AL JOLSON
Millennium Collection (MCA)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

---

America's first great recording hero has a catalog that would make Spiegel jealous (That's Spiegel, Chicago, 60609. Ooops.. sorry... it just seems to belong there.) The early recordings that made him famous sound like crap now. Well, it's true. I buy my kids teddy bears for Christmas with better fidelity when you squeeze their paws. So what's THIS all about, then? Well, this is a dozen of Jolie's most important songs, re-recorded in the mid 1940s after he'd returned from WWII, where he did USO shows. The Jolson Story was filmed and starred someone else but used Jolson's voice and some of these recordings. By this point, Jolson's voice had dropped down from tenor to baritone, but his delivery was still what it had always been and he remained the beloved media icon he might not have been had people known his true personality. George Burns once said of him "It was easy to make Jolson happy. You had to cheer him at breakfast, applaud him wildly at lunch, and give him a standing ovation at dinner." And try real hard not to piss him off along the way. Then again, you don't have to deal with him. You can just listen to this collection of some of his finest songs recorded without the pops and snaps and megaphone-from-50-yards effect, and all at the Millennium Collection budget price, which is a pretty fair deal.

Track List

Swanee * California, Here I Come * April Showers * My Mammy * Rock-A-Bye Your Babe With a Dixie Melody * You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It) * Anniversary Song * Alexander's Ragtime Band * Sonny Boy * Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away) * Toot Toot Tootsie! * When You're Sweet Sixteen

© 2001 - DJ Johnson