Product Description

This two-disc set, generous at 50 tracks, is probably the most comprehensive Julie London anthology available. While certainly no match for her more technically accomplished contemporaries, London was a fine, appealing singer who used her cool, understated alto to excellent advantage.

London is best known for her signature song "Cry Me a River", andthat's here, of course, but her sultry take on standards like "When I Fall in Love", "I Left My Heart in San Francisco", and "Body and Soul" are nothing to scoff at. While some ofher later recordings can suffer from excessive orchestration, London's vocal stylings are always on point, as the wealth of material on this EMI collection proves.

Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Fly Me To The Moon
2. Cry Me A River
3. Blue Moon
4. Sway
5. My Heart Belongs To Daddy
6. When I Fall In Love
7. Can't Help Lovin' That Man
8. Misty
9. Lover Man
10. Desafinado (Slightly Out Of Tune)
11. Girls Talk
12. Let There Be Love
13. Wives & Lovers
14. In The Wee Small Hours of The Morning
15. Making Whoopee
16. The Good Life
17. The More I See You
18. A Taste Of Honey
19. Go Slow
20. You And The Night And The Music
21. Black Coffee
22. Basin Street Blues
23. Blues In The Night
24. 'Round Midnight
25. As Time Goes By

Disc 2:

1. Can't Get Used To Losing You
2. September In The Rain
3. Mad About The Boy
4. Love Letters
5. I Left My Heart In San Francisco
6. Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend
7. Goody Goody
8. Days Of Wine & Roses
9. You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To
10. Light My Fire
11. Here's That Rainy Day
12. Body & Soul
13. God Bless The Child
14. They Can't Take That Away From Me
15. Our Day Will Come
16. I�ve Got Your Under My Skin
17. The End Of The World
18. One For My Baby
19. Love For Sale
20. Sentimental Journey
21. I've Got A Crush On You
22. Call Me Irresponsible
23. You Made Me Love You
24. Nice Girls Don't Stay For Breakfast
25. Everytime We Say Goodbye

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5767 in Music
• Released on: 2005-05-30
• Number of discs: 2

Album Description
A sultry, smoky-voiced master of understatement, Julie London enjoyed considerable popularity during the cool era of the 1950s. She used restraint, softness, and subtlety to maximum advantage. An actress as well as a singer, London played with heavyweights like Gregory Peck and Rock Hudson. London performed her biggest hit, "Cry Me a River", in the Jayne Mansfield film The Girl Can't Help It. The 2-disc The Very Best of Julie London includes "Cry Me a River", plus "Fly Me To The Moon", "My Heart Belongs To Daddy", "Making Whoopee", "Blue Moon" and many more.

Customer Reviews

SIMPLY SUBLIME
For those of you who know Julie London then you will appreciate this as one of the greatest albums of 2005. For those of you who don't then all I can say is order this now. If you are a fan of female vocalists & have enjoyed anyone from Sade to Ella, Eva Cassidy to Norah Jones then you will be in for a treat. Julie's selection of songs was always impeccable & this selection matches hers. Sublime is the best way I can sum it up.

Superb Late Night Music...
There's something about Julie London's voice... sultry, sexy, super-cool... that perfectly captures the feel of the night. And, if you only know of her through "Cry Me a River" - as most people do - then you're in for a real treat because between the mid 50's and the late 60's she produced a huge amount of similarly beautiful music.

Featuring 50 tracks, most of which are "standards", virtually all of which are near-perfect examples of how to inject pure "atmosphere" into a song, and an incredibly large number of which are better than their more famous originals, this superb compilation will leave you wondering why she wasn't ranked up there with the great artists of her time... and, more interestingly, given the huge popularity of recent "jazz-cool" artists such as Norah Jones, why she's still so undiscovered.

Best of all this selection is a quite superb, flawlessly sung & played "late night" album - put it on and slip into over two hours of gloriously laid back music... you won't find much better.

A great collection of Julie's music
Julie peaked at the beginning of her career in 1955 with the classic Cry me a ricer. For the remainder of the fifties and most of the sixties, Julie recorded a series of albums that delighted her fans. While Julie was not the most technically gifted singer, she knew her limitations and worked within them, ignoring the prevailing fashions and focusing almost exclusively on romantic ballads. Julie's warm, intimate style of singing endeared her to a significant number of music fans. On her early records, the musical backing was very sparse, but as the fifties gave way to the sixties, orchestral arrangements took over, though these were always tastefully done. Personally, I slightly prefer the early recordings but I love everything I've heard of Julie's music (and that's most of it, thanks to all the CD re-issues of recent years).

Julie recorded a lot of songs from the first half of the twentieth century but she also recorded some contemporary material. This compilation contains a great selection of Julie's music including (of course) Cry me a river. Elsewhere, the compilation is filled with Julie's covers of songs made famous by others such as Fly me to the moon, Blue moon, My heart belongs to Daddy, When I fall in love, Misty, Let there be love, Making whoopee, The more I see you, Black coffee, Blues in the night, As time goes by, Can't get used to losing you, September in the rain, Mad about the boy, Love letters, I left my heart in San Francisco, Our day will come, I've got you under my skin, End of the world and Sentimental journey.

With a compilation like this, it is always possible to argue about what is included and what is omitted, but this compilation fairly represents Julie's career. If you only ever buy one collection of her music, make it this one.