DORIS DAY - The Complete Doris Day with Les Brown (1996) 2xCD / FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

Forty-two songs cut between November 1940 and August 1946, and the perfect companion to Bear Family's It's Magic box set -- anyone who's been even tempted to own that will have to get this more modestly priced precursor to that material. Day's period singing with Les Brown is, today, regarded with a degree of love and affection reserved for Ella Fitzgerald's era with Chick Webb, or Frank Sinatra's work with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. Yet Sony Music's own releases devoted to Doris Day and Les Brown spread the music around to several different CDs, and suffered from sound that, today, seems substandard. These newly remastered tracks, offered in chronological order, including one previously unissued song ("Are You Still in Love with Me"), not only display a far richer, warmer sound, but have been presented with the kind of care that is normally reserved for the best parts of a label's catalog -- which these sides definitely are. Day's voice during this period (she was 16 when she cut her first sides with Brown) was an astonishingly expressive instrument. Anyone who thinks that 42 songs is more than they want simply hasn't heard her darkly emotive rendition of "When the Music Plays On," or the playful "Three at a Table with You," her jaunty "Broomstreet," or her gossamer enunciation (highlighted by some lovely high notes) on "Between Friends" -- the arrangements and the performances have the texture of the most finely spun silk. The hits are here, of course, but there's hardly a song on hand that doesn't deserve a hearing 50-odd years later. The notes by Joseph Laredo are also lively and informative. by Bruce Eder