In the spring of 1952, after
Eddie Fisher had hit the Top Ten with a series of singles, RCA Victor threw together some old tracks he had in the can and released his first album,
Eddie Fisher Sings. It was a tentative effort, the product of sessions dating back to 1949, during which the singer had groped for a style that could click. Mediocre as it was,
Eddie Fisher Sings became a Top Five success, because in 1952
Fisher had the Midas touch. RCA did not repeat its indifference in preparing an album for the fall season. This time,
Fisher held recording sessions specifically for the LP with his regular conductor,
Hugo Winterhalter, and the fare was not second-rate Tin Pan Alley rejects but rather A-list standards. (None of
Fisher's recent hits were included; at this point, albums and singles usually were considered entirely separate.) There wasn't any of the stylistic experimentation heard on
Eddie Fisher Sings, either. This was the
Fisher his fans were used to hearing on his singles, a singer who looked for places in the songs to emphasize and then bellowed in his overpowering tenor. His youth and inexperience were revealed more starkly on these sophisticated compositions than they were on his hits; these were songs that required more in terms of interpretive abilities than
Fisher yet displayed. He tended to sing as though he had little understanding of what, for example, a song like "You'll Never Know" was about. At 23, he wasn't really ready to sing a song like
Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin." But he did have a gorgeous voice, and that was what mattered to his fans.
I'm in the Mood for Love became another Top Five hit.