Gormé Sings Showstoppers

Album review

The Showstoppers are all show tunes on this collection of Broadway favorites from Eydie Gorme, her fifth album for ABC-Paramount Records. Appropriately given the title, the selections tend to be uptempo numbers, and that tends to put them right in the wheelhouse of this energetic performer. Gorme is at her best when she's belting, and she has that opportunity over and over as she takes on some of the big women's songs of the musicals of the ‘40s and ‘50s, shows like Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun ("You Can't Get a Man with a Gun") and Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! ("I Cain't Say No") and South Pacific ("I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair"). She even tries songs not specifically tailored for a distaff singer, notably the title tune from Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls, a composition that, it might be argued, isn't even sympathetic to women. There are ballads here as well, but they tend to be taken at a rhythmic pace. Gorme isn't interested in providing characterizations for these sometimes character-heavy songs; she does use accents where necessary to get rhymes across, but she is singing as herself, using her natural vivacity, powerful voice, and excellent enunciation to transfer these popular songs from the theatrical stage to the realm of nightclubs, where she is at home. Any one of them should fit into her act beautifully.

© William Ruhlmann /TiVo