Compilation of Laine's late 1950s recordings, where she covers a lot of "American songbook" standards - today this is propriety of exclusively jazz singers or pop artists who try to prove themselves capable in other genres, but back than this was actually a pop music.
Laine started as a vocalist for Johnny Dankworth orchestra and her earliest recordings are documented elsewhere. Later she became so well known (trough TV and musical theatre work) that eventually she would go solo - though is very possible Dankworth supported her (under pseudonym) even here. On this album she sings songs from repertoires of Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington and Peggy Lee and this shows great care about choice of music she was working with (as opposite to her contemporaries like Lita Roza who was doing "How much is that dogie in the window?") - this also makes her discography very enjoyable as lady had great taste and of course class, all of her recordings deserve to be heard. At this point her voice was still not as stratospheric as later, here she mostly croons politely and those famous vocal acrobatics still lie in the future.
I have greatly expanded CD version that has complete recordings released around the same time, including her lovely version of Peggy Lee's "Sugar" that by far surpasses the original.
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