Don't Go to Strangers
was
Etta Jones
' first album for the independent
jazz
label
Prestige
when it was released in 1960 (having been recorded in a single session on June 21 of that year), and although
Jones
had been releasing records since 1944, including a dozen sides for
RCA
in 1946 and an album for
King Records
in 1957, she was treated as an overnight sensation when the title tune from the album went gold, hitting the Top 40 on the
pop
charts and reaching number five on the
R&B
charts. An elegant
ballad
on an album that had several of them, including the masterful
"If I Had You"
and a marvelous reading of
"All the Way,"
a song usually identified with
Frank Sinatra
,
"Don't Go to Strangers"
featured
' airy, bluesy phrasing and uncanny sense of spacing, and was very much a
performance, making its success on the
charts all the more amazing. Listen to
' restructuring of the melody to the opening track, the old chestnut
"Yes Sir, That's My Baby,"
to hear a gifted
singer sliding and shifting the tone center of a song like a veteran horn player, all the while leaving the melody still recognizable, but refreshing it until it stands revealed anew. Apparently there were no additional tracks cut at the session, since bonus material has never surfaced on any of the album's subsequent reissues, although that's hardly a problem, because as is,
is a perfect gem of a recording. ~ Steve Leggett