Having previously devoted songbook albums to
Stephen Sondheim, Kurt Weill, and
Harold Arlen in successive years,
Julie Wilson continues the career comeback she mounted in 1984 by turning to
Cole Porter, who may be her most compatible songwriter source yet.
Wilson, a native of Omaha, NE, moved to New York and the world of musical theater and nightclubs, just as
Porter had also come east years earlier after his birth in Peru, IN.
Wilson shares
Porter's delight at wealth and sophistication as well as his underlying distrust of it. She is an ideal interpreter of songs that explore the top and the bottom, such as "Mr. & Missus Fitch" (which she performs as a duet with her piano accompanist William Roy) and "Miss Otis Regrets." Although most of the songs on the album are well known, she has a special affinity for one of the obscurities, "Queen of Terre Haute." Relying only on Roy's piano and her own voice,
Wilson emphasizes
Porter's wit and wordplay, savoring the lyrics. At 64, she has a limited voice, but she picks her spots to soar or growl, and
Porter benefits from her wise, nearly spoken passages, in which the meaning of the lyrics is emphasized. Not surprisingly, the album is an extrapolation of a club act
Wilson has been performing; she sounds like she has the material down. And this makes four winners in a row for her with DRG Records. ~ William Ruhlmann