Just three years after her celebrated appearance performing the title song of Stormy Weather,
Lena Horne was having trouble with MGM; the company refused to cast her in roles that would further her career. As part of an ongoing process of reinvention, she recorded several sides during 1946 for the Los Angeles label Black & White. With a roster including Willie "The Lion" Smith,
Barney Bigard, and
Erroll Garner, and the likes of producers
Leonard Feather and
Nesuhi Ertegun, the label focused on R&B and traditional jazz. The 17 tracks here balance numbers in keeping with
Horne's characters from recent films (the folk or spiritual numbers "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," "My Man's Gone Now," and "Frankie & Johnny") with more refined pop standards ("You Go to My Head," "Glad to Be Unhappy," "At Long Last Love," and "More Than You Know").
Horne's voice is gorgeous, uplifting, and very touching, while the accompaniment -- by
Phil Moore's orchestra, featuring Moore on piano,
Gerald Wilson on trumpet, and
Lucky Thompson on tenor sax -- is tasteful and somewhat restrained. As with many transcription releases,
The Complete Black & White Recordings reveals talents more in keeping with a live concert than any studio work done by
Horne. About half of the material here appears on the 1997 Simitar collection
More Than You Know.