Marge Dodson

MARGE DODSON - IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT (1959)

1.Sand in My Shoes
2.Someone to Watch over Me
3.Spring Is Here
4.But Not for Me
5.The End of a Love Affair
6.Looking for a Boy
7.Little Girl Blue
8.When Your Lover Has Gone
9.These Foolish Things
10.The Man I Love
11.I Cover the Waterfront
12.In the Still of the Night

In the Still of the Night is Marge Dodson's initial effort for Columbia and neither she nor the label's A&R man, the indefatigable Mitch Miller, were taking no chances. All the tunes on the program are major entries in the Great American Songbook, with a full half of them from the pens of the Gershwin brothers or the team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Dodson delivers them all competently with a pleasant, clear voice with good diction, medium range and virtually no vibrato, sounding like a blend of Dinah Shore and June Christy. But she brings nothing distinctive to the vocal table on this album, except for an unusual rendition of "Little Girl Blue." Here she uses a quirky beat pattern giving a different interpretation than one usually hears. To her credit, she also does a respectable, mid-tempo version of "But Not for Me." She is accompanied on all but one of the tracks by an assortment of small groups led by Michael Colicchio. On "Little Girl Blue," her husband Coleridge Perkinson does the honors. However, there is one constant on each track, her principal support is supplied by a bass player, never identified. The other instruments play subsidiary roles. Dodson was to cut another album for Columbia and one for Decca then seems to have disappeared not even remembered by a footnote in any of the standard works on vocal jazz. ~ Dave Nathan, Rovi