MORGANA KING: FOUR CLASSIC ALBUMS (FOR YOU, FOR ME, FOR EVERMORE / SINGS THE BLUES / THE GREATEST SONGS EVER SWUNG / LET ME LOVE YOU) (2CD) AVID

The “Godmother” brings it home……….!!
AVID Jazz here presents four classic Morgana King albums including original LP liner notes on a finely re-mastered and low priced double CD.
“For You, For Me, For Evermore”, “Sings The Blues”, “The Greatest Songs Ever Swung” and “”Let Me Love You”.
To quote from the liner notes for the “Let Me Love You” album recorded in July 1956, “good singers are at a premium these days…………….let’s say it out in front, Morgana King is a good singer…..always has been…endowing a song with a warm and very personalised feeling”. Born into a musical family in 1930 in Pleasantville N.Y., her father played guitar and sang, while her first husband was the talented jazz trumpeter Tony Fruscella who introduced Morgana to the music of Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday and Thelonious Monk among others. Her second husband was the jazz trombonist Willie Dennis who had played with Mingus and Mulligan and would collaborate with Morgana on many musical projects. Morgana herself studied at the Metropolitan School of Music. These four classic, hard to find albums, recorded between 1956 and 1959 all allude to the emergence of a bright new singing star that was Morgana King. With a four octave voice, Morgana was hard for critics to categorize, was she jazz or something else? It could explain why despite more than 30 albums to her name, recorded from the fifties to the nineties and rave remarks from such as Stevie Wonder who was quoted as saying “Morgana King has done the best version of “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” I have ever heard”, she never really found the full recognition she so richly deserved. She was even invited by Frank Sinatra to record three albums for his Reprise label in the mid sixties while the seventies saw her take on the role of wife to Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone in the classic The Godfather parts 1 & 2. These early albums show us what a great singing talent Morgana was and (indeed still is!) as she moves with consummate ease from jazz classics to blues to standards from the Great American Songbook.
All four albums have been digitally re-mastered for probably the finest sound quality ever!

CD1
1-12: ‘For You, For Me, For Evermore’
1. For You, For Me, Forever More
2. Here I’ll Stay
3. There’s A Lull In My Life
4. Delovely
5. Down In The Depths
6. The Song Is You
7. In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning
8. Ev’rything I Love
9. If You Could See Me Now
10. I’ll String Along With You
11. Everything I’ve Got
12. You’re Not So Easy To Forget
13-22: ‘Sings The Blues’
13. More Than You Know
14. Frankie And Johnnie
15. Mean To Me
16. When Your Lover Has Gone
17. Something To Remember You By
18. I See Two Lovers
19. Body And Soul
20. Mad About The Boy
21. It’s Only A Paper Moon
22. Bill

CD2
1-2: ‘Sings The Blues’
1. Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man
2. Why Was I Born
3-12: ‘The Greatest Songs Ever Swung’
3. Just You, Just Me
4. And the Angels Sing
5. Take the “A” Train
6. I Can’t Get Started
7. Lullaby of Birdland
8. A Foggy Day
9. How High the Moon
10. Perdido
11. Lonesome Road
12. At Sundown
13-25: ‘Let Me Love You’
13. All or Nothing at All
14. Let Me Love You
15. I Love You Much Too Much
16. I’ll Never Smile Again
17. I’ll Remember April
18. You Always Hurt The One You Love
19. The End Of A Love Affair
20. Mad About Him Sad Without Him, How Can I Be Glad Without Him Blues
21. That Ole Devil Called Love
22. Undecided
23. You Don’t Know What Love Is
24. I’ve Found A New Baby – Fast Version
25. I’ve Found A New Baby – Slow Version