Details

Doubtless Sammy Davis, Jr.’s least-known Decca album, All The Way … And Then Some! is Sammy’s only Decca title that has never received a release on CD – not even by a cut-price European outfit with crappy vinyl transfers! Featuring songs recorded over six different sessions across 15 months, and with arrangements by five different arrangers, the end result is a mishmash of tone and style.

“All The Way” kicks off the album, with Sammy starting with his Sinatra impression (“Good night Nelson, and sleep warm!”) and then musically horsing around a bit for the balance of the song. The remainder of the disc sees a mix of belted Broadway showstoppers, overwrought string-supported ballads, and hardened swing numbers.

The overall effect could be likened to attending Sammy’s nightclub act, and that is exactly the context Ken Grevatt provides in the LP’s liner notes: “Picture yourself in the smart atmosphere of a fine supper club. House lights down, spotlights up. Sammy Davis steps on the floor – as you put the needle in the groove.”

In addition to Sammy’s regular arrangers Morty Stevens and Jack Pleis, three new arrangers (Dick Stabile, Russell Garcia and Sonny Burke) provided two contributions each.

Saxophonist and bandleader Dick Stabile had been Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis’s musical director until 1956, and had worked with Dean on his recent Capitol albums. Sammy had worked with him since the early 50s when he was the bandleader at Ciro’s, and would work with him again when Stabile fronted the house band at the Cocoanut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in the early 60s.

Virtuoso arranger Russell Garcia had recently arranged albums for each of Julie London and Anita O’Day, as well as two Porgy and Bess duet albums, for Mel Tormé and Frances Faye, and for Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. An in-demand talent, here he provides two of the best toe-tapping charts on the record.

Sonny Burke was an active arranger, conductor and A&R man at Decca, although this was his only collaboration with Sammy at Decca (two recordings from his session with Sammy remain unissued in a vault somewhere: “My Gypsy Heart” and “That Old Feeling”). Both Sammy and Burke moved to Frank Sinatra’s Reprise Records in 1960 and would work together again there.