Love Me or Leave Me [Living Era]

• Artist: Ruth Etting
• Rating:
• Release Date: August 22, 2006
• Type: Compilation (best of)
• Genre: Vocal Music

Review

A native of David City, Nevada, Ruth Etting began her musical career in Chicago where she developed a style that could be said to epitomize the art of the straight and narrow pop vocal, for she never deviated from the melody or the lyrics as written. This places her in a completely different realm from Billie Holiday; Ruth Etting represented the "normal" approach to singing from which Lady Day deviated so wonderfully. As if to demonstrate the case in point, Living Era's tribute to Ruth Etting opens with her 1928 recording of Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn's "Love Me or Leave Me," a song that became a jazz standard after Fats Waller recorded it as a stride piano solo in 1929, and underwent remarkable transformations when Billie Holiday and Lester Young reinterpreted it in 1937. A comparison of Etting's and Holiday's approach to the same songs speaks volumes about the parallel arts of jazz and pop singing (examples included here are "Back in Your Own Back Yard," "I'll Get By as Long as I Have You," "Body and Soul," "I'll Never Be the Same" and "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie"). Although remembered as a paragon of the sentimental torch song, Ruth Etting sounded best when delivering pleasantly upbeat numbers like "Button Up Your Overcoat." On this collection, she is backed by excellent jazz musicians like Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, guitarist Eddie Lang, pianists Rube Bloom and Frank Signorelli; trumpeters Charlie Spivak and Manny Klein, and bassman Joe Tarto. Even if she sang like the girl next door, her story reads more like something out of an old Humphrey Bogart movie. During her early days as a Chicago nightclub entertainer, Ruth Etting became the consort and then the wife of mobster Moe "The Gimp" Snyder, a notorious thug who appointed himself as her manager and bulldozed people in the entertainment industry in order to further her career. Throughout the mid-'20s Etting became famous on Broadway, as a radio personality and as Columbia's most popular female recording star. The plot sickened, however, as her few appearances in motion pictures were flummoxed by careless casting and lousy scripts. Her marriage steadily deteriorated under the burden of Snyder's jealous boorishness -- he even gunned down her accompanist Myrl Alderman, who recovered and married Etting after Snyder went to prison. Withdrawing from public scrutiny for a few years, the aging singer attempted a comeback in 1947 and then retired to Colorado where she passed away in 1978. This double-disc portrait of "The Queen of the Torch Singers" proceeds in a more or less chronological manner, from her early recordings made in April of 1926 to her hit records of 1931 and 1932; sweetly stylish stuff presented during the darkest days of the Great Depression. ~ arwulf arwulf, All Music Guide

Tracks

CD 1

Track Title	Composers	Performers	Time
Love Me or Leave Me [From "Whoopee"]	Walter Donaldson, Gus Kahn	Ruth Etting	(3:20)
Lonesome and Sorry	Con Conrad, Benny Davis	Ruth Etting	(3:23)
But I Do, You Know I Do!	Walter Donaldson	Ruth Etting	(2:46)
'Deed I Do	Fred Rose, Walter Hirsch	Ruth Etting	(2:49)
What Do We Do on a Dew-Dew-Dewy Day	Charles Tobias	Ruth Etting	(2:47)
It All Depends on You [From "Big Boy"]	Lew Brown, Buddy DeSylva, Ray Henderson	Ruth Etting	(3:00)
I'm Nobody's Baby	Milton Ager, Benny Davis, Lester Santly	Ruth Etting	(2:55)
Sam, The Old Accordion Man	Walter Donaldson	Ruth Etting	(3:10)
Shaking the Blues Away [From "Ziegfeld Follies of 1927"]	Irving Berlin	Ruth Etting	(3:11)
The Song Is Ended, But the Melody Lingers On	Irving Berlin	Ruth Etting	(3:30)
Keep Sweeping the Cobwebs off the Moon	Oscar Levant, Joe Young	Ruth Etting	(2:57)
Back in Your Own Back Yard	Al Jolson, Dave Dreyer	Ruth Etting	(3:02)
When You're with Somebody Else	Ruth Etting, L. Wolfe Gilbert, Abel Baer	Ruth Etting	(2:49)
Ramona	L. Wolfe Gilbert, Mabel Wayne	Ruth Etting	(3:01)
Happy Days Are Lonely Nights	Fred Fisher	Ruth Etting	(3:12)
Because My Baby Don't Mean Maybe Now	Walter Donaldson	Ruth Etting	(2:40)
Beloved	Gus Kahn	Ruth Etting	(3:00)
Sonny Boy [From The Singing Fool]	Al Jolson, Lew Brown, Buddy DeSylva, Ray Henderson	Ruth Etting	(3:29)
My Blackbirds Are Bluebirds Now [From "Whoopee"]	Irving Caesar, Cliff Friend	Ruth Etting	(2:53)
You're the Cream in My Coffee [From "Hold Everything"]	Lew Brown, Buddy DeSylva, Ray Henderson	Ruth Etting	(3:07)
I'll Get by as Long as I Have You	Fred E. Ahlert, Roy Turk	Ruth Etting	(2:37)
Button Up Your Overcoat [From "Follow Thru"]	Lew Brown, Buddy DeSylva, Ray Henderson	Ruth Etting	(2:48)
Mean to Me	Fred E. Ahlert, Roy Turk	Ruth Etting	(3:29)
More Than You Know [From "Great Day"]	Vincent Youmans, Edward Eliscu, Billy Rose	Ruth Etting	(3:02)
Cryin' for the Carolines [From "Spring Is Here"]	Harry Warren, Joe Young	Ruth Etting	(2:52)

CD 2

Track Title	Composers	Performers	Time
Ten Cents a Dance [From Simple Simon]	Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart	Ruth Etting	(3:15)
Funny, Dear, What Love Can Do	George A. Little, Charley Straight	Ruth Etting	(3:07)
Dancing with Tears in My Eyes		Ruth Etting	(2:48)
Don't Tell Him What Happened to Me	Lew Brown, Buddy DeSylva, Ray Henderson	Ruth Etting	(3:22)
Just a Little Closer [From "Remote Control"]	Joseph Meyer	Ruth Etting	(3:02)
If I Could Be with You One Hour Tonight	Henry Creamer	Ruth Etting	(3:02)
Body and Soul [From Three's A Crowd]	Johnny Green, Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton	Ruth Etting	(3:23)
Love Is Like That, What Can You Do?		Ruth Etting	(3:28)
Nevertheless I'm in Love with You	Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby	Ruth Etting	(2:42)
Shine on, Harvest Moon [From "Ziegfeld Follies"]	Nora Bayes, Jack Norworth	Ruth Etting	(2:49)
Guilty	Gus Kahn, Richard Whiting, Harry Akst	Ruth Etting	(3:20)
Me!	Irving Berlin	Ruth Etting	(2:43)
A Faded Summer Love	Phil Baxter	Ruth Etting	(3:16)
Cuban Love Song (Cancion Cubana) [From "The Cuban Love Song"]	Jimmy McHugh, Dorothy Fields, Herbert Stothart	Ruth Etting	(2:55)
It Was So Beautiful [From "The Big Broadcast"]	Harry Barris, Arthur Freed	Ruth Etting	(2:46)
I'll Never Be the Same	Gus Kahn, Frank Signorelli, Matty Malneck	Ruth Etting	(3:15)
Linger a Little Longer in the Twilight	Harry Woods, Reginald Connelly	Ruth Etting	(3:01)
Close Your Eyes	Bernice Petkere	Ruth Etting	(2:49)
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes [From Roberta]	Jerome Kern, Otto Harbach	Ruth Etting	(2:37)
Riptide	Walter Donaldson, Gus Kahn	Ruth Etting	(2:52)
Easy Come, Easy Go [From "Bachelor of Hearts"]	Johnny Green, Edward Heyman	Ruth Etting	(2:44)
Life Is a Song, Let's Sing It Together	Fred E. Ahlert, Joe Young	Ruth Etting	(3:04)
You [From "The Great Ziegfeld"]	Walter Donaldson, Harold Adamson	Ruth Etting	(2:48)
It's a Sin to Tell a Lie	Billy Mayhew	Ruth Etting	(2:46)
There's a Lull in My Life [From "Wake Up and Live"]	Mack Gordon, Harry Revel	Ruth Etting	(2:41)
Goodnight, Sweetheart [From Earl Carroll's Vanities"]	Ray Noble, Reginald Connelly	Ruth Etting	(2:59)

Credits

Benny Goodman (Clarinet), Eddie Lang (Guitar), Charlie Spivak (Trumpet), Joe Venuti (Violin), Georg Brunis (Trombone), Ruth Etting (Vocals), Rube Bloom (Piano), Jimmy Dorsey (Clarinet), Tommy Dorsey (Trumpet), Manny Klein (Trumpet), John Lucas (Drums), Dick Reynolds (Piano), Ben Selvin (Violin), Frank Signorelli (Piano), Harry Barth (Tuba), Charlie Butterfield (Trombone), Tony Gerhardi (Banjo), Murray Kellner (Violin), Joe Tarto (Double Bass), Gilberto Torres (Guitar), Harry Raderman (Trombone), David Lennick (Transfers), Walter Kahn (Cornet), Greg Gormick (Liner Notes), Martin Haskell (Remastering), Martin Haskell (Restoration), Mario Perry (Accordion), Ray Crick (Compilation), Mark Ranshaw (Cover Art), Dave Klein (Cornet), Louis Alter (Piano), Philip Schwartz (Piano), Abel Baer (Piano), Ted Lewis & His Band (Clarinet), Jay Wilbur & His Orchestra (Orchestra), Ward Ley (Double Bass), Fred Farrar (Cornet), Alan Bunting (Remastering), Alan Bunting (Restoration), Sol Klein (Piano)