, Capitol Records gave up and cobbled together this LP out of previously released tracks and stray sessions. Two songs, "More Than You Know" and "Do I Love You?" appeared on Garland's 1958 album Judy in Love and are simply repeated here. "Comes Once in a Lifetime" and "Sweet Danger," two adequate Broadway show tunes from the 1961-1962 season, appeared together on a Garland single. (The former, by Jule Styne, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green, comes from Subways Are for Sleeping; the latter, by George Forrest and Robert Wright, was in the flop Kean.) The other six tracks were recorded in London in a series of sessions that found the singer revisiting her earlier work, such as "It's a Great Day for the Irish," a song she sang in the 1940 movie Little Nelly Kelly, and her "Judy at the Palace" medley of vaudeville favorites, assembled for her 1951 appearance at the Palace Theater in New York. She is certainly in good voice on these recordings, and even if this patchwork collection is not a worthy successor to Judy at Carnegie Hall, it contains some winning performances. ~ William Ruhlmann Judy Garland's Capitol Records album The Garland Touch, presented here with six bonus tracks, has a curious history. In August 1960, Garland went into the EMI studios on Abbey Road in London and held a series of sessions with British conductor Norrie Paramor in which she re-recorded 20 tracks from her repertoire -- everything from "Over the Rainbow" to her "Judy at the Palace" medley of vaudeville favorites -- apparently with the intention of releasing a two-LP set. Then, in April 1961, she appeared at Carnegie Hall, singing many of the same songs, of course, and that performance was immortalized on the two-LP set Judy at Carnegie Hall, which hit number one, went gold, and won the Grammy for Album of the Year. The proposed album drawn from the London sessions was now somewhat redundant, and the material was shelved. In October 1961, Garland went into a New York studio intending to record an album of new Broadway songs, but she had a cold, and the only tracks deemed presentable were "Comes Once in a Lifetime" (a song by Jule Styne, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green from Subways Are for Sleeping) and "Sweet Danger" (from George Forrest and Robert Wright's score for Kean), and they were issued on a single. Garland's schedule of personal appearances and film work prevented her from getting back to recording, and, after a year had gone by, Capitol grew impatient for a follow-up to Judy at Carnegie Hall. So, the label went back to the London sessions and picked six songs that Garland hadn't sung at Carnegie Hall; added the two Broadway songs from the recent single; and padded the collection out with two songs ("More Than You Know" and "Do I Love You?") from Garland's 1958 album Judy in Love. These ten tracks made up The Garland Touch, released on July 30, 1962. Eventually, the London material was released in its entirety, first on an LP called Judy in London and later on a CD called The London Sessions, but until 2009, nobody thought of reissuing the patchwork collection The Garland Touch on CD. For this release, DRG Records has added five more of the London tracks as well as the rare song "It's Lovely to Be Back in London," which was pressed on a promotional single given to people attending a Garland concert in London in 1957. The result is a mixed bag of recordings that make more sense in the complete versions of the London recordings. But Garland is in good voice, and she is effective singing some of her warhorses as well as a few unfamiliar songs. ~ William Ruhlmann

It was Judy Garland, not Bing Crosby, who inherited Al Jolson's mantle as America's premier 20th-century entertainer. Possessing both the voice and pure show-biz sensibility for the requisite broad gesture, her own emotional vulnerabilities also gave a special depth to every single performance.

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