Smooth & Swinging: The Singles & Albums Collection1947-58

Johnny Hartman was a jazz and easy listening singer with a rich baritone voice and a stylish way with ballads who recorded with some of the top bands and accompanists of the day during his career, including Earl Hines, Dizzy Gillespie and Erroll Garner, and became famous during the 1970s, beyond the scope of this collection, for an album he made with John Coltrane. Unlike his more middle-of-the-road peers in the world of post-war pop, he did not make records aimed at the singles charts so is less well-known than artists like Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis and Mel Torme, but was a singer who was highly-regarded by his peers and aficionados. This excellent-value 52-track 2-CD collection comprises material drawn from singles and albums, featuring recordings with the orchestras of Earl Hines, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimmy Carroll, George Williams, Norman Leyden, Perez Prado, Howard Biggs and Frank Hunter, plus the Errol Garner Trio. It includes selected titles from Regent/Savoy album “Johnny Hartman Sings”, and his albums on the Bethlehem label “Songs From The Heart”, “All Of Me: The Debonair Mr. Hartman” and “And I Thought About You”. He was a fine interpreter of the repertoire of the Great American Songbook, and this collection offers an insight into the talents of a performer who has not has the attention he merits, and is an entertaining showcase for his work.