Details

It’s been argued that in order to truly appreciate the genius of Sammy Davis, Jr. you had to see him perform live – that is, in an environment in which the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. One of those individual parts was Sammy’s talent for impressions, a staple of his live act; yet another thing he could do to delight his audience when he was finished singing, or tapping, or playing instruments, or telling jokes. With The Sammy Davis, Jr. All-Star Spectacular, Reprise wanted to capture this lightning in a bottle.

Sammy was no professional impressionist like Rich Little or Frank Gorshin, but cultivating the skill was important to him; after all, it had been a much younger Sammy’s groundbreaking impressions of white celebrities, done in front of white audiences, during his days with the Will Mastin Trio that had really set the Trio apart from other vaudeville acts. Furthermore, due to his own vocal prowess, Sammy could actually do impressions of singers – this had been how he got into singing in the first place. (In several of his first few sides recorded for Capitol in 1949, he sounds so much like Billy Eckstine you can tell he’s been doing impressions to the point where he can’t find his own ‘voice’.)

Sammy had largely shied away from impressions and other novelty material on LP at Decca (a notable exception being “Because of You” on Starring Sammy Davis, Jr.), but the idea of singing songs as the people who popularised them and then using that as a launching pad for his favourite impressions must have appealed to him. The album’s A-side makes for more interesting than purely enjoyable listening today, given that a few of Sammy’s subjects have since faded somewhat from modern popular culture’s memory. The list of impressions are as follows:

• “That Lucky Old Sun” – Frankie Laine, Ray Charles, and Al Hibbler.

• “Be My Love” – Mario Lanza and Louis Armstrong (concluding as himself).

• “Lulu’s Back In Town” – Mel Tormé and Jerry Lewis (concluding as himself).

• “Stranger In Paradise” – Tony Bennett (somewhat unkindly over-emphasising an almost non-existent lisp) and Billy Eckstine.

• “Ballerina” – Nat ‘King’ Cole and Vaughn Monroe (with some George ‘Kingfish’ Stevens and Huckleberry Hound thrown in).

• “Sonny Boy” – Al Jolson, James Cagney, Bela Lugosi, Jimmy Stewart, Dean Martin, Edward G. Robinson, and Boris Karloff.

The album’s B-side is something of a hidden gem in Sammy’s Reprise catalogue: six of the swinging-est sides he ever laid on vinyl. Arranger Morty Stevens (who also arranged the A-side) has Sammy explode out of the blocks with “I Married An Angel”, and things don’t get any less uptempo from there! You can catch your breath briefly on “If You Are But A Dream”, which is given a mambo-esque flavour by long-time Count Basie arranger Neal Hefti.

With its two-mini-albums-in-one structure and Sammy goofing around with impressions and accents, The Sammy Davis, Jr. All-Star Spectacular is a unique and entertaining entry in the Sammy Davis, Jr. canon.