©2010
Featuring:
Steve Kuhn
Lewis Nash
Track List
1. When The World Was Young
6:11
2. On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe
3:14
3. Skylark
4:18
4. The Glow Worm
2:51
5. Come Rain or Come Shine
4:45
6. Midnight Sun
8:03
7. Accentuate the Positive
2:32
8. I’m Old Fashioned
3:29
9. Laura
6:31
10. That Old Black Magic
2:15
11. Out of This World
4:54
12. Early Autumn
4:38
13. Moon River
3:56
Album Notes
When a girl gets named for a movie and song favorite by her talented singer-father and concert pianist-mother, she has a right to consider it her favorite song, and the genius lyricist, Johnny Mercer one of her favorites as well. Johnny captured the mood and imagery of “Laura” without having seen the movie itself.
Laura… Though never having recorded Laura, this Laura’s haunting version was worth waiting for.
When the World Was Young… Laura’s intriguing vocal poignantly captured Johnny’s dreams of a simpler time in his native Savannah.
On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe… Seeing recently the great Midwestern rail yards of Omaha and Kansas City, Laura couldn’t resist taking some poetic license with the lyrics.
Glow Worm… shows Mercer’s wit, humor and creativity with this old German song and gives Laura a chance to swing! Skylark… After hours of studying Fred’s beautiful flute track, Laura re-worked her vocal and soared in the air with the skylark.
Midnight Sun… Laura and her close friend Bobby Rozario combined arranging skills to create a moving version of this great standard…simply incredible! Personally, I could listen to this cut a few hundred times!
Johnny left a comfortable life in the South to seek a career in acting in NYC and later Hollywood, but found more success writing lyrics with the many talented songwriters, especially Harold Arlen, Harry Warren, Henry Mancini and Hoagy Carmichael. He had a more outdoor viewpoint than those raised in the eastern urban areas, and that is reflected in his songs of birds, apple blossoms, rivers, leaves and a hive of bees. Laura’s impeccable intonation and beautiful voice seem perfectly suited for such visual beauty.
Laura’s “roadmaps,” as she called her charts, provided the form, modulations, beginnings and endings to these standards, but as she so sincerely expressed, it was the talent and creativity of the musicians involved in this project that provided the beautiful interplay found on these tracks.
