Responding to the demand for mood music albums in 1958, Decca put together an LP of ballads and things that
Ella Fitzgerald recorded in tandem with Decca's all-purpose music director
Gordon Jenkins when he was riding high in the early '50s.
Fitzgerald could invoke a few jazz inflections here and there, particularly on a bluesy rendition of "Black Coffee," but she is asked mostly to play the role of a white-bread pop crooner. All of
Jenkins' harmonic, big-band, orchestral and choral trademarks are in full play here, evoking the cozy ambience of postwar suburbia as completely as anyone did in those days. As a period piece, it is very enlightening, but
Fitzgerald's best Decca work lay elsewhere. ~ Richard S. Ginell