For The Night People

Album review

After 1959's excellent Julie...at Home, a small-group West Coast session cut in her own living room, Julie London's albums became increasingly orchestral and less jazzy during the first half of the '60s. While many of these albums are excellent (particularly Around Midnight), most weren't up to her best recordings from the 1950s. Then, in 1965 something changed, and stripped-down jazz backings reappeared on her albums until her notorious final disc went soft rock with a vengeance in 1969. For this album, the West Coast arranger and bass player Don Bagley combines an excellent jazz trio with subtle string charts that never swamp the intimate feeling of the disc. London came to fame by recording stripped-down sessions with just guitar and bass, so it makes sense that on For the Night People, an unidentified jazz guitarist gets to solo throughout the album. A typically low-key and melancholy session, standout tracks include a languid reading of the usually manic "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey" and two songs made famous by Frank Sinatra -- "Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night in the Week)" and "I'll Never Smile Again." This album is a must-have for Julie London fans and thankfully she worked with Bagley again on the more upbeat but no-less-languid Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast, which keeps the guitar heard here, but after the title track replaces the strings with a jazz organ and horn.

© Nick Dedina /TiVo