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Van Alexander RIP


Hardbopjazz

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Van Alexander arranged four of Kay Starr's best LPs in 1959-60, just after she left RCA and returned to the Capitol fold. 

'Movin'', 'Loser's Weepers', 'Movin' On Broadway', and 'Jazz Singer' are fully mature, professionally-realized recordings of Starr at her pinnacle.  They're free of her earlier Capitol novelties and RCA's efforts at big-selling pop singles.

When critic Will Friedwald selected the Alexander-arranged LPs 'Movin', Movin' On Broadway', and 'Jazz Singer' with Gerald Wiggins' small jazz combo backing on 'I Cry By Night' (Capitol, 1962), he praises them "...so terrific as to give the impression that Starr knew her option wouldn't be renewed and wanted to end her stay at the top with four of the most colossal jazz vocal sets ever recorded."  (Friedwald in 'Jazz Singing', pgs. 217-18, Da Capo, 1996).      

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