Gogi Grant RIP

[JSngry]

Not a fan, but Granted, It's Gogi, with fine charts by Johnny Mandel shows that she might not have been particularly hip to the trip, but she was cool enough to not fuck it up, sometimes when those jazzypoppyswingy things happened, the singer's pocket and that of the charts were clearly at odds, and that did not happen here. So -  RIP just for that,

 

[jlhoots]

My wife likes The Wayward Wind - R.I.P.

[Bill Nelson]

What Sangrey said.  And yes, her best and closest to jazz happened on 'Granted... It's Gogi', the last of her five albums for RCA (1960).  Fortunately, producer Dick Pierce was able to secure the arranging services of Johnny Mandel, just prior to him being chosen by Sinatra to provide same for the 'Ring-A-Ding Ding' debut on Reprise.

Gogi's recording career was relatively short, lasting eight years.  Her 1956 debut at the top-o-the-charts -- the million-selling single of 'Wayward Wind', would likely provide her meal ticket for the next 60 years.  All of her LPs were done in Hollywood/L.A. until her last -- a country music production in 1964, with Chet Atkins and Floyd Cramer in Nashville (still produced by Dick Pierce). 

At 40, Gogi seems to have thrown in the towel with recording.  She doesn't get as much as a paragraph in Will Friedwald's 'Biographical Guide to the Great Pop and Jazz Singers'.  However, her run of six LPs provides us with that withering vibrato fueled by 'that restless wind that yearns to wander".