"Ten Cents A Dance" by Ruth Etting

If you are familiar with Hollywood 1950s classics, chances are you know the biopic "Love Me or Leave Me"  that one and only time had Doris Day playing cold and manipulative role of a calculated nightclub dancer who uses the influence of gangster boyfriend to break into show business, just to drop him once the fame and fortune happens. James Cagney was heartbreaking as besotted gangster pulling all the connections so his girlfriend can get on Broadway, though watching Day in an her dazzling glory its a bit unclear why she needed any push at all, since she had charm, looks and talent galore - it was heavily fictionalised and kind of "Fatal attraction" of its day but the story is timeless and deserves new version that could look closely on dynamics between the two main characters.

This "ASV" compilation (on unfortunately obsolete British label) is the real thing: here you can hear genuine article and what Ruth Etting actually sounded like. In music literature she is mainly unfairly compared to contemporary Annette Hanshaw who seems to be kind of artist critics prefer - while Etting was a big star, Hanshaw is known only to cognoscenti therefore by some strange logic she is celebrated as better of two, though there is absolutely nothing wrong with Etting herself. Both possessed thin, slightly squeaky and girlish voices popular back in 1920s but where Hanshaw had annoying trademark to end her recordings with a phrase "that's all!" (it gets predictable and tiresome after a while), Etting milked pathos of her sentimental ballads for all its worth. In addition to sensational looks (she was in Ziegfeld Follies), she also had tons of really good songs of which some later became American Songbook standards - "Love Me Or Leave Me", "You're The Cream In My Coffee", "Body And Soul" and "Mean To Me"  were later re-visited to death by any Jazz singer from later generations, while "Ten Cents A Dance" was Etting's own "Private dancer". Its a surprisingly strong jukebox of 1920s and early 1930s hits and of genuine interest to any listener curious about that era.