Sentimental Journey: Legend at Her Best [Box]

Performer: Doris Day
Distributor: Gotham Distributing Corp.

Notes: SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY compiles several original Doris Day albums on Columbia reissued as Collectables 2-for-1 CDs including: DAY BY DAY (1956)/DAY BY NIGHT (1967); LOVE HIM! (1963)/SHOWTIME (1960); ON MOONLIGHT BAY (1951)/BY THE LIGHT OF THE SILVERY MOON (1953); TEA FOR TWO (1950)/LULLABY OF BROADWAY (1951); CUTTIN' CAPERS (1959)/BRIGHT & SHINY (1961); I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS (1951)/CALAMITY JANE (1953); SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY (1965)/LATIN FOR LOVERS (1965); WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW (1960)/I HAVE DREAMED (1961) plus the original soundtracks THE PAJAMA GAME (1957) and JUMBO (1957). Including soundtracks of films in which she starred, Doris Day released about 30 newly recorded LPs on Columbia Records between 1949 and 1965, the first third of which were 10" records and the rest 12" ones. Collectables Records has been reissuing these discs, often as two-fers, over the past few years, and this box set collects ten of them together. Eighteen of Day's albums are included for a total of 187 tracks and a running time of over nine and a half hours. (You might expect the running time to be longer, but three of discs each combine two 10" albums, so they still aren't very long, and two contain single soundtracks at regular LP length.) The early albums are often tied into Day's light movie musicals of the early '50s, such as On Moonlight Bay and By the Light of the Silvery Moon, though they present studio, not soundtrack recordings of the songs. Here Day sings a lot of old standards, sometimes accompanied by co-stars such as Danny Thomas. There are also real soundtracks -- Calamity Jane (actually, this one is half-studio, half-soundtrack), The Pajama Game, and Billy Rose's Jumbo -- albums on which stars such as Howard Keel and John Raitt get their own solos. And there are ten Day albums originally released between 1955 and 1965 that conform roughly to the Frank Sinatra "concept" album formula. Each seems to have a chosen theme -- Broadway hits on Show Time, dream songs on I Have Dreamed -- with a bunch of tunes selected primarily from the standards of the 1920s, '30s, and '40s that conform to that theme, and maybe one or two newly written ones. These albums are generally less impressive than the early movie tie-in records and soundtracks, though some, notably Love Him! -- produced by Day's son, Terry Melcher -- have their moments. ~ William Ruhlmann

Regarded as a beloved film icon, the effervescently blonde Doris Day was a sort of Betty to Marilyn Monroe's Veronica, and starred in a series of popular movie romps from the early 1950s through the early `60s. But before that, she'd had a flourishing career as a radio personality and vocalist, most notably with bandleader Les Brown. She enjoyed several big hits, including the sweet singalong "Que Sera Sera" and her signature tune "Sentimental Journey," which she recorded several times. For the most part, Day retired from moviemaking and recording on the cusp of the `70s, during which her appeal was not in step with the zeitgeist, and has only reemerged professionally a few times since.

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