You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet! is a tribute album to
Al Jolson on which
Eddie Fisher sang a group of songs associated with
Jolson. The pairing was appropriate;
Fisher had emerged in 1950, on the heels of a
Jolson revival and just before
Jolson's death, with a bravura singing style that many people attributed to
Jolson's influence, not the least of them
Fisher himself. Even in an era of big-voiced singers like
Frankie Laine,
Fisher stood out for what some found thrilling and others dismissed as over-singing, but his approach clearly came from an established musical/theatrical tradition, one that
Jolson had done much to originate. Eighteen years later,
Fisher's singing voice had deepened, which made it sound even more like
Jolson in
Jolson's later years.
Fisher had enjoyed something of a comeback on records after re-signing to RCA Victor in 1966, and on some of his new recordings he seemed to be imitating
Jolson deliberately. He had not quite re-established himself as a record-seller, so the tribute album was a risky project. The original idea had been to find new songs in
Jolson's style, but
Fisher wasn't able to find any. He sang the old songs in new arrangements that gave them more of a '50s than a '20s sound, and he sang them as himself, though he did not hesitate to throw in an occasional inflection or bit of phrasing that were Jolsonesque. The result was an entertaining gloss on the work of "the World's Greatest Entertainer" that made the case for
Fisher as his spiritual heir. Unfortunately it had nothing to do with the pop music of 1968 and did not sell. That might have been a minor problem, though, if
Fisher had not quit RCA, leaving him without a major-label berth he was unable to replace. ~ William Ruhlmann