Search - Bing Crosby :: Feels Good Feels Right

The Old Master at his late-in-life best

El Comandante | Cincinnati, Ohio USA | 10/25/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In many ways, this album serves as a summation of Bing Crosby's career. His voice is captured throughout with stunning fidelity and puts one in mind of Mel Torme's comment how as Bing got older, the richness of his low tones could make your woofers beg for mercy. The title track finds Bing playing tongue-in-cheek with quasi-rock rhythms (he was even looser on this if you ever saw him perform it in person), and "There's Nothing I Haven't Sung About" is a great special material song Bing had done a few years earlier on TV. However, the ballads make this package one for the ages. Too many highlights to list, but "The Rose in Her Hair" is a final and completely fitting nod to the sentimental waltzes Bing turned into gold during the 1930s. Perhaps best of all, Crosby's ability to imply enormous feeling without overstatement is brilliantly displayed on "What's New?", which aches with regret and completely overshadows his better-known 1939 version. True, the competent orchestral arrangements aren't on the level of what Nelson Riddle or Billy May could write (or, for that matter, what Pete Moore was providing for Bing's United Artists sessions). But Bing is in top form throughout, and so is reissue producer/engineer Michael Dutton, whose brilliant Vocalion transfers are fully up to his customary standard. Bravos all around!"