Product Description

24-Bit Digitally Remastered
(2 Lps On 1 Cd) + Bonus Tracks
Includes 20-page booklet with session details, rare photos, memorabilia and extensive liner notes.
Having gained considerable experience as the top singer with some of the biggest name bands in the country, Lucy Ann Polk (1927-2011) decided to quit the road after four successful years with the Les Brown band. Voted Best Girl Band Vocalist in Down Beat magazine s Readers Poll for four years in a row (1951-1954), she settled in her Los Angeles home, with her husband, trombonist Dick Noel. From then on she worked on casual singing TV and radio engagements, and appeared in several live performances mainly with the Dave Pell Octet.
She had acquired a mature style of her own, much admired by both public and musicians. Her voice was not the penetrating instrument of other leading vocalists, but she was a warm and swinging singer. As these sides make abundantly clear, she found her own freedom, away from the constraints of the band setting, in singing backed by small groups like Pell s octet or Marty Paich s sextet and quartet. An independent soul, she was a lovely and talented singer, tellingly described by Les Brown s trumpeter and arranger Wes Hensel as one of the grooviest people who ever walked this earth.

Review

"Lucy Ann Polk's lone Mode session pairs the singer with a sextet led by pianist and arranger Marty Paich, whose nuanced, spacious orchestrations perfectly complement Polk's sultry yet supremely controlled style. The strength of Lucky Lucy Ann is its subtlety -- not a note is wasted or extraneous, and for all the modernist elements converging in Paich's arrangements, he never obscures the clarity of perennials like "Makin' Whoopee" and "Time After Time." Polk likewise shades the universal themes of the lyrics with a style and fierce intelligence all her own -- for all the power of her voice, it's her restraint that rings loudest and clearest." --Jason Ankeny (All Music Guide)