Bobby Short

In the summer of 1957, when Bobby Short went into the studio to record his fourth 12" LP for Atlantic Records, the label hired an orchestra for one of the dates, and Short cut a total of 27 songs for what was supposed to be a two-record set. Atlantic seems to have reconsidered the economics of such a package, however, and the resulting album, Sing Me a Swing Song, was a conventional single disc, with the rest of the tracks going into the vault. It is only now, more than a decade later, that Short has persuaded Atlantic to go public with the remaining material on this album, Nobody Else But Me. But from a musical standpoint, it doesn't make that much difference whether this album appeared in the late '50s or the early '70s. Great changes may have taken place in the world of popular music in general, but not in the classy nightclubs of Manhattan. Beginning with two songs on which he's joined by his rhythm section of Ismael Ugarte on bass and Sonny Rivera on drums, and ending with three songs featuring the orchestra conducted by Phil Moore, with seven songs in the middle on which he accompanies himself on the piano alone, Short turns to his usual favorites for song choices (i.e., the great songwriters of the interwar period) including composers Harold Arlen, Noël Coward, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and Arthur Schwartz, with the likes of Coward, Porter, Howard Dietz, Dorothy Fields, Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein II, Lorenz Hart, and Ted Koehler providing the words for him to sing. The trick here is that, while the names of the songwriters are familiar, most of the song titles are not. Short has rummaged around lesser Broadway and Hollywood musicals for forgotten songs that have much of the melodic and lyrical sparkle one associates with the great songwriters, but none of the overuse. He sings them in his usual forthright style, never leaning too hard on meaning or sentiment, but moving along to the next witty phrase or catchy bit of melody. This is an album that sounds like it's full of classics, even though most listeners won't have heard most of the songs before. [This 2002 Atlantic CD contains the bonus track "It Never Was You"]. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide