Love Me Tonight
Columbia 95093
In football, they say that the player who is the victim in the situation resulting in a penalty kick should not be given the task of striking it. If it happens, he is too excited and is prone to miss it.
A similar thing could be said about records and reissues: don’t let the person producing an album with not-perfect original records write the comments. Here we have the knowledgeable Michael Brooks complaining about and making excuses for the inclusion of every track. That is not a good way to sell a record. It’s at a point where it gets comical. If not about the sound, he complains about the song in question, and most irritating is when a somewhat cynical commentator about fifty years later puts his own thoughts and attitude versus a song in the head of the singer, in this case a young Bing Crosby.
Let’s forget about the backside of the LP and do with the music what it was meant for: to be enjoyed. I’m a huge fan of Bing, and I brought back this and two companion records from New Orleans in 1982. I don’t think that they were released in Europe at the time, and they contain some material that was rather rare at the time. Since then, I have bought the chronological series on CD.
On this earnest delivery of a song from 1932, Bing has good company from Frankie Trumbauer’s mellow saxophone. There is harmony in the song, the singing, and the playing, from the first to the last note as I hear it.