"Stormy Weather,"
Harold Arlen and
Ted Koehler's 1933 standard, was written for
Cab Calloway, introduced by
Arlen himself on a hit recording, and sung on-stage at the Cotton Club by
Ethel Waters. But it became the signature song of a teenager who was in the club's chorus line in those days,
Lena Horne, when she sang it a decade later in the movie musical of the same name. It was 14 years later that
Horne would use the song as the title track of her first full-length studio LP. She had made a comeback with Lena Horne at the Waldorf Astoria and followed it with this collection of favorites such as "Summertime" and "Just One of Those Things," plus three songs from the
Arlen/
Johnny Mercer musical St. Louis Woman. The orchestra, packed with jazz musicians, was conducted by her husband,
Lennie Hayton, and the project was a triumph, matching a singer at her peak with some of her best material. The 2002 reissue on RCA/BMG's Bluebird imprint adds ten bonus tracks to the original 11, including a previously unreleased earlier version of "Stormy Weather" employing a full string section, another unreleased track, "Come Runnin'," and period recordings drawn from singles and EPs, among them such show tune standards as
Cole Porter's "From This Moment On," Lerner & Loewe's "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," and Rodgers & Hammerstein's "A Cock-Eyed Optimist," "I Have Dreamed," and "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top." The result is a superlative augmentation of the original release. Note that the title
Stormy Weather is confusingly overused in
Horne releases, even by RCA/BMG, which also has out a 2000 international release that is a compilation and an earlier Bluebird release called Stormy Weather: The Legendary Lena (1941-1958), not to mention European compilations on Prime Cuts, Charly, and Hallmark. Don't be fooled. ~ William Ruhlmann