Description
Doris Day
Doris Day (born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff; April 3, 1922 – May 13, 2019) was an American actress, singer, and animal welfare activist. She began her career as a big band singer in 1939, her first hit recording being “Sentimental Journey” in 1945 with Les Brown & His Band of Renown. After leaving Brown to embark on a solo career, she recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967.
Day’s film career began during the latter part of the Classical Hollywood Film era with the film Romance on the High Seas (1948), ultimately leading to her twenty-year career as a motion picture actress. She starred in a sequence of of films, including musicals, comedies, and dramas. She played the title role in Calamity Jane (1953), and starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) with James Stewart. Her most best known films were with co-star Rock Hudson in such films as Pillow Talk (1959). She also worked with James Garner on Move Over, Darling (1963). She also co-starred in films with such leading men as Clark Gable, Cary Grant, James Stewart, David Niven, and Rod Taylor. After her final film in 1968, she went on to star in the CBS sitcom The Doris Day Show (1968–1973).
As an actress, she became the biggest female film star in the early 1960s, and ranked sixth among the box-office performers by 2012. In 2011, she released her 29th studio album, My Heart, which became a UK Top 10 album featuring new material. Among her awards, Day has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Legend Award from the Society of Singers. In 1960, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and in 1989 was given the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures. In 2004, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush followed in 2011 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Career Achievement Award.
André Previn
André George Previn, KBE (April 6, 1929 – February 28, 2019) was a German-American pianist, composer, arranger, and conductor.
His career was three-pronged. Starting by arranging and composing Hollywood film scores for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Previn was involved in the music for over 50 films over his entire career. He won four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings (and one more for his Lifetime Achievement). He was also the music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Oslo Philharmonic, as well as the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. In jazz, Previn was a pianist-interpreter and arranger of songs from the Great American Songbook, was piano-accompanist to singers of jazz standards, and was a trio pianist. All along the way, his efforts were recorded; much of the way, they garnered acclaim and awards.
Doris Day & André Previn-Duet 1962
Recorded late in 1961, this album is a milestone in Doris Day’s career — despite having generated no hits — as her best long-player, and her purest jazz solo album. Cut as a duet with André Previn (with Previn Trio bassist Red Mitchell and drummer Frank Capp providing occasional support), the album presents Day in the most intimate musical setting of her career. Her trademark style of singing works twice as well here as it did on her swing-era and early solo recordings. The repertory includes “Fools Rush In,” and Alec Wilder’s “Give Me Time,” “Falling in Love Again,” and a few Previn-authored pieces that hold up magnificently in this company.
Track Listing
