Carol Sloane - Out of the Blue

Japanese import

Carol Sloane, who made a strong impression with her performance at the 1961 Newport Jazz Festival, shortly after recorded her first album for Columbia. At the time, her voice sounded a little like Ella Fitzgerald's in spots, but Sloane's own personality frequently pops through. She mostly sticks to ballads, along with an occasional swinger, on this set, and the only partly identified band is mostly confined to a quiet supporting role by arrangers Bill Finegan and Bob Brookmeyer. After recording a second album for Columbia, Sloane would slip into obscurity until her rediscovery (at first by the Japanese) in the late '70s but, as this reissue shows, Carol Sloane was a highly appealing singer from the start.

AllMusic Review by Scott Yanow