Jo Stafford
walked the delicate line between
jazz
and
pop
as well as any singer in the immediate postwar period, and her smooth, elegant sense of melody always put the song she was singing first, so her vocals seem to glide as effortlessly as air through the arrangements, never drawing undue attention, but always there at the center of things. This set from her
Capitol
years in the 1940s and early '50s does have a couple of her biggest hits (
"You Belong to Me,"
"Make Love to Me"
), and duets with
Gordon MacRae
(
"The Alphabet Song"
) and
Johnny Mercer
"Candy"
), as well as a wonderfully balanced and nuanced version of
"Scarlet Ribbons,"
but it's really too brief a collection to be anything more than a teaser. ~ Steve Leggett