All's Fair in Love and War

• Artist: Dick Powell
• Rating:
• Release Date: 2003
• Type: Compilation (best of)
• Genre: Vocal Music

Review

British archival label Blitz offers the absolute minimum in terms of packaging on its Dick Powell title All's Fair in Love and War: a single photograph of the singer, repeated on front cover and back, and a list of the song titles. It turns out, however, that these are recordings borrowed from Decca Records, tracks Powell recorded in a two-year period between November 1935 and November 1937. At that time, he was one of the busiest actors in Hollywood; he appeared in six films in 1935 and four each in 1936 and 1937. Most of those films were musicals, and Powell also went into the Decca studios and cut record versions of some of the songs he and his co-stars were singing in them, along with a few other tunes. Nine recording sessions produced 32 masters, 20 of which are featured here. Powell had some good material to work with. Al Dubin and Harry Warren wrote songs for Shipmates Forever, Hearts Divided, Gold Diggers of 1937, and The Singing Marine; Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg for Stage Struck and Gold Diggers of 1937; Irving Berlin for On the Avenue; and Johnny Mercer and Richard A. Whiting for Varsity Show and Hollywood Hotel. And among those songs were several, introduced by Powell, that made the hit parade: "Don't Give Up the Ship," "With Plenty of Money and You," "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm," "You're Laughing at Me," and "'Cause My Baby Says It's So." Interestingly, however, the hit recordings of these songs were all by others, and nearly all those others were swing bandleaders like Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. Maybe Powell was too busy making movies to promote his records, maybe Decca was more interested in promoting Bing Crosby, or maybe the public wasn't as interested in light tenors as it had been in the 1920s. In any case, Powell's recordings of the mid-'30s reveal something of a neglected talent, even on this skimpy reissue. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi

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