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 Gene KellySong and Dance Man Release Date: 1948 Label: MGM Rating:  |
Gene Kelly was much better known as a dancer than a singer, though he did do a fair amount of the latter, mostly to his detriment after 1950 or so -- never a very strong singer, his voice weakened notably after age 40. This album, only the 30th release of the then-new MGM label when it appeared in 1948, captured Kelly at a time when he was still in good form vocally. It's also, surprisingly, a kind of a concept album, focused on compositions specifically associated with some of the great song-and-dance men who preceded Kelly to fame, including George M. Cohan and George Primrose. He opens, interestingly enough, with the Bill Robinson signature tune "Doin' the New Low-Down," demonstrating a flexibility, range, and subtlety that make the loss of those attributes in the subsequent decade all the more tragic; he has a different kind of fun with "The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady" -- a Pat Rooney homage -- and pays tribute to his colleague Fred Astaire with "Let Yourself Go." Sadly, in the decade that followed, Kelly's singing would be the first of his major talents to fail him, and he came to Hollywood so "late" -- at age 29 -- that he was never fully able to exploit his abilities in this area. But this LP is worth hearing and even the original is worth tracking down, because it was pressed at a time when MGM Records was still putting out good platters (their later pressings, from the '60s and early '70s, were notoriously cheap and noisy). Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
Tracks:
| Title | Composer | Time | |
| 1 | Ida! Sweet as Apple Cider | Leonard, Munson | |
| 2 | Let Yourself Go | Berlin | |
| 3 | Moonlight Bay | Wenrich, Madden | |
| 4 | Doin' the New Low Down | Fields, McHugh | |
| 5 | Daughter of Rosie O'Grady | Brice, Donaldson | |
| 6 | You're a Grand Old Flag/Yankee Doodle Boy | Cohan |
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