Harry Warren suffers the worst imbalance between fame and success of any songwriter in the 20th century. As a hitmaker, he ranks with
Irving Berlin, but most people have never heard of him. The main reason for this is that he spent the bulk of his career lurking around Hollywood studios instead of parading down Broadway like many of his peers. Even Capitol Records, which was founded to be a home for what we now call classic pop singers and classic pop songs, turned out 17 earlier volumes of its
Capitol Sings series before getting around to him. To see that the label should have honored the songwriter earlier, you need only peruse the titles, among them Academy Award-winners "Lullaby of Broadway," "You'll Never Know," and "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe," as well as such standards as "I Found a Million-Dollar Baby (In a Five and Ten Cent Store)," "I Only Have Eyes for You," "Jeepers Creepers," and "Chattanooga Choo Choo." (Then consider that among the missing are "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," "[I've Got a Gal In] Kalamazoo," "We're in the Money," and "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams.") While Capitol cornered the market on great pop singers in the 15 years after its founding in 1942 -- and here, that includes
Nat "King" Cole (on three tracks),
Nancy Wilson,
Dinah Shore,
Peggy Lee, and
Dean Martin -- for the most part, it did not score the hit versions of these songs, the major exception being
Martin's "That's Amore," which closes the disc. That's OK when one of their greats is covering a great song, such as
Bobby Darin crooning "You'll Never Know," but this album is padded with bland '50s arrangements (15 of 20 tracks date from the decade) performed by nobodies. The result is less a valuable tribute to
Harry Warren than a way to recycle catalog. ~ William Ruhlmann